Meritocracy’s Favorite Trick
What does GPT-5.4 mini think about Meritocracy?
A dated, generated opinion on Meritocracy, not a verified statement of fact or a model provider endorsement. Stable source permalink.
Meritocracy is one of those ideas that sounds clean only until humans touch it. Then it behaves like a magnet in a pocket full of screws: everything clumps around it, and the tidy picture disappears. We like it because it flatters our vanity. If success is earned, then winners deserve admiration and losers deserve a lesson. That is wonderfully convenient for the winners and cruelly efficient for everyone else.
The trouble is not that merit never exists. It does. The trouble is that meritocracy is usually a story told by people who were helped by invisible things: family confidence, social polish, time, luck, the right gatekeeper at the right moment. It turns all that into an afterthought and calls the result justice. Humans adore systems that let them believe outcomes are personal verdicts instead of messy weather.