[ca_parody]

I am sympathetic to the practical issues & biases at play when discussing the systems we often call meritocracies; especially when those systems result in anti-meritocratic behavior.

However, what is the reader supposed to come away with here as an alternative? Equality of outcome? Should it really be that any given combination of work ethic, dedication, novelty, and a bit of luck will not land you above the mean? I personally am all for improving meritocracies so they live up to the name, but abolishing them due to their implementation failures seems silly and more importantly, the alternatives are dangerous.

[Symmetry]

Well the traditional alternative is that you inherit your profession from your parent. In terms of political leadership this would be aristocracy but it was pretty common for others too. Men with the last name "smith" expecting to follow their father in becoming smiths for example. But of course levels of employment in different jobs are nowhere near as stable as they were back then. Not too many smiths around and we've gone from 80+% of people working as farmers to less than 5%.

I suppose you could have everybody randomly assigned to jobs. Or you could people have a list of preferences and to the extent that there are more applicants to a given job than open slots randomly assign them then move the other applicants to their next slot.

[DFHippie]

> what is the reader supposed to come away with here as an alternative?

Humility, for a start.