The Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite

by Daniel Markovits

But the principal mechanisms behind snowballing meritocratic inequality involve individually innocent choices—to educate children, to work industriously, and to innovate—that accumulate and feed on themselves, in ways that cause collective harm. Highlighting individual actions ignores the deeper structures within which people act. Emphasizing personal morality neglects politics.