Meritocracy
Calibration-weighted collective bind — the overlap of quality and legitimacy
Meritocracy (in this corpus) is calibration-weighted collective bind at the commitment boundary: weight follows pre-committed, outcome-grounded calibration — not equal voice (democracy) or title alone.
Introduction: Meritocracy — The Sweet Spot.
The sweet spot
Meritocracy is neither column alone — and in an important sense superior to both when institutionalised: better-calibrated processors count more and the rules of counting are on the record.
What it draws from each side
- Quality inputs: track record, Brier scores, override rates, domain calibration
- Legitimacy inputs: pre-committed weights visible to voters; dissent on record; panel composition as L0 policy; separated authorization chain
vs democracy and certification
Mutually exclusive with democratic equal-weight aggregation per bind.
Research hypothesis
A2 — working context: AI and organizational harnesses may help create auditable meritocratic systems — Meritocratic Systems via Harness. Genesis motivates; implementation is deferred to later collections.
What meritocracy is not
- Positional rank without measured calibration
- Post-hoc weighting — theatre / compliance theatre
- Guaranteed correctness — Goodhart’s Law on the score without art. 20 challenge and art. 35 contest paths
Corpus stance
A2 — working context: Political “meritocracy” is broader; here an architectural target at the bind. Historical difficulty and failure modes: art. 36.