When people complain about meritocracy, the complaint is usually not about the ideal but about our failure to live up to it. The wealthy and powerful have rigged the system to perpetuate their privilege; the professional classes have figured out how to pass their advantages on to their children, converting the meritocracy into a hereditary aristocracy. Colleges that claim to select students on merit give an edge to the sons and daughters of the wealthy and the well-connected. According to this complaint, meritocracy is a myth, a distant promise yet to be redeemed. This complaint is certainly valid. But what if the problem runs deeper? What if the real problem with meritocracy is not that we have failed to achieve it but that the ideal is flawed? What if the rhetoric of rising no longer inspires, not simply because social mobility has stalled but, more fundamentally, because helping people scramble up the ladder of success in a competitive meritocracy is a hollow political project that reflects an impoverished conception of citizenship and freedom? To explore this larger question, we need to examine two objections to meritocracy as a moral and political project. One is about justice; the other is about attitudes toward success and failure.

A perfectly mobile society is an inspiring ideal for two reasons. First, it expresses a certain idea of freedom. Our fate should not be fixed by the circumstances of our birth but should be ours to decide. Second, it gestures to the hope that what we achieve reflects what we deserve. If we are free to rise based on our own choices and talents, it seems fair to say that those who succeed deserve their success. Despite its powerful appeal, however, there is reason to doubt that even a perfectly realized meritocracy would be a just society. To begin, it is important to notice that the meritocratic ideal is about mobility, not equality. It does not say there is anything wrong with yawning gaps between rich and poor; it only insists that the children of the rich and the children of the poor should be able, over time, to swap places based on their merits — to rise or fall as a result of their effort and talent. No one should be stuck at the bottom, or ensconced at the top, due to prejudice or privilege. What matters for a meritocracy is that everyone has an equal chance to climb the ladder of success; it has nothing to say about how far apart the rungs on the ladder should be. The meritocratic ideal is not a remedy for inequality; it is a justification of inequality. This is not, in itself, an argument against it. But it raises a question: Is the inequality that results from meritocratic competition justified?