I digressed, while giving a talk at Claremont McKenna College about the changing economics of professional satire in the digital age, into a topic I've thought about a lot but, for reasons unknown, haven't expressed much in public: Meritocracy is immoral.
The first time you heard meritocracy defined, you probably thought it was fair. I sure did. If you work hard, you deserve the rewards. Meritocracy made sense to me — because I could win by those rules.
Under our capitalist system, working hard supposedly entitles you to a higher income. (I don't know how to square that with the respective salaries of a coal miner and a CEO, who sits at a desk shuffling papers, but whatever.) Under this doctrine, if you'd rather pass your time smoking pot and playing video games than working late, you shouldn't expect to earn as much as the busy bee. If you've ever had to pick up the slack for someone who wasn't pulling their weight, it's tempting to buy the argument that hard workers deserve higher remuneration than slackers.