>>69400703The theory of meritocratic recruitment is that you always pick the best person for the job, regardless of that person's antecedents or background. This was of great interest to burgeoning middle classes, wherever burgeoning middle classes began to burgeon, whether it be the townsmen of Edo, the newly-enriched plebs of Rome, or the guildsman of the Renaissance, because they were upwardly-mobile, frugal, competent, and it struck a blow against the aristocracy's hereditary stranglehold on power. In practice, no society has ever had purely meritocratic recruitment, and the tensions between loyalty and competence have always existed.
