It doesn't surprise me that this highschool is doing away with merit, much like many colleges are starting to. I'm about 4/5th of the way through Chaos Monkeys. I'm liking what comes across as a mix of personal honesty and cynicism, as much as witty characterizations that go throughout. After this, "Meritocracy is the propaganda we use to bless the charade" You say soon after, "Capitalism is an amoral farce in which every player-investor, employee, entrepreneur, consumer-is complicit" I think that worse things happen when you suppress the natural outlet to power. "There are worse ways of monetizing sociopathy than startups. If you know better ways, I'm listening" (p. 148). Denying meritocracy in education is withholding an outlet for children to prove their intelligence. Moreover, it's denying manhood in itself: be smarter, be rich, be fit, be funny, to get that better mate. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the whole redpill/etc community but all this is a backlash to the coddling from school authorities growing up. When you were ousted from the apple job, people treated your book like an incel manifesto for convenience's sake. Tattletelling to the teacher, someone said something bad. I think that it's not surprising there's an increasing rate of women are graduating college more than men. It comes after decades of an equity movement for women. People tell boys from a young age that everything a man becomes is evil. Frankly, I see defeatism in the self directed cynicism you have towards yourself as a startup founder. I know you're purposely exaggerating, which is why it hits the mark. Feeling the necessity to demean yourself as a man for wanting money is a new cultural fad. Social justice is the charade that the corporate machine enacts moreso than pure meritocracy.