This is what happens when neoliberal meritocratic technocracy hollows out democracy and leaves social media to fill the vacuum with outrage, distortion, and division.
Replies
Eliot’s pulling out all dem big words! 😁😂
jul 23, 2025, 10:22 am • 0 0 • view
This whole thread! 💯
jul 23, 2025, 1:32 pm • 3 0 • view
It is almost as if there was a clear inverse relation between having political power and knowing what is actually going on...
jul 23, 2025, 9:24 am • 0 0 • view
It's almost as though Starmer's trying to suggest people repeat the Southport riots. Certainly, reminding people of the riots and 'warning' of repeats is irresponsible at best and inciting civil unrest at worst. But none of this would be classed as terrorism, of course...
jul 23, 2025, 9:08 am • 0 0 • view
I like your synopsis, very interesting & thanks for sharing the article. However I would argue that it's not meritocratic, and that's one of the main issues
jul 23, 2025, 9:45 am • 0 0 • view
Is it really meritocratic?
jul 23, 2025, 7:42 am • 0 0 • view
In its most corrosive form, yes. Meritocracy encourages credentialism and promotes the false promise that hard work guarantees success. This fosters a moral judgement: that those who fail must be lazy or undeserving, and that their lack of success is not just unfortunate, but justified.
jul 23, 2025, 7:47 am • 15 0 • view
The answer is, to do meritocracy better.
jul 23, 2025, 8:51 am • 0 0 • view
The Thiel playbook is exactly on that what you describe here. That Thiel has access to high ranking politicians at all, is despicable.
jul 23, 2025, 8:35 am • 7 0 • view
Fascinating thread. It has helped me understand better my dissatisfaction with the existing (what I call) pseudo-democracy in GB, where I get lengthy positive replies from an MP who does what he and/or his party bosses want.
jul 23, 2025, 8:54 am • 1 0 • view
How do we combat it and fill the vacuum positively?
jul 23, 2025, 7:44 am • 1 0 • view
To fill in a hollowed-out institution, I suspect collective action, aimed at rebuilding democratic culture and institutions, is at the heart of what ordinary people can do. Reclaim the common good - libraries, schools, transport and healthcare, join community and neighbourhood initiatives.
jul 24, 2025, 9:46 pm • 0 0 • view
Beyond voting, I suspect individuals have to organise or join political groups advocating for equality, environmental and social justice, housing, labour rights - hold MPs and councillors to account for these common social good and justice; challenge "market logic" with social need.
jul 24, 2025, 9:53 pm • 0 0 • view
Wow I’ve never read it broken down so clearly, effectively. You’re so right and I’ve been feeling this way - to some degree at least - probably since I graduated (2010) but never have a I quite understood why. Thank you.
jul 23, 2025, 12:34 pm • 0 0 • view
thanks for the good analysis. this bears out in my experience of living in several countries which didn't have so much neoliberalism, but caught the neoliberal bug. over the span of ten years, in each country, the populations went from relaxed to stressed, much more self centered and apathetic. ...
jul 23, 2025, 10:28 am • 7 1 • view
... these were all countries in northern Europe, which had mostly enjoyed the calm and solidaric Nordic Model. like clockwork, when one adds a intense dose of neoliberalism and pressure (read: cut) public institutions, people get quite stressed and worried about their own existence.
jul 23, 2025, 10:30 am • 5 0 • view
Foreign nationals accounted for a quarter of sexual assault convictions on women last year, figures reveal www.lbc.co.uk/crime/foreig...
jul 23, 2025, 9:57 am • 0 0 • view
The Labour Party dance around the banal evil of Twitter as a vehicle for hate is maddening. They’re posting on there like it’s normal, getting sometimes 5 likes, with hundreds of bots saying things like “you deliver migrants directly to our doors you commie scum”
jul 23, 2025, 9:38 am • 0 0 • view
Need to say this in every day language so that most people get it. The average reading age is, what, 11? Otherwise it’s written off as lofty leftie nonsense.
jul 23, 2025, 6:12 pm • 0 0 • view
Or.. this is what happens when white working class racists are given free rein.A word salad of isms, while true in parts, is always going to fall flat when it ignores the elephant in the room.There are vile individuals on the l and r and in every social demographic. Unpalatable,but everyone knows it
jul 23, 2025, 11:17 am • 0 0 • view
Speaking of stoking racial hatred: what the h*** was this, James? Ate you going to address this ? You were duped, you apparently need a course in classic antisemitic inversion trope... but show some backbone and address it! bsky.app/profile/sans...
jul 23, 2025, 10:53 am • 0 0 • view
📌
jul 23, 2025, 9:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Pseudo "meritocratic" - right?
jul 23, 2025, 12:03 pm • 0 0 • view
More corrosive, as per Sandel.
jul 23, 2025, 12:21 pm • 0 0 • view
Do you mean why mention feral social media when you can mention neoliberal meritocratic technocracy?
jul 23, 2025, 7:53 am • 0 0 • view
Ok, so what do we do, if elected officials are not going to take action?
jul 23, 2025, 1:55 pm • 0 0 • view
I probably agree with you, but you completely lost me along the way 🥴
jul 23, 2025, 11:05 am • 3 0 • view
Since when did the racists become the good guys?
jul 23, 2025, 10:01 am • 0 0 • view
Maybe do your jobs as LABOUR party members and not red tories.
jul 23, 2025, 8:29 am • 0 0 • view
It’s always the knuckle dragging minority making the most noise and committing the most crimes, so lock them up and stop trotting to appease them.
jul 23, 2025, 9:10 am • 1 0 • view
📌
jul 23, 2025, 8:14 am • 0 0 • view
when consumers follow the billionaires to ever cheaper, easier and unregulated forms of media with liberals and progressives happily lending a helping hand.
jul 23, 2025, 7:53 am • 0 0 • view
Ban X
jul 23, 2025, 8:50 am • 0 0 • view
For Rayner to talk about rising distrust in our institutions has broken my irony meter. When politicians as a species are top of the mistrust league by a mile? Talk about "physician heal thyself".
jul 23, 2025, 8:12 am • 4 0 • view
If you wanted to protect "English Culture", you'd encourage everyone to spend their hard earned £ on things that are traditionally English & reject all the forrin crap pushed at us by adverts. Watch English TV, read English-owned newspapers, ignore US social media. Can't see that happening, tho.
jul 23, 2025, 9:02 am • 0 0 • view
There is nothing meritocratic about our current system failure.
jul 23, 2025, 1:18 pm • 0 0 • view
We can blame social media now, but summer riots were very much a feature of past times when kids with nothing to do attached themselves to a cause they actually cared little about.
jul 23, 2025, 9:29 am • 0 0 • view
This is great analysis Eliot.
jul 23, 2025, 8:34 am • 6 0 • view
Can you explain more about how neoliberal meritocratic technocracy has hollowed out democracy?
jul 23, 2025, 7:46 am • 1 0 • view
On hollowing out of democracy, from memory I think Higgins recommends these two books for further explanations: In the Ruins of Neoliberalism_ The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West by Wendy Brown & The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandel
jul 24, 2025, 9:30 pm • 0 0 • view
I'd also contest Starmer's view that the only way to repair the social fabric is to be hostile to migrants. That sounds like creating an artificial homogenous 'in' group.. not repairing a broad social contract.
jul 23, 2025, 7:55 am • 25 3 • view
Yes, it's all surface and no substance, democratic middle managers responding to whatever is trending on X rather than fixing the underlying issues.
jul 23, 2025, 7:58 am • 35 1 • view
Completely agree. Ironically it will also help improve the chances of their political opponents in legitimising a narrative that essentially removes the humanity from these often poorly served and awkwardly placed humans.
jul 23, 2025, 8:12 am • 12 1 • view
📌
jul 23, 2025, 8:08 am • 0 0 • view
When I say neoliberal meritocratic technocracy has hollowed out democracy, I mean that democratic values like public reasoning, representation, and accountability have been displaced by managerial logic, credentialism, and market-driven thinking. bsky.app/profile/yusu...
jul 23, 2025, 7:51 am • 244 55 • view
Thank you for that clarification. I agree
jul 23, 2025, 8:58 am • 0 0 • view
Means testing remains one of the worst ideas in the history of western governance
jul 23, 2025, 9:56 am • 1 0 • view
@unroll.skywriter.blue unroll
jul 23, 2025, 8:32 am • 1 0 • view
The thread as a shareable webpage: https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:2whlowi5jjjqrdrrj4lxh2lx/post/3lumjeen3fs2h.
jul 23, 2025, 8:33 am • 0 0 • view
📌
jul 23, 2025, 8:54 am • 0 0 • view
In 4th part about meritocracy, I think autocorrect got you. Usually I read right past, but could you say it again? I’m missing something.
jul 23, 2025, 8:28 am • 0 0 • view
Which bit specifically?
jul 23, 2025, 8:35 am • 2 0 • view
“This creates a moral logic that equates inequality with desert, eroding solidarity and masking systemic barriers.” My apologies. I had not seen desert used as the noun of deserving. I’m very sorry to bother you. Thank you.
jul 23, 2025, 9:12 am • 1 0 • view
I picked it up from Sandel.
jul 23, 2025, 9:13 am • 1 0 • view
I'm having an issue with every word If you argue trump is "neolib" then you can't apply the same meaning to dems Meritocracy may suggest a lot of things, but that's protestant predestination And experts solving stuff is just good? The problem is when the problem a fascist has is different from yours
jul 23, 2025, 1:21 pm • 0 0 • view
I’m not saying Trump is a neoliberal in the way Clinton or Blair were. But Trump governs through the aftershocks of neoliberalism, a hollowed-out public sphere and institutions reduced to performance. He exploits the ruins of a system he didn’t build but absolutely thrives in.
jul 23, 2025, 1:26 pm • 6 0 • view
Fair enough, but nor Clinton nor Blair nor Obama seemed to imply this "business owner" perspective in any way? They weren't cultists, AFAIK they listened to both their base and the fairly competent circle they had around, and most of all they didn't hollow public participation (if any the opposite).
jul 23, 2025, 2:00 pm • 0 0 • view
I’m not saying Blair, Clinton, or Obama intended to hollow out public participation, in many ways they believed they were modernising government. But by embracing market logic and technocratic management, they reshaped democracy around performance, not participation.
jul 23, 2025, 2:51 pm • 4 0 • view
All capitalist "leaders" seek to hollow out public participation. Embracing market "logic" is fundamentally bad (for us mere peasants) and bourgeois politicians know it. They serve the rich, not the people.
jul 23, 2025, 5:29 pm • 0 0 • view
The state became a service provider, citizens became consumers, and politics became about branding, delivery, and metrics. It wasn’t cultish, it was professionalised. But it still weakened the structures that once rooted democratic power in public life.
jul 23, 2025, 2:51 pm • 8 0 • view
I read words in your sentences.. but for the life of me I just cannot figure out what you are talking about in practice? Hell, "branding and delivery" seems exactly the opposite of what biden was trying to provide. Constantly pushing for appeasement rather than the angry populist bent people wanted.
jul 23, 2025, 3:35 pm • 0 0 • view
When I say politics became about “branding and delivery,” I’m not talking about PR spin. I mean that governments started thinking like managers, not democratic leaders: “What do the polls say? What can we announce that looks like progress?”
jul 23, 2025, 4:18 pm • 6 0 • view
Think Blair’s Delivery Unit or Starmer’s obsession with “message discipline.” In the US, Biden rolls out policies with metrics, funding breakdowns, targeted benefits, all of which matter, but they’re delivered like a product, not shaped through public debate.
jul 23, 2025, 4:18 pm • 34 0 • view
I disagree on JRB, I'll grant that I have lil insight into Blair, but if Starmer is the example sure I can see the idiocy. But regressing to the mean doesn't seem "neolib"? I mean maybe overvaluing the average voter as "rational" (and with good reasons for their beliefs) is but.. it feels a stretch?
jul 23, 2025, 5:40 pm • 0 0 • view
It’s not about intent, it’s about structure. When politics is reduced to managing outcomes and calming markets or headlines, democratic participation gets bypassed. That’s what I mean by hollowing out the deeper structures of public power
jul 23, 2025, 4:19 pm • 51 9 • view
And yes, meritocracy is entangled with Protestant notions of predestination, that’s precisely the problem. It moralises inequality. As for experts: the issue isn’t expertise, it’s when technocracy replaces democracy, when problems are "solved" without public participation.
jul 23, 2025, 1:27 pm • 2 1 • view
📌
jul 23, 2025, 3:16 pm • 0 0 • view
I see what you are saying here (as opposed to the N-word above).. but it seems a bit odd to adopt the corrupt meaning which conservatives implicitly use to peddle heinousness, rather than what they should mean normally per the dictionary. Then fairly enough this is a 300 characters limited platform.
jul 23, 2025, 2:03 pm • 0 0 • view
On one hand the thing isnbad as described on the other I do maintain in strongest terms that current UK is not driven by managerial logic or market/capitalism and things would be better if it was. Even credentialism takes backseat to a troglodytic, anti-evidential patetnalist *impulse*
jul 23, 2025, 9:02 am • 0 0 • view
Neoliberalism reframes citizens as consumers, and the state as a service provider. It promotes the idea that society should be run like a business; efficient, competitive, and responsive to market signals, not democratic deliberation.
jul 23, 2025, 7:51 am • 201 37 • view
Don't disagree, but the presence of organised, independent social movements doesn't mean 'democracy strengthening' eg 1930s fascist movements before they were invited into govt, evangelical churches in Latin America. The issue is *progressive* working class and 60's social movements got smashed.
jul 23, 2025, 11:20 am • 0 0 • view
Indeed, I’m not arguing that any organised movement strengthens democracy. As Wendy Brown and others have shown, neoliberalism didn’t just erode collective structures in the abstract, it specifically dismantled progressive counterpower: labour, civil rights, and solidarity-based publics.
jul 23, 2025, 12:25 pm • 6 0 • view
The vacuum left behind hasn’t remained empty, it’s been filled by reactionary, exclusionary forces precisely because the democratic infrastructure that once channelled collective action toward justice was smashed.
jul 23, 2025, 12:26 pm • 38 2 • view
So yes, what was hollowed out wasn’t organisation per se, it was the civic and institutional capacity to expand democracy. Rebuilding that means recovering not just form, but direction: structures that cultivate public reasoning, solidarity, and shared democratic purpose.
jul 23, 2025, 12:26 pm • 43 3 • view
I agree but I have no idea how except the hard slog of irl organizing around material, everyday issues But you can't really do that without social media and all that entails Where I live a few MLM and knitting(!) influencers built a 100k strong movement like that. But it is antivax and rw populist
jul 23, 2025, 12:56 pm • 0 0 • view
They say 'politics follows culture' and have set up local meetups, food growing groups and a radio station They're also using their network to introduce rw ideology via a mixture of lifestyle and political content But they have $$$ and can draw on copious output of US/UK culture war influencers
jul 23, 2025, 1:12 pm • 0 0 • view
It would be great if the left could do that. Our indigenous people do have the kind of independent grassroots, social movement you describe, but they have had to, to persist. But the left seems to be mainly on line with the occasional one off, reactive protest which doesn't really go anywhere.
jul 23, 2025, 1:23 pm • 0 0 • view
On the party political level, how can there be any hope when the supposed opponents of fascism adopt its language and so much of its world view? When they plainly believe in nothing? What hope is there for civic society once Labour's calamitous failures give us a Reform government?
jul 23, 2025, 12:48 pm • 0 0 • view
Capitalism did all that in the early 20th century too
jul 23, 2025, 9:27 am • 0 0 • view
Meritocracy adds the moral dimension: if you succeed, it’s because you earned it; if you fail, it’s your fault. This creates a moral logic that equates inequality with desert, eroding solidarity and masking systemic barriers.
jul 23, 2025, 7:52 am • 159 24 • view
In fact Meritocracy in this system doesn't really exist except as a narrative. The real way to advance is through contacts, not ability alone. Often people gain positions because they say the right things in interview. Often they aren't actually qualified. The merit is illusory.
jul 23, 2025, 8:57 am • 0 0 • view
I'd really recommend Sandel's work on this, this podcast covers his work on meritocracy www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/epis...
jul 23, 2025, 9:04 am • 1 0 • view
That's not a definition of meritocracy that I recognise: for me, it's always meant that you shd be able to advance as far as you can based on yr ability, not yr social background/gender/ethnicity & c.
jul 23, 2025, 8:50 am • 1 0 • view
Michael Sandel's Tyrannt of Merit describes how that is actually corrosive for society, as predicted by Michael Young when he coined the term. I'd highly recommend the Tyrannt of Merit, this podcast covers it well too www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/epis...
jul 23, 2025, 8:53 am • 2 0 • view
I think what's corrosive is when it fails to deliver. I worked hard, got great qualifications, then struggled to get work commensurate with my abilities.
jul 23, 2025, 8:56 am • 1 0 • view
Indeed, and it also creates a permission structure to make moral judgements about those deemed unsuccessful by the standards of the meritocracy, both by the successful and the unsuccessful, and that breeds the sort of resentment being exploited by the likes of Trump and Farage.
jul 23, 2025, 9:00 am • 0 0 • view
My problem has been seeing dim-witted well-connected ppl or immoral chancers get on… The ethos I was raised in (late 1960s-1970s) told me that I shd be able to do anything if I succeeded academically. I loathe the lauding of 'prodigals' who 'made it': always thought that an immoral fable.
jul 23, 2025, 9:08 am • 0 0 • view
I'd really recommend Sandel's work as he reflects a lot of what you've experienced in his own thinking or meritocracy.
jul 23, 2025, 9:11 am • 0 0 • view
Tbh, I don't rlly have time/inclination to read outside my historical/art historical researches, these days.
jul 23, 2025, 9:51 am • 0 0 • view
I support meritocracy: I believe there's nothing wrong with élitism based on ability & achievement, but there shd be a proper safety net below. That's why I think UBI is a good idea. When I was child (late 60s-70s) there was a proper safety net: cdn't imagine how quickly that wd be dismantled.
jul 23, 2025, 9:37 am • 1 0 • view
Technocracy further narrows politics to the domain of ‘experts’. Decisions are framed as technical problems for specialists to solve, not issues requiring collective judgement. That strips the public of agency.
jul 23, 2025, 7:52 am • 134 19 • view
The result is a system that performs democracy, elections still happen, institutions remain, but the citizen’s role is reduced to passive consent or reaction. Democratic participation becomes hollow, procedural, or symbolic.
jul 23, 2025, 7:53 am • 146 18 • view
Democracy was always a bourgeoisie delusion that favored property owners over everyone else
jul 23, 2025, 9:28 am • 0 0 • view
Democracy cargo cults.
jul 23, 2025, 7:55 am • 1 0 • view
In that vacuum, people lose faith. They turn to spectacle, strongmen, or conspiracies to make sense of a system that no longer hears them. The shell of democracy remains, but the substance is gone, replaced by disillusionment and disinformation.
jul 23, 2025, 7:53 am • 140 20 • view
Now do elite kompromat, do elite kompromat, do elite kompromatttttttt
jul 23, 2025, 7:54 am • 0 0 • view
This is the hollowing out: democracy without voice, governance without participation, legitimacy without trust.
jul 23, 2025, 7:54 am • 125 13 • view
📌
jul 23, 2025, 8:08 am • 0 0 • view
Good questions; I’m not claiming the pre-neoliberal era was a democratic ideal, but neoliberal meritocratic technocracy didn’t just weaken institutions, it hollowed out the conditions for democratic participation, including the role of counterpublics. bsky.app/profile/ande...
jul 23, 2025, 8:13 am • 75 7 • view
The democratic project has always relied on more than formal elections. Counterpublics, organised groups outside dominant power, play a vital role in expanding rights, challenging elites, and reshaping what democracy even means.
jul 23, 2025, 8:13 am • 82 13 • view
No this is what happens when you allow unregulated social media run by actual Nazis, oligarchs and the Chinese state. All of whom seek to destabilise democracies by promoting racial hatred and hiding truth.
jul 23, 2025, 8:46 am • 2 0 • view
In the postwar period, despite many exclusions, unions, grassroots movements, radical media, and activist communities forced democratic expansion. They didn’t just protest, they produced knowledge, exerted pressure, and built legitimacy from below.
jul 23, 2025, 8:14 am • 75 13 • view
The neoliberal approach regards rules either as hindrance or as self-ruling, as if they don't need to be enforced by an outside force. It's like thinking about architecture without stairs, toilets and the way people move inside or to it. Of course these topics are not what a building is about but >
jul 23, 2025, 4:39 pm • 0 0 • view