The Tyranny of Meritocracy- Standpoint

 Is Meritocracy Tyrannous?

Aryan Mukherjee


    A principle of ideology that has been ingrained in the minds of millions of students worldwide is to let each man merit his own prize. Meritocracy, thus, is the paragon of accomplishment in which, to simply put it, hard work and plentiful studying to go places is the only way to go places, and those who do strive to earn their own merit truly deserve it. Is this common ideal infringed with tyranny? Or is meritocracy truly something every lay man should go out to achieve?

Meritocracy is tyrannous, and for a plethora of reasons. For one, it is corrosive of solidarity, separating the hubristic elites from the grounded misfortunate. It travels under the fundamental belief that all people are given equal opportunities, and thus the aristocratic people who make it places believe they deserve it, looking down upon the humiliated lower half of people who couldn’t endeavor to such leaps and bounds. Luck is a massive factor in play here, but the feeble-minded meritocrats are concealed under a gossamer of their own pride, thus expanding the gap between ‘winning’ and ‘losing’. 


However, in his interview with Michael Sandel, Shashi Tharoor, a renowned Indian politician and diplomat, argues that not every meritocrat would fall under this ruse of being contemptuous from meritocracy. Although valid, the majority who do would gather mass hubris from the lot, and it is shown through statistics. Sandel calculatively contends that in IV Leagues and other prestigious colleges, there are more there from the top 1% of affluent citizens than the bottom 50% combined! This manifests that the equal opportunities principle, although not viewed by every meritocrat, has already impeded on people’s lives profusely, and is slowly widening the gap of opportunity for those who just happened to be on the worse side of the coin flip of luck, so to speak.


In addition, Sandel argues that meritocracy has led to an underappreciation and disvalue for the essentiality of society- the working class. Garbagemen, teachers, construction workers, galore are the foundation of society, without which the dystopia of boundless societal communism and tyranny would truly rage rampant. Yet, this class is at the pits of the economy, with their drudgery being polarized by those who lucked their way into fortune. Others have their part to play, but the candid injustice, fueled into omission, segregation, and bias, is all a factor of meritocracy.


Two groundbreaking principles, opposite spectrums. The grit necessary for merit to arise is the means of factors played out of our hands, yet separates people sheerely based on their hubris and rancor. As Mr. Sandel so poignantly put it, “Being good at making money measures neither our merit, nor the value of our contribution.”

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