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Speaking only for myself...

It's not that I'm wilfully blind to the flaws of the system I live in. It's that the overwhelming majority of people who offer critique offer absolutely nothing in the way of workable solutions. If the public intellectuals who came up with the doughnut economy, teal society, or the Rojavan system were having a talk in my town, I'd be very interested in going. But note that these people actually created something and spend very little time cataloguing flaws of the things they're seeking to replace. Nearly anyone can critique a thing that exists, and people who do nothing but criticise tend to rub everyone the wrong way.

More insidiously, there are often class interests at work motivating the criticisms or denials of meritocracy, and most people who enjoy having the chance to make a positive contribution to the world view that particular class with an extreme suspicion and often well-earned hostility. If you'd really like to understand how the other side thinks, I'd recommend this essay: https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2016/01/donald...

I'd love to see more focus on solutions, but there are _huge_ numbers of people who don't (or won't) even recognize that there are problems; and that recognition is step one.

The public intellectuals and concepts you mention may be known in your bubble, but they are not popular or talked about.

It's insane that with all of our gains in productivity the last hundred years Americans are working two or three jobs just to survive. That's fucking bananas. Cloaking that in dry academic discussion may work for you, but it clearly isn't having a big cultural impact.

Squid Game touched a nerve. People know that that we're all getting screwed.

And it's not just America, clearly. Neoliberals all over the world are strip mining the common good, at our expense and at the expense of our descendants.

So let's not shit on media that at least gets people talking about systemic inequality, while also actually managing to be popular. That's an accomplishment, and to be praised.

Sadly, I don't think there is a solution to be had (otherwise politics wouldn't a thing). Nature is just simply brutal. I think Hobbe's arguments presented in his "Leviathan" perhaps makes it most apparent, and with a little thought experiment, you can easily see how impossible a meritocracy is, as it totally relies on a unified will for it to work.

I don't believe it's true that huge numbers of people don't recognize there are problems. I think rather that the majority of the solutions being put forward look like ways to exacerbate the problems a plurality finds most pressing.

I'll try and illustrate what I mean with a very personal example. A number of years ago, I was in a fragile state mentally and a precarious position economically. I chose to bite the bullet, humble myself, and ask my family for help even though I wanted to be successfully independent before I really had all the necessary skills. I could have chosen to look for opportunities in my immediate vicinity, which would have likely lead to a downward spiral of drug abuse and mental illness. I made what in retrospect was the right choice and am now in a quite good situation.

About half the solutions being put forward would focus on the fact that I had the means of getting help when I needed it, while the other half would focus on the fact that I chose to get help when I needed to. Any sane person can agree that for a positive outcome, both are necessary. But two issues arise: The first is that there genuinely are predatory elements of the investor class that subvert the need for self-directed action and room to manoeuvre by taking all the best opportunities for themselves. And there are also genuinely parasitic elements of the professional-managerial class that subvert the need for mutual aid and communal resources by channelling most of those resources towards administrative salaries that don't add much value.

The second issue is that criticisms of either effort at subversion often comes across as criticising the value being subverted. I see that in your post - Meritocracy is a sham, is it? My making the right decision in a moment of crisis had no bearing on the outcome, did it? We can help people without their active participation, can we? Of course, if you're well intentioned you don't actually believe any of that. But plenty of ill-intentioned people are participating in the public debate and genuinely attacking some foundations of a healthy society, the better to exploit the people who don't have both. It's easy to have difficulty distinguishing well-intentioned criticism of subversion and ill-intentioned criticism of the values themselves. Without knowing what someone would propose to do if their critcism galvanised large-scale action, it seems safest to assume the worst.

TL;DR: If you don't want to come across like a parasite it's necessary to distinguish your criticism of the idea meritocracy alone is enough with criticising the idea of meritocracy itself.

>How can smart people miss the point so completely?

They want to miss it so badly, it's simple cognitive dissonance. Some people don't want to accept that they had luck while others didn't. They have successfully convinced themselves that we are not all equals, that somehow there are people who are more deserving.

You're conflating different people's comments. From reading the thread, people expressing opinions described in your second paragraph are not also expressing opinions described in your third paragraph.

The show can have a good message and also have bad writing/be derivative/etc.

Not sure what you’re arguing against here. A piece of fiction can have a strong moral point of view and still be of poor quality. The righteousness of message doesn’t instantly make the messenger appealing.

> Y'all seem to think that we're in some kind of meritocracy, that predatory capitalism isn't centrally planned, that you earned your position in society and so everyone who's poor just isn't working hard or smart enough...

Not everything is perfect, but we're not living in a dictatorship yet. Sure, some poor people don't have a chance and the closer you are to money, the easier it gets, but it's not like it's all on the system. There are also quite a few capitalist countries other than the US, with less problems.

> there's still people in this thread saying "I don't understand the appeal", "it's just brutality and shock value", "if you can watch this you're rich and who it's aimed at", "pfft, this is a ripoff of [obscure manga]"...

I agree that squid game can be interpreted that way. But let's be real here, there's massive amounts of gore in there and it's portrayed extensively, far beyond where it would be necessary to make a point. And I'm pretty sure that a lot of people watch it mostly for that and for the crime story, not the implied portrayal of society. You can see it in there, but squid game is mass market first, social critique second.

> Not everything is perfect, but we're not living in a dictatorship yet.

There's 'not perfect', and then there's us... We've got sanctioned torture, an oligarch class, perpetual war, unaccountable surveillance, black sites, executive orders, secret courts, silencing, detention and torture of foreign journalists, and record inequality.

And that's in our own country - we do much worse to South America, Africa, the Middle East. Have done for hundreds of years. We even threaten and surveil European groups and leaders without (immediate) consequence.

> squid game is mass market first, social critique second.

So what? If it were social critique first people would be complaining that it's too political. I've overheard people discussing social inequality in the grocery store because of this show, and I fucking love it for that.

> There's 'not perfect', and then there's us... We've got sanctioned torture, an oligarch class, perpetual war, unaccountable surveillance, black sites, executive orders, secret courts, silencing, detention and torture of foreign journalists, and record inequality.

> And that's in our own country - we do much worse to South America, Africa, the Middle East. Have done for hundreds of years. We even threaten and surveil European groups and leaders without (immediate) consequence.

Well, I'm not going to defend these actions, but there are arguably worse actors. My point is, it's not like it's as bad as it could be (especially historically), so the "obvious" point of it being horrible really depends on the perspective. Which is not to say that the situation should not improve!

> So what? If it were social critique first people would be complaining that it's too political. I've overheard people discussing social inequality in the grocery store because of this show, and I fucking love it for that.

Which is cool! My point is, given the graphic violence and it's focus on that, it's quite easy to miss the deeper social point in it and/or argue that this is just trying to read some meaning into a snuff film. I agree with you that it's good, but it's not like the people writing it off don't have a point.