ICYMI: The Latter-Day Mandarins

Instapundit links to a four year old Megan McArdle column for The Daily Beast about the elites who end up running things. A choice excerpt:

This ostensibly meritocratic system increasingly selects from those with enough wealth and connections to first, understand the system, and second, prepare the right credentials to enter it—as I believe it also did in Imperial China. And like all elites, they believe that they not only rule because they can, but because they should. Even many quite left-wing folks do not fundamentally question the idea that the world should be run by highly verbal people who test well and turn their work in on time.

Both DrsC are clear examples of "highly verbal people who test well and turn in their work on time." The "ostensibly meritocratic system" certainly paid off well for us. Whether it should have is another question entirely.