> The best people want to work in a place where they're valued (and paid) on merit.
It is well recognized that meritocracy is an illusion. A much better determinant of success is the birth lottery. If you're born into a rich family versus a blue-collar one, you have unequal starting points, access to education, better-than-average medical care, and more reliable, higher-quality food. Once you win the birth lottery, you have access to a network full of connections that will hire you based on who you know or who your parents are, rather than your ability (e.g., a Nepo baby). When you are a nepo baby, you are insulated from many of the inequalities built into our financial and education systems.
You'll frequently hear from successful people that they got where they are because they have sufficient morals or good standing in the world, and that if you didn't make it, you're clearly not a good person. This rationalization is mostly bullshit because there are many in the 1% class who are lousy human beings and, by their own justification, should be on the street.
When you buy into meritocracy, you are contributing to keeping the billionaires in place and supporting their destructive behavior, tearing at society.
see: https://www.linkedin.com/videos/the-institute-of-art-and-ide...
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2025.2...
https://therowlandfoundation.org/the-myth-of-meritocracy-ref...
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/01/the-myth-of-m...