There is no such thing as being meritocratic

Taking a break from essay-writing to put up a short round of ideas, which surrounds meritocracy. It’s rather unpolished at the moment, so bear with me.

There is no way to be ‘meritocratic’. You can only be ‘anti-unmeritocratic’. (Yes, the double negative here isn’t the same thing as the original.)

That is to say, you can’t help people who are good. No one in authority should overtly recognise merit because that gives them an unfair advantage, which is unmeritocratic. Hence, meritocracy can only imply that one opposes unmeritocratic actions and no further. Hence, anti-unmeritocracy.

If I were to be completely meritocratic in an organization, I would have to have a completely laisse-faire attitude to who-does what and let a sort of natural selection weed out the poor sods and allow the best to rise up on their own.

It’ll pretty much be a Nietzschean method of doing things. Survival of the fittest.

So, do the fittest survive in Singapore? Not sure, writing a Malaysian essay which is pretty obviously a flawed or ‘siloed’ meritocracy.