Random selection is necessary to create stable meritocratic institutions

From the Wikipedia § Criticisms page:

> In his 2019 book The Meritocracy Trap, Daniel Markovits poses that meritocracy is responsible for the exacerbation of social stratification, to the detriment of much of the general population. He introduces the idea of "snowball inequality", a perpetually widening gap between elite workers and members of the middle class. While the elite obtain exclusive positions thanks to their wealth of demonstrated merit, they occupy jobs and oust middle class workers from the core of economic events. The elites use their high earnings to secure the best education for their own children, so that they may enter the world of work with a competitive advantage over those who did not have the same opportunities. Thus, the cycle continues with each generation.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Books

> In his book The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?, the American political philosopher Michael Sandel argues that the meritocratic ideal has become a moral and political problem for contemporary Western societies. He contends that the meritocratic belief that personal success is solely based on individual merit and effort has led to a neglection of the common good, the erosion of solidarity, and the rise of inequality. Sandel's criticism concerns the widespread notion that those who achieve success deserve it because of their intelligence, talent and effort. Instead, he argues that this belief is flawed since it ignores the role of luck and external circumstances, such as social and external factors, which are beyond an individual's control.[91]

* Ibid

Yep you can read in the same article that the word “meritocracy” was originally coined as a perjorative word intended to highlight how “merit” is obviously a function of social class and money. It’s wild that everyone is using “merit” and “meritocracy” as though it somehow avoids elitism, when in reality it’s a sneaky way to cement biases without the appearance of bias. Of course people should be judged on their skills and not their wealth. But, how’d they acquire those skills, and why would anyone assume the money didn’t help? Of course it’s a self-reinforcing system. What I don’t know is what the alternative is. Randomness? Maybe, but I’m not convinced.

At the same time few things are as suspicious as an antipathy to the competent being in charge, especially when it comes from the existing elites. It just screams "How dare you interfere with my ordination by connections by being better!".

There are essentially multiple levels of meritocracy. A level 1 meritocracy would judge only by current skills - for better or worse. This may be less than impressive even if technically a meritocracy. It may say, result in most knights coming from noble families trained from birth, but exceptional individuals would not be barred just from their background. Strictly better than a hard caste system but not something to brag about. A level 2 would try to ensure some degree of access to skills and education to all and be more meritocratic. Public education of unequal qualtity would qualify. A theoretical level N would involve completely equal starting points and would thus have pure 'merit' as the decider, even if it only accumulated from luck and the normal curve. Which highlights another issue - the distribution of quality is never perfectly even, it tends to follow a normal curve of some sort.

As for 'solving' the issue. Ability begets ability - this is called education and practice and I doubt there is a true alternative. We would call it rightfully barking mad to ban education for the sake of equity despite education contributing greatly to disparate outcomes. I think that is one of those imperfections of the universe we must accept for now.