A short two-minute video of Yale law professor Daniel Markovits discussing meritocracy:

Why rich kids always win at life

One of the complaints against DEI in admissions and hiring is that it’s unfair to otherwise qualified people whose “slots are taken” by DEI hires. The argument is that meritocracy is fair, or at least fairer than DEI. Markovits’s point, with which I agree, is that even a pure meritocracy is unfair because it doesn’t reward intrinsic talent and effort — it rewards intrinsic talent plus effort plus ‘investment’, by which Markovits means educational investment.

He’s speaking at the Oxford Union, and he points out that even at Oxford, which he regards as a true meritocratic institution, the student body skews rich relative to the general population because of the educational advantages that rich kids enjoy.

Proponents of pure meritocracy might argue that even if it’s unfair, a meritocratic system is better because it selects the most capable people for positions, even if that capability reflects privilege as well as intrinsic talent and effort.

Anyway, I thought a thread on the DEI vs meritocracy question would be interesting. Hence this OP.