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posted by n1 on Saturday June 18 2016, @06:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the in-my-day-we-called-it-social-darwinism dept.

When Michael Young, a British sociologist, coined the term meritocracy in 1958, it was in a dystopian satire. At the time, the world he imagined, in which intelligence fully determined who thrived and who languished, was understood to be predatory, pathological, far-fetched.

Today, however, we’ve almost finished installing such a system, and we have embraced the idea of a meritocracy with few reservations, even treating it as virtuous. That can’t be right. Smart people should feel entitled to make the most of their gift. But they should not reshape society so as to instate giftedness as a universal yardstick of human worth.


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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @01:29PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 18 2016, @01:29PM (#362082)

    > And the ugly truth is that discipline and dedication will outperform intelligence most days

    I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that you didn't bother to read the article, didja?

    Because despite your little tantrum, your conclusion ain't all that far off from the author's point.

    Since you seem to think you are speaking as someone with at least "a modicum of intelligence" we are now left with a dilemma...

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