Merit-based selection demands equality of birth and inheritance advantages

Evidence

It is obvious that those individuals also in whose favour there is birth, education, family name, business connections, and inherited wealth, would be selected in the race. But selection under such circumstances would not be a selection of the able. It would be the selection of the privileged. The reason, therefore, which forces that in the third respect we should treat men unequally, demands that in the first two respects we should treat men as equally as possible. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 908

Categorization

• SEED: Could seed an argument piece against naive meritocracy grounded in this heredity-vs-effort reasoning.
• XREF: connects to: Meritocracy is a fairy tale masking class as individual choice — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 222