meritocracy

Philip II’s morale system of promoting good soldiers and demoting bad ones, even when it overturns aristocratic hierarchy.

The belief that people should succeed according to talent, ability, and hard work.

In this lecture, a revolutionary social order where people rise by willingness to serve God's vision rather than religion, class, caste, or tribe.

Philip's reform principle that battlefield performance, not social status, should determine promotion.

He argues that America really does reward merit in a way most of the world does not, even when discrimination exists at first contact.

Philip II creates the Macedonian war machine by combining Persian, Athenian, Spartan, and Theban innovations with meritocracy and morale.

Meritocracy appears fair because it rewards talent, ability, and hard work, but Jiang frames it as one of the forces destroying American society.

The meritocracy seeks traumatized people and, because elite schools are powerful, traumatizes the world in order to find and produce them.

Jiang attributes a broad crisis bundle to meritocracy: mental illness, social immobility, 1% wealth concentration, left-right division, corruption, identity breakdown, elite mismanagement, and soulless leadership.

Young societies are open regardless of formal ideology; Jiang claims both 1950s America and 1950s China were open because criticism was encouraged and talent could rise.

Modern schooling creates artificial hierarchy by labeling students smart or stupid and routing them into different life outcomes.

Robespierre is greater than Napoleon because promoting the talented requires selflessness and the capacity to ignore inherited social values.