[herbstein]

The word 'meritocracy' was coined as a derogatory term about the education system in England in the 50s in a satirical text. It mocked the idea that such a thing could exist because the system obviously wasn't designed for it. If you value "intelligence", but only give rich people access to good education, then you've just created a two-step process that selects for rich people.

[Dirlewanger]

Ok, so what? It's not used in that context anymore. It's the same pitfall as the master/slave/blacklist/whitelist/etc. arguments: people have a problem divorcing historical meaning from present-day usage. Meanings change and evolve over time. If we follow this stunted logic, then there's going to be a lot of other English words/phrases that need to be banned as well. The only people associating them with their historical meanings are those wanting to ban the phrases. These etymological fallacies do nothing but pointlessly divide people. It needs to stop.

[cthalupa]

The term was coined in a derogatory manner because the person who coined the term thought it was a ridiculous concept.

No one is saying ban the word meritocracy, but people are saying that if you're arguing for one, you've missed the point.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

The concept that was considered ridiculous was only giving rich people access to the resources to make it in a meritocracy.

But for a while, the UK actually didn't do that. New universities were created, "grammar schools" were mostly replaced, new hiring practices adopted, and the stranglehold of the establishment was broken a little bit, for a little while.

That was because as ridiculous as the original idea might have been, good people with good intentions started to believe in "meritocracy", and used the idea to make changes.

[rafram]

The present-day usage of the term still refers to an impossibility.

[sjy]

I don’t think this is an accurate summary of the book. The satirical history of the “modern education system” in chapter 3 describes how funding for public education was increased, and students were aggressively streamed into different schools based only on IQ tests. Eventually expensive private schools went out of fashion because they were attended only by students who couldn’t get into the best public schools, so they no longer conferred academic prestige. Early in the book, capital levies are introduced which prevent the building of new fortunes, and in chapter 7, an Equalization of Income Act is passed so that all citizens receive the same basic income. The meritocracy is transformed into an aristocracy not because “merit” is a proxy for heritable wealth, but because “intelligence” (as defined in the book: “the ability to raise [economic] production, directly or indirectly”) is also heritable, and in the book this effect was amplified through eugenics. You can find a more modern and less satirical take on this argument in Fredrik deBoer’s The Cult of Smart.