Meritocracy

Coined by British sociologist Michael Young in his 1958 satirical novel The Rise of the Meritocracy — as a warning, not a celebration. Young intended it as a critique of a society that sorted people by test scores and called the result fair.

Adopted as the opposite of its original intent. 'Meritocracy' is now invoked to justify inequality — if outcomes are based on merit, then unequal outcomes reflect unequal merit. Young spent his last years dismayed that his coinage had been turned into an endorsement of what he had meant to satirize. Research consistently shows that outcomes in supposedly meritocratic systems are strongly predicted by family income, parental education, and ZIP code — variables that have nothing to do with individual merit.