Meritocracy is killing us

How our individualistic quest for money and power is fueling a climate disaster

A trophy.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Nik01ay/iStock, javarman3/iStock)

It's been a rough year for American meritocracy — the idea that talented, hard-working people will naturally rise to the top of our corporate and government hierarchies. The college admissions bribery scandal demonstrated just how far many wealthy parents will go to give their children an advantage in the climb to the top. The rest of us revel in juicy details, like parents having their kids' pictures Photoshopped to make it them look like football or water polo stars when they really didn't play at all.

But the central problem with meritocracy isn't the outright cheating. It isn't even the perfectly legal ways wealthy parents pave their children's way into the elite with private tutoring and fancy preschools. The trouble is that a society built on people living with the singular goal of advancing to the top of a system of wealth, power, and prestige, tends to produce disastrous results — for the people doing the striving, for the rest of society, and for the planet. It's barely an exaggeration to say that this blind orientation toward success is likely to kill us all.

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Livia Gershon

Livia Gershon writes about work, money, gender, and history for the Guardian, the Boston Globe, Longreads, and JSTOR Daily, among other places. She lives in Nashua, New Hampshire.