The Rise of the Mediocrity

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I doubt it'll surprise you to hear that I'm much more sympathetic to the critique of "merit" than you are, although I'm of course approaching it from the social and spiritual context of American liberalism rather than British socialism, a context in which "meritocracy" is used as an argument not only about who should hold leading positions in society and government but who should have access to any comfortable social position at all. "Merit" in this context is what in other situations people just refer to as "intelligence", or even just "being good at school", and I don't think there's any reason that isn't internal to the elite-liberal ideology itself to believe that this is an attribute that makes someone a better person or more deserving of a decent standard of living.

So as applied to being one of the "elites" (sic), sure, I think your rejection of Young's argument--and of his personality, yeesh, what a prick--has, well, merit, but I would only be willing to entirely let go of the anti-meritocratic position in a society where it was taken for granted that not being "elite" shouldn't be tantamount to permanent quasi-penury.