Comment by strongpigeon

To strong-man their argument, they don't seem to be arguing to reward effort only, in their words:

> "To truly measure and reward by an effortocratic measure we need both a top-down and bottom-up approach

- At the top, reward people who have overcome more to get to the same point

- At the bottom, level the playing field so that potential, wherever it is, can be realised"

The way I think of it is using a vector analogy. They're arguing that a meritocracy only reward the end point, and that instead we should value both the magnitude of the vector in addition to its end point. You're interpreting effortocracy (not unfairly IMO) as only rewarding the magnitude of the vector, which is indeed absurd.

In my opinion however, they themselves are straw-manning what they point to as "moral meritocracy". As I understand it, their main gripe is that achievements are not only rewarded, but also ascribed higher moral weight, which is plain false. People vastly prefer rag-to-riches story to born-rich ones. So much so that you have many rich people straight up lying about their origin stories to make it sound more rag-to-riches than it is.

Edit: removed last bit that was harsher than intended.