I may have discussed this topic few years back but reading about it online made me ponder on this issue again, albeit amidst my revision for finals so it's gonna be a short note for my own future reference.
Reference:
http://poskod.sg/Posts/2014/4/4/Meritocracy-as-Myth
"This is why I cringe when anyone says that the poor cannot make excuses because anyone can be successful if they worked hard enough. The fact is that not everyone had an equal starting point and not everyone was equally equipped for the same battles. Some had higher hurdles to cross. Both externally and, more significantly, within themselves."
Meritocracy wasn't meant to be equal. One of the commenter mentioned that meritocracy is less about you but more about the system as a whole, where the most suitable are selected to be employed. It's never about letting you succeed as an individual, it's about making the system a sustainable success.
That said, meritocracy isn't equal but it's fair. Unfairness arise if you judge a fish by how fast it climbs a tree; meritocracy judges ones intellectual and technical capability for intellectual and technical roles, how else do you suggest we sieve out the best engineers and best doctors for their job if not by how well they do in engineering and medical school? Granted not all who excel in school are bound to excel in the workplace (I don't even believe results and intelligence are exclusively causal in the first place), but there's no way we can determine how someone is gonna survive better at work than to look at how he/she's coping with the technical workload and dealing with the stress in school that can be paralleled to what he/she is going to face in the future. At least those that emerged victorious showed their potential right?
So it's fair; but equality? Never. No one said anything about going into battles being equally equipped. There's two things you need in a battle: your skills (analogous to your capabilities relevant to work), and your weapon (opportunities). In a random world, some people are extremely skillful but are granted with wooden swords; some are not so good but have the chance to wield swords of Valyrian Steel; others are both unskillful and unlucky; while the rest are just born on easy mode.
Meritocracy is about ceasing such chaos and instilling fairness; unearth those extremely skillful ones, give them the Valyrian steel (because, well, they make better use of it, more than the less skillful ones at least) and make them the general. If you fear you'll die in a battle with a wooden stick, hone your skills to earn that Valyrian steel. If you want equality, the battle will be led by mediocre soldiers with Valyrian steel sword and master swordsman with wooden sticks: nothing productive will come of it (to say the very least).
Are the skillful ones hogging the Valyrian steel? That's the question (and my answer is that I doubt it - look at all the SAF and MOE scholarships waiting for you to grab them! And may I add, they are more lucrative than more competitive scholarships elsewhere). But in a state with ever-increasing above-average swordsman, there may just be insufficient Valyrian steel to go around. How, then, can we mutate meritocracy to incorporate more equality (which, as you may have guessed, will compromise fairness)?
