Apr 22, 2013
This was the system's great flaw, and it enraged us. A pure meritocracy, we'd discovered, can only promote; it can't legitimize. It can confer success but can't grant knighthood. For that it needs a class beyond itself: the high-born genealogical peerage that aptitude testing was created to supplant with a cast of brainy up-and-comers.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/01/lost-in-the-meritocracy/303672/