What is often forgotten is that Michael Young's 1958 book, The rise of the meritocracy, which introduced the word, was a satire, not a blue print. Its point was the smugness of those who rose to the top of such a society and believed not only that they deserved whatever rewards flowed from that, but also that their own children would deserve them too reflecting the advantages of their inherited abilities, as well as the way they would be brought up.