> for meritocracy proponents, 'merit' is explicitly amoral quality as it is clear that it has significant pure luck factor.
This is a strange argument. Luck is the opposite of merit, and meritocracy proponents are at pains to deemphasize the luck factor, to the extent of claiming, "you make your own luck". Persistence, making the most of your opportunities, hard work, yadda yadda.
> This is a strange argument. Luck is the opposite of merit
I think it is pretty clear. Merit is just ability to create economic value, regardless of where this ability come from (which is clearly based on many factors, some a luck, some are your good decisions, some are good decisions of other people). There are obvious examples of luck factors, like genetics and accidents. If your merit is based on ability to think deeply, and after a hit to a head by a robber you end with concentration problems, then your merit is lowered, by bad luck.
> to the extent of claiming, "you make your own luck". Persistence, making the most of your opportunities, hard work, yadda yadda.
These are not really descriptive statements about merit, these are advice how to behave to maximize your merit. If you want to maximize your merit, then it make sense to focus on aspects you can change and not on that you cannot.
By analogy, getting hit by a car has significant luck component, but if you want to give someone advice how to avoid getting hit by a car, you would focus on things like 'look around before crossing' and not 'have good luck'.
> Merit is just ability to create economic value, regardless of where this ability come from
This is in danger of being a tautology. How do you distinguish one's actual economic value created from one's "ability" to create economic value?
> These are not really descriptive statements about merit, these are advice how to behave to maximize your merit.
How can you tell whether someone has "maximized" their merit? Especially if "merit", according to you, includes luck? You could always have more luck.
From a previous comment:
> economic outcomes (both positions in economic structures and personal incomes) should depend just on ability to create economic value (which is in this context called 'merit'), not on other factors like moral worth.
I think you're misunderstanding. According to meritocracy, the ability to create economic value is moral worth. Meritocracy is a moral (or immoral) system. That's my point. Economic value itself has no inherent moral/judgmental component.
>> Merit is just ability to create economic value, regardless of where this ability come from
> This is in danger of being a tautology.
Well, that is an definition of a term, so it is tautology.
> How do you distinguish one's actual economic value created from one's "ability" to create economic value?
That is a hard question for real societal structures, but not relevant for the idea of meritocracy itself, which is just a societal aspiration, not some explicit criteria.
So yes, in some sense idea of 'meritocracy' is a value system, but a value system about societies (saying that society should aspire to be more meritocratic), not about individuals.
The concept of 'meritocracy' is pretty clear on specific examples. I guess that few people would disagree with idea that e.g. surgeon positions should be occupied by people with better outcomes when doing surgery (even if we do not know how effectively evaluate that) than some other criteria like class origin, loyalty to the regime, or based on whether their parents were surgeons. But also i guess few people would consider 'have better outcomes when doing surgery' as factor of moral worth.
Using terms like 'creating economic value' is just universal term (and kind of simplification) for merits in specific positions.
> That is a hard question for real societal structures, but not relevant for the idea of meritocracy itself, which is just a societal aspiration, not some explicit criteria.
It's not just an aspiration. We wouldn't be talking about meritocracy so much if were some pie-in-the-sky utopian ideal. What makes the idea of meritocracy so pernicious is that many people believe that our society is in fact more or less a meritocracy, albeit imperfect. We do judge people in our current society based on their so-called merit in the capitalist economy. That's the whole point of this discussion, going back to how we view poor people, as having "made bad decisions" and thus "deserving" their predicament.
> few people would disagree with idea that e.g. surgeon positions should be occupied by people with better outcomes when doing surgery
You've chosen the least controversial question to answer. But this says nothing about, for example, how much money surgeons should get paid, or who gets admitted to medical school, when surgical outcomes are definitely unknown at that point. And it says nothing about what social services we should or shouldn't provide to the poor, again going back to the original issue.
Meritocracy views poverty as a personal moral failing, deserving blame rather than sympathy. It doesn't view poverty as a natural, predictable side effect of the economic system that needs mitigation.
This is a strange argument. Luck is the opposite of merit, and meritocracy proponents are at pains to deemphasize the luck factor, to the extent of claiming, "you make your own luck". Persistence, making the most of your opportunities, hard work, yadda yadda.