If this was just a post on language I think I totally agree - it is a tricky word to define. And I hope you saw the comment above on the ironic origin of the word.
However I got the impression from several things in your post that you don't like the commonly held ideal of choosing leaders based on merit (i.e. meritocracy):
(1) Donald Trump is somehow an example of it at work (see my comments about him above).
(2) It discriminates against those from disadvantaged backgrounds who likely will accumulate less "merit". BTW - I agree this is a problem with both "meritocracy" and the world generally and should be adressed in various ways.
(3) It somehow implies to "some people" that "none of the people in positions of authority are bozos".
(4) Meritocracy does not "minimizing false negatives".
You seem to be against the ideal not just that particular definition. The only positive thing you say is that it is better than "picking leaders at random or having some dictator appoint his drinking buddies".
Do you like the idea of making choices based on merit? You seem to be both criticizing it as a goal and saying that it is not practical.
I get the sense you would prefer making decisions based on some sense of "justice" rather than "merit".
BTW - Love your many great posts on development. Thanks you very much. I feel awkward debating a hero.
I think it is a post about the word "meritocracy" meaning many things to many people, and not being very useful for certain types of discussion.
If two people understand each other and agree to disagree, fine. But recently, I've seen a lot of online arguments about these kinds of things, where I get the impression that there are two reasonable people talking past each other without really understanding each other.
I think that meritocracy is somewhat orthogonal to the issue of equality of opportunity. Given a pool of candidates, we should pick the best ones (eliminate false positives). AND, we should invest as much as we can reasonably afford to ensure that we get people with good potential into the pool (eliminate false negatives).
My overall view is that we're going to go into a serious economic struggle in the next twenty years, and like any sports team, scouting is as important as coaching :-)
Then I think I misunderstood the point your post - I hope you can see how it could happen. And I am probably yet another example of exactly what you were trying to warn against - people on the Internet talking past one another.
I think we actually agree overall. Leaders should be chosen as best we can by merit and we should seek to expand the pool as best we can.
This brings up another idea I wonder about: If choosing leaders is so hard can we somehow reduce our dependence on them? Put another way can we move to a more emergent approach to organizing ourselves rather than depending some "leader" to decide how we should be organized?
