Meritocracy is a Trap
Does meritocracy really reward hard work and talent, or does it justify existing privilege? In this episode, Chisom Udeze explores the origins of meritocracy as a warning against inequality and examines how the concept became a justification for wealth, status, and success. Drawing on evidence from executive pay, billionaire taxation, elite university admissions, and declining social mobility, she challenges the belief that those at the top simply earned their place.
With Chisom Udeze
Listen On
Show Notes
In this episode, Chisom turns to the word meritocracy, and to the man who coined it in 1958 specifically to warn against it. Michael Young’s satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy, predicted exactly the trap the word now sets, a society that tells the people on top their position needed no explanation beyond their own virtue. He spent his life watching the warning turned into an excuse.
This episode tests the word against the record. It traces Jeff Bezos’s 1.1 percent true tax rate against 127 billion dollars in wealth growth. It follows executive pay moving from 21 times a typical worker’s wages in 1965 to 325 times in 2025, a gap traced to board capture rather than market pricing. It walks through Harvard’s litigation data, legacy applicants admitted at nearly six times the rate of everyone else. And it sits with Raj Chetty’s finding that a child’s odds of out-earning their parents have fallen from nine in ten to a coin flip in two generations.
The word Meritocracy promises effort is rewarded. The record says otherwise.