Imagine a brain trust like echopulse thinking he would benefit best from a world where merit was what mattered. SMH.
He still believes that Trump has a master plan for world trade that he is going to benefit from. Only the bottom feeders are still hanging onto the hope that all this tariff bs is good for them. And willingly funding a tax cut for the richest residents of the US ( including Canadians ). One side note Canada seems to be fairing far better then Trump and some of these pundits thought we would. Our GDP remains positive ( unlike the US ), plenty of real trade deals coming ( just not with the US ), and a surprise reduction in unemployment this morning ( just one item but there is a pattern here we aren't going into a massive recession because of Donnie ).
Tev Elam brilliantly outlines in this Oxford Union debate speech, meritocracy is less about rewarding excellence than laundering privilege through competition. It doesn’t fix unfairness, it sanctifies it. And those who worship it most loudly are often the least equipped to survive a system that truly runs on outcomes, not effort. “It’s not practice that makes perfect. It’s perfect practice that makes perfect." Vince Lombardi. But access to perfect practice involved expensive 1-1 attention.
Professor Markovits's entire case against meritocracy is built on a fundamental misinterpretation: he is observing the inescapable expression of human nature and mistaking it for a flaw unique to a single social system. Humans are animals, driven by a deep, biological predisposition to protect, love, and ensure the success of their own children. This is not a choice to be judged; it is an instinct to be observed. This fundamental instinct is not created by any political or economic system. It is brought to every system by the people within it. Paradoxically, in systems ideologically designed to stamp out privilege, this human drive doesn't vanish; it metastasizes into a less transparent and more arbitrary form. In fact, it becomes even more potent and insidious in systems like communism and socialism that claim to have eradicated it.
Parental drive, excluding most narcissists and psychopaths, to advantage one's children is biologically grounded and it predates capitalism, democracy, and modern meritocracy. But that’s precisely the point... meritocracy doesn’t transcend human nature, it amplifies its inequalities while pretending not to. Markovits (and Tev Elam) aren’t saying people shouldn't care for their kids. They’re saying that when a system claims to reward merit, but in practice funnels success through inherited advantages, elite tutors, bespoke education, social capital, legacy admissions, it masks inherited privilege as earned success. This isn't just nature expressing itself. It’s nature channeled through institutions that pretend to be fair. That’s not a “misinterpretation,” that’s calling out the system for what it is: a clever way to justify unequal outcomes while insisting the game is fair. To quote Elam’s implicit critique, meritocracy launders privilege through competition, and that laundering process makes systemic inequality harder to see, not easier.
What is a list of amazingly qualified women that you assume are not strictly because they are women and black