DYNAMICS OF THE MERITOCRACY TRAP AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Abstract

In this study, Daniel Markovitz's book titled "The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite," published by Penguin Press, is thoroughly evaluated in the context of the dynamics of the meritocracy trap and the two distinct phases it contains. The first phase corresponds to a period when the education system and the labor market were open to everyone. During this phase, human capital could be equally invested in through education. However, from the 1970s onwards, the spread of automation due to technological transformations eliminated this advantage for the middle class, either displacing middle and low-skilled workers from the labor market or condemning them to lower wages. While the middle class was replaced by automation, the elite class began to own the high-skilled and consequently high-yielding jobs created by automation. In this transformation, the education systems once again revealed their elitist structure, creating a new elite educational option only accessible to wealthy families, strongly linked to elite jobs in the labor market. The study also discusses the potential of artificial intelligence technologies to move these dynamics into a third phase. The proliferation of artificial intelligence technologies has dynamics similar to those that moved the meritocratic system into the second phase, greatly strengthening automation. Therefore, this study discusses how artificial intelligence technologies can be used not merely to strengthen automation but to focus on employment and enhance the skills of particularly middle and low-skilled workers in workplaces, complementing human labor and increasing overall productivity.