# kaal:claim:3782220-010

**Claim.** A society that relies only on meritocratic rewards destroys its own meritocracy: Price's Law differentiates rewards exponentially, the bottom tier cannot afford the training to compete, and the separation widens until the society destabilizes and collapses.

**Type.** failure  **Support.** argued

**Holds when.**

- pure meritocratic distribution
- multigenerational time horizon

**Source quote.**

> disenfranchised subgroup due to Price's Law (exponential differen- tiation of rewards, since the rich get richer). In succeeding generations, the bottom tier will not be able to afford training to compete and the separation will exacerbate until the society destabilizes and collapses.

**From.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, *The Importance of Transcendental Unifying Values for Decentralization* (2021), Integrating polar values, page 3

**Cite as.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, The Importance of Transcendental Unifying Values for Decentralization (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782220

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `f0bf1e80c6da60a6f8ba20630562bdf1dab171ccb5267f497dc0b815113cde99` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Calcaterra%20and%20Kaal%20-%202021%20-%20The%20Importance%20of%20Transcendental%20Unifying%20Values%20for%20Decentralization.pdf

**Failure mode.** meritocratic runaway differentiation  (family: inequality-and-access-divide)

**Topics.** economics

**Keywords.** meritocracy, prices-law, inequality, social-collapse, self-undermining-policy

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