ALARM IN THE IVIES: 6/8: The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World, by Adrian Wooldridge
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 17 December 2023
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Aristocracy-Talent-Meritocracy-Modern-World/dp/1510768610/ref=sr_1_2?qid=1658009977&refinements=p_27%3AAdrian+Wooldridge&s=books&sr=1-2
The Times (UK) book of the year! Meritocracy: the idea that people should be advanced according to their talents rather than their birth. While this initially seemed like a novel concept, by the end of the twentieth century it had become the world's ruling ideology. How did this happen, and why is meritocracy now under attack from both right and left?
In The Aristocracy of Talent, the esteemed journalist and historian Adrian Wooldridge traces the history of meritocracy forged by the politicians and officials who introduced the revolutionary principle of open competition, the psychologists who devised methods for measuring natural mental abilities, and the educationalists who built ladders of educational opportunity. He looks outside western cultures and shows what transformative effects it has had everywhere it has been adopted, especially once women were brought into the meritocratic system.
1917 Yale: French artillery
Transcript
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| 0:39.5 | aristocracy of talent how meritocracy made the modern world and the left or the wise are in the late |
| 0:47.8 | 20th century doubtful that meritocracy produces results, whether equitable results or even rational results, |
| 0:57.0 | because we have the new nepotism, described with two family names, Bush and Clinton, the new nepotism. Those are hot topics in the |
| 1:07.0 | United States, so I want to back up a little bit and talk about the new rich and |
| 1:10.9 | the old rich. You write cleverly, very cleverly, Adrian, that the new |
| 1:17.4 | rich require posh surroundings and the old rich will require academic degrees. |
| 1:24.0 | So they share their opinion that we're the elite and we're just going to trade virtues. |
| 1:30.0 | Absolutely. |
| 1:32.0 | I think one of the things has happened at the end of the 20th century was that the old rich, which inherited its money and the new which made its money through intellectual brilliance and academic |
| 1:44.8 | success have sort of merged into one. |
| 1:48.2 | So I say what we have ruling our society at the moment is not a meritocracy, but a Pluto meritocracy. |
| 1:54.8 | And that is a group of people who combine ability with money, but also if they have money they buy ability, and if they have ability, they acquire money through success in life. |
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