Il "merito" come criterio allocativo. I dilemmi della “meritocrazia”

What constitutes merit or a meritocratic society differs markedly among economists and social scientists. The word “meritocracy” was invented by Michael Young in 1958, but the term was first used in a negative sense. In the same years, Friedrich Hayek pictured the market economy as a social system incompatible
with the idea of merit. On the other hand, Richard A. Musgrave tried to use merit as an allocative criterion for some services and goods (i.e. “merit goods”), but his proposal was very controversial. Some of the major difficulties with the idea of a “meritocratic society” arise from the contradictory nature of
the concept of “merit” itself. In this paper we present the thought of Young, Musgrave and Hayek on merit and meritocracy with the aim of showing how the ideas of merit and meritocracy are ambiguous and indefinite.