> That's not what I said. This is bordering on bad faith, please don't do that.

The premise of a meritocracy isn't that everyone is the same, it's that everyone is subject to the same standard. The alternatives are things like racism or nepotism where someone gets the position even if they're not expected to do a better job, because of their race or because their father owns the company.

But merit isn't a fixed property. If you spend your time studying physics, you'll make yourself qualified to do certain types of engineering when spending that time playing football wouldn't.

Money, then, can be used to improve merit. You can e.g. pay for tuition at a better school that someone else couldn't afford. If that school actually imparts higher quality skills than a less expensive school (or no school), a meritocratic hiring practice will favor the graduates of that school, because they're actually better at doing the job.

You can then argue that this isn't fair because rich people can afford better schools etc., but a) that will always be the case because the ability to use money to improve yourself will always exist, and b) if you would like to lessen its effect, the correct solution is not to abandon meritocracy in hiring decisions, it's to increase opportunities for the poor to achieve school admissions consistent with their innate ability etc.

> First, what term would you have me use instead? Second, I don't believe it matters what term I choose, because it will get demonized just like DEI did.

The demonization comes from rooting the concern in race rather than economic opportunity, because the people obsessed with race are interested in dividing the poor and pitting them against each other in tribal warfare, and then any term you use for that will be demonized because it will become infected with tribal signaling associations.

> There is still a large gap between "high-quality individualized private tutoring" and "poor kids should walk large distances to public libraries, have access to worse materials and have no tutoring available".

And then we're back to, what is even the dispute? You can't close the entire gap because part of the gap is a result of things that are infeasibly expensive at scale and no one disputes that. There are cost effective and reasonable policies that could close some of the gap, but many of those have already been implemented or could be adopted with minimal opposition if they were simply proposed in the places not already doing them, because they're cost effective and reasonable. It's literally only a matter of going to your town council meeting and convincing them that it's a good idea.

People don't strongly oppose libraries that stock study books. They oppose race quotas.

> People don't strongly oppose libraries that stock study books. They oppose race quotas.

People absolutely do oppose libraries. They also oppose programs that pay for tutors for poor kids, programs that allocate more money to schools in poorer neighborhoods and basically anything else you can think of.

But I do admit it must make your life incredibly simple to just pretend racism doesn't exist and everyone ends up in the exact position they deserve.