Caplan’s citation of the Bell Curve is revealing enough, to say the least. I heard precisely the same kinds of arguments around my father’s dinner table, except with more emphasis that the justice of the marketplace has revealed Nature in the inferiority of women and brown people, rather than poor people. I’ve always found it strange that invocations of meritocracy almost always seem to come from people defending what are conventional rather than rational orders of merit, and it’s always about how the market rewards native superiority, rather than chosen or learned excellence.

The mature Rand at least emphasised that the most important distinctions among men and women were between those who chose to think and aspire to greatness, and was often aware that those most hung up on unchosen superficialities such as race and parentage were those who had the least to be genuinely proud of. The trouble is that Rand advocated genuine meritocracy but combined it with a worshipful admiration for the American capitalist class – and her followers have embraced not her individualism but the classism she wrapped around it.

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/01/pyramid_power.html