Is meritocracy a bad thing? Michael Young, the British sociologist and author of The Rise of the Meritocracy viewed it as dystopia. Picking upon this, The Economist ran a leader article titled Repairing the Rungs on the Ladder: How to Prevent Virtuous Meritocracy Entrenching Itself at the Top on diminishing social mobility in the United States.

Meritocracy and class
Simply stated, in a meritocracy those with superlative talent achieve advantage. And since ability is transmitted from one generation to another not merely genetically but continuously and organically in the life of the family, the privilege of the the intelligent, creative and connected compounds. Highly educated, intelligent parents are also notorious for seeking learning opportunities for their children. And so the advantages of meritocracy accrue to the children of intellectual elites.

This genetic and cultural transmission occurs at the other end of the spectrum too. If your parents were of below average intelligence, never married, and your mother completed only secondary education, it sets you exceedingly low on the merit scale because you inherit not only your parents genetics, but their culture. Consequently, it is exceedingly difficult for this group to achieve social mobility. The parental investment, social stability, and language rich environment that constitute advantage are lacking. Hence, the Economist laments the increasing social immobility of children born into these families.

Virtuous Meritocracy
What was strikingly absent from the Economist article was the centrality of virtue. The fact that advantage, wealth and power accrue to the intellectual elite magnifies the primacy of virtue. For if those elites employ their wealth, influence and intellectual powers to serve the good of the disadvantaged, then there can hardly be a better social scenario for all involved. This is wealth redistribution in the very best sense: capital put to work for those who need it most by those who can steward it well and truly seek the good of those they serve.

Meritocracy is good for human society if and only if virtue is more cherished than skill. Then it is truly virtuous meritocracy.