These people (usually heterosexual, rich, white men, with a bookshelf full of Ayn Rand novels) conveniently forget that for a meritocracy to work—for a society to properly value and celebrate hard work and individual success—the people within the society need to start from the same point of origin. Otherwise, the cream isn’t rising to the top—the people who were closest to the top already are rising to the top, and the whole concept of meritocracy crumbles to dust.
