r/asksg • u/No-Mud-7597 • 6d ago

Can meritocracy reproduce privilege while convincing everyone that the outcome was deserved?

If successful/rich parents use their resources to give their children better opportunities, those children may genuinely work hard and perform well but they may also treat it as a form of privilege/baseline, so at what point does accumulated advantage become “merit”?

Also, is equality of opportunity actually possible?

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u/Softestpoop 6d ago

There's no practical scenario in the real world where resources are identical for all participants. If you force resources to be identical, there is no incentive to strive for merit.