The rise of the progressive aristocracy – The Spectator World

The radical left is now presenting a critique of meritocracy that is far more extreme than anything that has gone before it, but which also wields far more cultural heft: a woke assault on meritocracy. It starts by repeating standard leftish complaints about meritocracy: that it protects social inequality by dressing it up as cognitive inequality, thereby adding to the already intolerable pressure of modern life. Then it throws the explosive question of race into the heart of the debate. This rests on the demeaning claim that the best way to promote members of ethnic minorities is through equity rather than excellence. It also makes it far more difficult for ordinary people to discuss the subject dispassionately and far easier for radicals to engage in demagoguery and polarization. Even more importantly, it creates a new hierarchy of virtue at the heart of society. We are thus moving to a more ambitious stage in the left s long social revolution: from simply dismantling meritocracy to creating a new social order based on virtue, rather than ability.

via thespectator.com

This is a pretty good essay and makes a good point. The replacement of merit by a notion of virtue, by which it means what you would expect. RTWT as they say.

By Adrian Woolridge, whom I’ll be keeping an eye out for.

AI, which you will have heard of, is going to scramble things up further. When AI gets smart enough, which I would guess is only a few years out, the role of experts will be diminished further, presumably opening things up more for rule by the virtuous, which sounds horrible and probably would be.