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This is such a philosophically important question that I am surprised nobody seems to be aware that the term ‘meritocracy’ was coined by Michael Young, a British sociologist, in his satirical dystopian novel The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958). His book takes the perspective of a historian in 2033 looking back at the development of a meritocracy over a few decades in a new British society. It describes a dystopian society in a future United Kingdom in which intelligence and merit have become the central tenets of society, replacing previous divisions of social class and creating a society stratified between a merited power-holding elite and a disenfranchised underclass of the less merited.In the distant future, riches and rule were earned, not inherited. The new ruling class was determined by the formula “IQ+effort = merit”. Democracy would give way to rule by the cleverest – “not an aristocracy of birth, not a plutocracy of wealth, but a true meritocracy of talent.”In 2011, one year before he died, Michael Young penned an article in the Guardian lamenting how his warnings of meritocracy have been unheeded: [1]I coined a word which has gone into general circulation, especially in the United States, and most recently found a prominent place in the speeches of Mr Blair. The book was a satire meant to be a warning (which needless to say has not been heeded) against what might happen to Britain between 1958 and the imagined final revolt against the meritocracy in 2033.He predicted a revolt by the lower class against the tyranny of meritocracy in 2033 and if we take the election results around the world in 2016 as a manifestation of that revolt, his prediction came true 17 years earlier than he had anticipated.The arguments in the other answers (by Allen Lobo and Shern Ren Tee) against meritocracy are on practical grounds, such as we can’t meaningfully define merit or we don’t have a system to recognise and select people with merit to run a country. Instead of just focusing on meritocracy as a system of electing politicians to run a country, I’d like to ask whether meritocracy is the best way to run society in general.I am not convinced by these two objections because it would imply that there is absolutely no objective way to judge a leader, which is not true. Even if the meritocratic process isn’t flawless and there’s no unanimous agreement, the leader’s ‘merit’ can be reasonably judged by broadly desirable qualities such as the living standard of the country’s citizens, the lack of corruption, freedom of press and the rule of law. We can say with pretty high confidence that the Danish government is more meritorious than Sudanese for example. Not all claims of merit (such as ‘divine right’ or the moral right to own slaves) have equal merit (pun intended). Such relativistic views would render all ethical considerations of governance pointless.Another argument against the current form of ‘meritocracy’ by John Cate is that it is not meritocratic enough. For argument’s sake, let’s pretend we can agree on a reasonable definition of ‘merit’ and devise a truly meritocratic system, is it still a good way to run society?The negative connotation of the term ‘meritocracy’ has been lost and I think Young offers a powerful moral and political argument against it. So let’s unpack what exactly he was saying.As the director of the party’s research office, he was instrumental in shaping the British Labour Party’s thinking after the Second World War and drafted large parts of the manifesto on which the party won the 1945 election. The manifesto, “Let Us Face the Future”, called for “the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain – free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public-spirited, its material resources organised in the service of the British people”. Soon the party, as it promised, raised the school-leaving age to 15, increased adult education, improved public housing, made public secondary school education free, created a national health service and provided social security for all. Throughout his life, Young worked tirelessly on education as he believed it was not only a means of mobility, but a way to make people forceful citizens, less easily bullied by the powerful class.[2] He devoted his life to upending the old class hierarchy where wealth and power was inherited by birth.So why was Michael Young, who opposed the old caste/aristocratic system, also against meritocracy?His concern was that as wealth increasingly reflects the innate distribution of natural talent, and the wealthy increasingly marry one another (another prediction that has been borne out: The Marriage Divide: How and Why Working-Class Families Are More Fragile Today), society sorts itself into two main classes, in which everyone accepts that they have what they deserve. He imagined a country in which “the eminent know that success is a just reward for their own capacity, their own efforts”, and in which the lower orders know that they have failed every chance they were given. “They are tested again and again … If they have been labelled ‘dunce’ repeatedly they cannot any longer pretend; their image of themselves is more nearly a true, unflattering reflection.”What should have been mechanisms of mobility had become fortresses of privilege. He predicted the emergence of an insufferably smug meritocratic class, even more than those who were merely born into wealth. They are arrogant because they actually believe they have morality on their side. This self-serving notion of ‘merit’ would inoculate the winners from shame and reproach.He worried that this harsh system would grant dignity and power to those at the top but deny respect and self-respect to those who did not inherit the talents and the capacity for effort, creating the politics of humiliation:I expected that the poor and the disadvantaged would be done down, and in fact they have been. If branded at school they are more vulnerable for later unemployment.They can easily become demoralised by being looked down on so woundingly by people who have done well for themselves. It is hard indeed in a society that makes so much of merit to be judged as having none. No underclass has ever been left as morally naked as that.With the coming of the meritocracy, the now leaderless masses were partially disfranchised; as time has gone by, more and more of them have been disengaged, and disaffected to the extent of not even bothering to vote. They no longer have their own people to represent them.Young understood that even if we manage to level the playing field and provide equal opportunity for all, some people with more talent, hard work and luck will still come out on top. Do they really deserve it?Think about your talent. Did you really deserve it or is it also genetic luck? How about the fact that you happened to be born into a time and a society that values your particular talent and provides it the opportunity to flourish?You might object that you worked hard to deserve the position you find yourself in today. But maybe there’s a genetic or environmental element to it? That you happened to be born into a family with good work ethics or have the physical capacity to work hard? Anecdotal evidence of course, but I have several immensely talented friends who just can’t achieve much in their life because of severe depression. Others were brought up in highly dysfunctional families with no good role model in their life. Their imagination and capacity to aspire is severely limited. Is hard work entirely unrelated to luck?Whenever I reflect on my situation, I become more aware of my incredible luck. I was born into a functional family, with reasonable intelligence and strong work ethics. I have no physical or mental health issues (I can't stress enough how important mental health is). I inherit decent emotional intelligence from my parents which helps tremendously with social interactions. I went to a competitive, solid school and had access to the internet earlier than my peers, which opened up new possibilities and motivated me to study abroad. I had positive early influences in life, have been helped by countless people along the way and fallen into dumb luck situations that I can't claim credit for. I only partially “deserve” my success. Many who work just as hard or harder than me are simply not as fortunate. I look at those who fail and stand up to try again and again, while they might not be successful in external terms, there's something deeply heroic and moving about their struggle, who is to say their life is less virtuous and worthy?So, despite the talk about effort, it’s really contribution, or achievement, that the meritocrat believes is worthy of reward. Whether or not our work ethic is our own doing, our contribution depends, at least in part, on natural talents for which we can claim no credit.Coming from a communist country, where the economy was ruined by the slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, I fully understand the value of meritocracy as a useful illusion. In my country, where it used to be that no matter how hard you worked, you’d still end up the same as everyone else, I can tell you how demoralizing it is. Everyone became lazy, resentful and resigned to their fate of mediocrity, stagnation, poverty and rule by the incompetent.Aristocracies or caste systems are unfair because they distribute income, wealth, opportunity and power according to the accident of birth. Communism rewards based on (feigned) ideological loyalty. Meritocracy remedies this arbitrariness, at least to some degree by giving people with ‘merit’, which can partially be developed by effort, the opportunity to succeed. It provides some approximate, imperfect but useful selection criteria to match people to positions along with appropriate incentives to ensure that the necessary work gets done.If these principles of selection are reasonable, we can say that the people who meet the criteria ‘merit’ those positions. Money and status are rewards that can encourage people to get things done. A well-designed society with good rules/incentives can benefit tremendously from developing and deploying talent efficiently. The rewards of wealth and honour are inevitably going to be unequally shared if they are to serve as incentives for human behavior. I have no issue with that. While we can improve the definition of merit, I can't see any better alternative system.But where it goes wrong is the question of human worth. We are all born with unique circumstances, limitations and talents. The reward we receive has nothing to do with our intrinsic moral worth. The lives of the less successful are not less worthy than those of others, especially when success is narrowly defined by market worth. The task of reimagining human worth will only become even more urgent and critical as the advance of AI and automation might turn a huge proportion of the population into an unemployable class.The disconnect between reward and moral worth features heavily in John Rawls’ theory of distributive justice. He argues that the other three rival systems: feudal/caste, libertarian or meritocratic bases distributive shares on factors that are arbitrary from a moral point of view – whether accident of birth, or socioeconomic advantage or natural talent. He provides an alternative vision of justice based on the difference principle, which permits income inequalities for the sake of incentives provided the incentives are needed to improve the lives of the least advantaged. It is not the same as saying that the successful have a privileged moral claim to the fruits of their labour. Distributive justice is not a matter of rewarding moral desert. Instead, it’s about meeting the legitimate expectations that arise once the rules of the game are in place. Once the principles of justice set the terms of social cooperation, people are entitled to the benefits they earn under the rules.[3]It is important to make sure that even people at the bottom can preserve their dignity and are not denied a decent life simply because of their bad luck. Social mobility and opportunities for advancement are an important way to soften the rough edges of meritocracy and maintain social stability.Apart from the moral argument, I think there is also the psychological argument. In medieval England, the word for somebody who was at the bottom of society was “an unfortunate”. Today, it is a “loser”. The idea of ‘deserving’ our success and failure can cause an immense amount of shame, anxiety and resentment by the losers, and snobbery and contempt by the winners. Competition can be a great motivating force but too much of it undermines our cooperative spirit.It is important to expand our definition of merit to “IQ/talent + hard work + luck”, to be a little bit more humble about our own and less envious of others’ success, to be less judgmental of failure, a bit more compassionate and grateful, to be cognizant that we all need each other as a society. To fully acknowledge that meritocracy is merely a useful myth, with all of its caveats.I’d like to close by the wise words by Alain de Botton:[4]So what I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we are truly the authors of our own ambitions because it's bad enough not getting what you want; but it's even worse to have an idea of what it is you want, and find out at the end of the journey that it isn't, in fact, what you wanted all along. So by all means, success - yes. But let's accept the strangeness of some of our ideas. Let's probe away at our notions of success. Let's make sure our ideas of success are truly our own.Please see this wonderful lecture on distributive justice by Michael Sandel, Harvard professor:Alain de Botton on Status Anxiety:and this excellent article on Michael Young’s life and politics:The myth of meritocracy: who really gets what they deserve?A critique of Young’s vision:https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.155163!/file/philosophicalcritique.pdfFootnotes[1] Comment: Down with meritocracy[2] The myth of meritocracy: who really gets what they deserve?[3] Full text of "Justice What Is The Right Thing To Do By Michael Sandel"[4] Alain de Botton: What's A Kinder Way To Frame Success?

So, I wasn’t initially going to answer this and often try to avoid Trump questions - not always successfully - but after reading through the answers, I feel compelled to. I am going to cheat a little and give you two distinct misconceptions, but I’ll lump them into one.The biggest misconception about Donald Trump is that he isn’t what he appears to be and won’t do what we all fear he might do.More specifically, it’s the two distinct ideas that A. he’s actually really smart and calculating despite appearing to be a braying jackass with no understanding of most of the topics extremely relevant to a potential president. And, B. that sure he’s basically crazy and awful but he would be impotent in office and out in four years so it wouldn’t be a big deal and he couldn’t do too much damage.It’s funny because sometimes, amongst smart people (like your average Quoran, for instance), there is a tendency to over-complicate things and it can be hard at times to just accept the obvious thing you see right in front of you as an obvious thing you see right in front of you. It’s seductive, particularly in politics, to envision that “there must be something else going on” or to try and game theory things ten steps down the line. We all like to think that someone, somewhere, knows exactly what they’re doing and everything is according to some kind of plan. When, in reality, having worked in politics, I can tell you that 9 times out of 10 what you see in front of you and what your gut tells you actually is usually the truth. That’s not to say that politicians and their staffs don’t gameplay themselves or that there aren’t secret agendas and whatnot, but usually not (or usually they’re a lot simpler and base than you imagine to be, such as “my adviser told me this is a good thing to say to win votes and/or money and I like votes and/or money so I’ll say it”). What you see is kind of what you get. For all the times in American political history where we imagined that campaign X was secretly intended to advance Y or politician D- is actually politician A+ putting us all on to win votes and will reveal their true natures once elected, nearly always, campaign X usually just advances X and D- is just a D-. You really will nearly never go broke believing your own lying eyes.Anyway, two parts to this, and judging from the other answers, these misconceptions are way more prevalent than they should be.The assumption that Donald Trump is very intelligent.Look, I don’t know the man. He may well be intelligent. That said, his public record is voluminous, and to this point, I have never heard him say anything that made me think “wow, this guy is really smart.” You’d think if he was secretly some kind of genius, even if he was “putting on an act” he’d slip up and say something intelligent once in awhile. Wow, what discipline and commitment to not breaking character! He certainly comes off as a guy with more braggadocio than brains, a guy that has little understanding of or interest in most major topics and issues, a guy who has never had to intellectually challenge himself, a guy whose every assertion even in areas of his supposed expertise are paper thin, and a guy who has spent almost the entirety of his substantial public life sounding, well, pretty dumb.The truth is that the idea that he is very intelligent is an as-yet unevidenced assumption. It takes success and mistakes that for smarts and then sort of retrofits an intelligence narrative to it (i.e. “he must be smart because he accomplished this or that.”)I really appreciate Mohammad Reza Barazesh's answer tackling this subject . He mostly talks about the political aspect (with a surprising and interesting analogy), and I’d like to address that too. Many in this very thread keep saying things like “He couldn’t be dumb if he managed to win the Republican nomination for president” or “only a smart guy beats 16 other candidates,” both of which are, well, not true. I mean, they’re OBVIOUSLY and PATENTLY not true. Who here actually believes that dumb people can’t win elections? Does anyone have any actual evidence to back up those kinds of statements? Because I can sure think of a lot of counter examples to them.Dumb people win stuff all the time. They frequently succeed over more intelligent people, in every field but ESPECIALLY in politics where intelligence isn’t nearly as important as completely intelligence-unrelated things like money, name ID, charisma, money, circumstance, popularity, political climate, who your opponent is, etc. Hell, it was Napoleon who said, “In politics, stupidity is not a handicap,” and if anything that’s MORE true today in American politics then it was then. Is anyone going to really stand here and argue that if a dude wins elections saying dumb things they are probably secretly smart? Do these people not remember Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle, John Ensign, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, Rob Ford…the list is endless.These are not “smart people” and no, just because they appeal to segments of voters is not prima facie evidence of some sort of inherent savvy. I would be curious to poll people who have worked in politics for a long time whether they have ever met a dumb politician. I would be shocked if every one of them didn’t raise their hand. It always seems to me that the people making assumptions about the secret intelligence of dumb-seeming politicians are people who have not actually been around a lot of dumb politicians. Because, news flash, those people exist…and they really are dumb. And, by the way, popular intelligence theory aside, “connecting with people,” “taking advantage of popular sentiment” or other like attributes are not the same as being smart. You can be dumb and be charismatic, be liked, or even have a game plan that roughly works out.Don’t get me wrong, there are LOADS of incredibly smart people working in politics today. Some of the smartest people around are politicians. But there are some dumb ones too and sometimes they win. And yet, so many people seem to want to give them the benefit of the doubt or, worse yet, envision scenarios where they spend their entire public life looking dumb and then go back behind closed doors to be all smart and plotting.What's more, what smart thing did Donald Trump do that a dumb person would not have, exactly? Mind you, he did plenty of things that worked out in his favor, but that's not the same thing at all. He used immigration as a wedge issue? He stoked fears about terrorism? He played into anti-minority sentiment and economic unease? He attacked the front runners? He tried to appeal to the common man? Are you saying a dumb Republican would never have thought to do those things? Because I don't know if you're aware, but plenty have.In fact, I will go a step further - not only has this rather well worn playbook been used before, but nearly every Republican primary for president of the last forty years has had a candidate of exactly that type running exactly that kind of campaign. Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, Pat Buchanan, Pete Wilson, Michelle Bachmann, Jesse Helms, I could go on and on. Is the difference between Donald Trump and all of them that Trump is smart and they weren’t? Perhaps. But, isn’t it just as likely that the difference between Trump and them might have more to do with the fact that Trump also had gobs of money, celebrity, universal name recognition, a weak primary field, and an unsettled angry electorate? Because from where I’m sitting those all look like far more determining factors than some kind of sharp intelligence or savvy on Trump’s part.With Trump and the assertions that he’s super intelligent, there is an additional factor that plays into it - the assumption that because he’s rich that, too, is evidence that he must be smart. But those two things don’t follow each other either. Again, people seem very inclined to confuse success with intelligence. Typically even his critics will offer some paean to his business acumen and confuse that with intelligence. “While he may be a genius at building a brand…” or “despite his skills at building a business…”No.Others have covered his business history - which is by no means stellar - in more detail so I won’t rehash it here. It is true that he has made a lot of money and made himself a well known figure. But that is not necessarily a sign of intelligence. He was born to an extremely privileged life and was in the amazingly fortunate position of being given millions of dollars with which to invest in NYC real estate in the 70s and 80s which, in hindsight was a pretty idiot-proof way to make a fortune. Rather than him “building a business” it's more akin to being born in Texas in the 1880s with the deed to a property that strikes oil and being given a bunch of capital with which to buy a bunch of other properties like it from your neighbors. And as far as “building a brand,” being a narcissist that puts your name on everything in the biggest letters possible is hardly acumen, nor is becoming a well known figure for being celebrity-ish and a blowhard who is extremely privileged. His “brand” is not much different than Paris Hilton’s was when she was a thing or any number of people who are “famous for being famous.”This was not a guy that invented some new product or revolutionized some process or industry or even some guy that worked his way to the top. Money tends to perpetuate money in this country - celebrity perpetuates celebrity which in turn perpetuates money. Donald Trump is a success almost entirely because of the extremely privileged start he was given, and later almost entirely because of his amazingly fortunate position and self-mythologizing visibility/celebrity. And even then he fails more than he succeeds. The difference is, he can.All of this boils down to the seductive but incorrect assumption that people who are successful - in politics, business, or other fields - must on some level be smart to have succeeded. That the cream always rises to the top. This is OFTEN true, and I’m glad that it is. But even for people advocating that about Trump, I’m curious what specific, non-speculative evidence they have that his winning the Republican primary or him having some success in business is because he’s smart. To me, it looks for all the world like a bombastic rich dude who has self-mythologized himself, used his wealth to build more wealth, and happened to be at the right place at the right time (as he was in business) to take advantage of an electorate who happened to be uniquely suited (for reasons having nothing to do with Trump himself) to receive his message and his character. Absent that non-speculative evidence, is your message, boiled down, really just that rich or politically successful people can’t be dumb, or that success is prima facie proof of smarts? Because, when you actually put it that bluntly, that seems like a pretty unsupportable assumption to me. And, again, it’s not like we don’t have ample evidence - like, everything he says and most of what he does - that indicates otherwise in Trump’s case.His supporters love to make the case that he’s just “putting us on” by seeming dumb, and even many of his critics love to assume that he’s “secretly very conscious of and carefully calibrating everything and he’s a master chess player lulling us all into a false assumption that…” yadda yadda yadda.Sometimes, again, just believe your damn lying eyes.2. The assumption that Donald Trump wouldn’t really be a disastrous president.This is the one that most gets me, because it is such a weird logical leap, such lazy and easily falsifiable wish-casting, and because the people that use this line of thinking typically do so to justify minimizing or even getting on board with the Trump candidacy.I don’t mean the people that think Trump would be a good president. I mean the people who say “yeah, okay, so he SOUNDS like a horrible person advocating terrible policies, but really once he gets in office he’ll chill out / reveal his true nature / be stopped by Congress / be unable to get anything done” and so on.Not to pick on you Doug, but this answer gets at one common construction of this assumption. Relevant quote:Trump is a blowhard tyrant who has never had to involve himself in a democratic process of any type, much less the kind of wheeling and dealing and trade-offs necessary to get anything done on Capital Hill.I’ve seen that same thought expressed multiple times in many ways, but usually it comes down to “hey guys, we shouldn’t worry too much, because all of that dumb shit he says he’s going to do he couldn’t possible do so really worst case scenario it’s just a wash and he’ll be out in four years.” More concerningly, often times this is from smart people who don’t like Trump and RECOGNIZE that at a glance he looks like he would be a terrible president committed to doing mostly dumb or terrible things.To steal from my comment to that post:Maybe the biggest misconception here is that the democratic or political process still reins in executive excess like it used to.It does not. It simply does not. In big, neon 100 foot tall letters, it does not.Both Bush and Obama have proven that the old system of checks and balances has broken down. Our tripartite system has waaaaay become heavily weighed in favor of the executive branch in recent decades. That is one of the core political upheavals of our time, in my opinion, although we’re so close to it it can be hard to see and it frequently passes without mention. But to express the thought in a slightly different way, the idea that a president can’t get anything done without getting broad support from Congress is just…it’s just nuts, to be honest. And it completely ignores the example of, you know, all our recent presidents who got a lot of shit done with no support from Congress and near total opposition from the minority party. You don’t need a fancy argument to prove this point - you literally just need to look.Here are topics or things things we can do now just because the POTUS wants us to, not because they managed to negotiate broad bipartisan support but simply because they were the president and wanted to do them.Legalize torture.Start wars.Overhaul the health care system and the implementation and details of its replacement.Determine American policy and execution regarding surveillance.Enact whatever agenda or strategy you like regarding killing people in the name of fighting terrorism.Determine any War on Terrorism powers and whether or not you think you need any oversight in their application.How to deal with the economy, Wall Street, and big business.Immigration policy and enforcement.The definition and application of the 6th amendment.Federal oversight of basically everything, from drugs to cards to the environment to banks.Much of educational policy including federal standards.Federal employment details including protected classes, minimum wages, diversity, etc.All international relations.All military decisions.A broad swath of civil rights policy.Most science decisions including EPA, NSF etc.And on and on. And that’s not even including things like appoint the people who will be in charge of the judicial branch, the Federal Reserve, the National Parks, whatever.Some of that stuff did indeed have legislation attached to it in some way - some did not. You could have an in-depth discussion on any one of them. But all involved an incredible and heretofore unimagined use of executive authority.It should be remembered that the last two presidents have both been HATED by the minority opposition, who in many cases did everything in their power to try and check them, literally shutting down the government or refusing votes on appointees. And don’t get me wrong, that can hold up a lot of stuff and be a giant pain in the ass. But is anyone going to argue that the Bush or Obama presidencies have not had historic impacts IN SPITE of completely lacking bipartisan support (in Bush’s case, after 2003ish at least).I commend that steadfast optimism in the power of government to check and balance the executive but man, what country have you been watching?The truth is the office of the president today is more powerful than it ever has been in American history. The truth is that the president can do a LOT of things and accomplish a great deal without a legislator on board - and the truth is also that we have gotten so partisan you could be John Wayne Gacy and count on at least a majority of your party to support you. The executive office is incredibly muscular and right now the balance between the three branches of government is not even close to being in equilibrium.And here you have a man who if nothing else has a long history and is indeed CAMPAIGNING on the idea of doing what the hell he wants to do consequences or dissent be damned. And the argument is that his four year term would likely wind up being uneventful?Like, I get it, he’ll never be able to come close to building a wall, but there is a LOT of stuff that he COULD do and what’s more, because we are in a critical period in terms of executive authority largely BECAUSE of the failure of checks and balances, this next president will go a long way to defining the role and power of the office for a generation at least. If we've learned nothing from these last 16 years it's that a president isn't a mayor or even a Senator - they are uniquely able to rejigger the entire constitutional order if they see fit, and that we can no longer trust traditional checks and balances, partisan politics, or electorate disapproval to stand in their way. EVERY DAY the president makes decisions that impacts the lives of millions and sets new policy or precedent for American governance. And while Donald Trump may not have a specific ideological agenda (besides himself) or his most well known proposals may have no chance of getting enacted the way he promises them to be, that is not to say he isn't ambitious, nor is it to say that he isn't almost preternaturally inclined and agreeable to reshaping the entire executive office in his image - and that we are at a point in our history where he will be uniquely able to do just that. People compare him to Putin - I think the more apt comparison is someone like Silvio Berlusconni. No agenda maybe besides self-aggrandizement and appeasing his own whims and appetites and prejudices, lots of opposition, but ask Italy how that worked out for them or look at how “little” Berlusconni was able to do.The frankly completely self-evident truth is that the President is, like, really important. He or she has a whole lot of power, and an enormous ability to wield it. Much of it is completely independent of checks and balances, and in recent years we’ve seen how weak checks and balances are even when we do deign to use them. I don’t believe four years of ANY president in this day and age could be “uneventful” or not massively impactful, and I certainly can’t imagine any scenario where that would be the case for Donald Trump, who by his own admission is extremely authoritarian, who by his own behavior believes that the rules are what he says they are. Guess what - that’s mostly true for presidents in this day and age!There is a final, related misconception that feeds into this, incidentally, or is at least related.The misconception that Trump can't win.He could. President Trump is literally the second most likely outcome of this election - and I'm not talking about a 1% or 10% chance, I'm talking like a 40% chance. I feel that there are still people, similar to those who believe he “wouldn't be able to get anything done,” who think that there is value in voting for him as a protest or to give a middle finger to the system or because it's hilarious or because they hate Hillary Clinton. They think that because they think he can't win. Yes, he can.We take that lightly at our peril.It’s funny, because both hidden assumptions - that success is proof of intelligence, or that an unpopular president can’t get anything done - are transparently, very obviously false. Heck, even the people making the argument that Trump is intelligent or would be a president held in check I bet KNOW those precepts are false if you put it plainly enough and asked them to consider their logic in a vacuum. And yet so many people are seduced into believing them in this case, maybe because the bald, plain-as-day truth in front of them is too disconcerting to consider.The tendency seems to be to try to pretzel your way to a conclusion while dismissing the need for evidence or the existence of ample counter-examples.No, Donald Trump is not smart. You can tell he is not smart because he is constantly saying not smart stuff and doing not smart things.No, Donald Trump would not be successfully held in check as a president, because he’d still be the fucking president.And, again, it is not like all the evidence for those two assertions is not right in front of us. Donald Trump is, right now, the most publicly scrutinized person on Earth. He stands up in front of a stage every day and is Donald Trump, shows you what Donald Trump is like, and tells you what Donald Trump will do. I have no idea why so many people then follow that up with “well, actually, I have a theory about that…” This is not rocket science. This is not some inscrutable thing that we can only guess it. There are no tea leaves to read here - it is a firehose of Lipton being blasted in our faces every day. Literally all the evidence is standing there in front of you. With Trump, if we know ANYTHING, we know that what you see is what you get. He has proven that his entire life, over and over and over again, and is standing on a national stage flat-out TELLING you that and proving it with his every action and statement. We know exactly who Donald Trump is and what the office of the president can do. We don’t have to guess at anything.Cut away all the BS, all the hidden assumptions, all the too-smart-by-half hypothetical imagined scenarios, all the game-playing projecting and wish-casting, all the pretzel-logic over-rationalizations, and just look at what’s right in front of you. There is not some secret person behind a mask, no conspiratorial agenda behind the agenda actually being said out loud right to you multiple times a day, no secret government reality that will kick in once he gets in office, no shell game of hidden meanings or plans.Donald Trump is what he appears to be and will do what we all fear he might do.Believe what you see.

Beyond the fact that you have the same set of character classes up to 20 levels, the same set of core stats with the same modifier progression, the same three saving throws, and the same overall core d20-roll-higher-than-the-DC mechanic, Pathfinder 2 as it has been presented thus far in the 2018 playtest is a wild departure from the first edition of the game — and yet, also completely on-brand. There’s enough to talk about that I can’t possibly explore everything without just re-writing the playtest book, but let’s go over the bigger strokes.Completely Deterministic Character CreationThere is no random roll component to making a character. Instead, all your stats start at 10, and then your Ancestry, Background, and Class each come with boosts to your ability scores. Some are pre-determined, some are “free” boosts that you can pick where they go. Unless you’re using a race that has a drawback on an ability score, you probably won’t get below 10 — and even then those can be offset with boosts.Thoughts: Good in principle, a little uninteresting in application. Paizo has expressed that the final version will have a little more flavor but generally follow the same idea. For a game that’s as much about build optimization as this one is, though, this is a good idea.Edit - Release Version: Nope, works the same, but there’s a lot more Backgrounds to work with and they bothered to give Backgrounds skill proficiencies.Feats are the Center of Character-BuildingWhereas 5th edition D&D largely fell back on a more pre-determined class structure with a handful of high-impact choices, Pathfinder 2 opts for maintaining its granularity, such that 90% of character features are replaced with Feats. You have Ancestry Feats from your race (now called Ancestry); Skill Feats that can enhance or add new uses to your Skills; you have General Feats which include Skill Feats as well as a handful of other, more universal Feats, like Toughness; and you have Class Feats, which are essentially a grab bag of class features. All of them are tiered based on a prerequisite level you must be in order to gain them, and your character class’s progression explicitly awards one of these four kinds of feats depending on what level you’re at. Almost none of them require a lengthy chain of previous Feats, except where they explicitly upgrade a feature granted by one, like Animal Companion.Thoughts: Better in principle than it is in practice. The idea of standardizing Feats as the basis of character creation is great for Pathfinder, getting around a lot of the hacky workarounds that characterized Archetypes and creating an easy basis on which to customize classes without completely having to reinvent them. However, the number of Feats to select is overwhelming if you try to build a mid-level character, with a large number of them — especially Skill and Ancestry Feats — constituting annoying or irrelevant fluff. Some classes fare better with this structure than others, with some being solid gold and some being full of boring or irrelevant choices that never quite fit the play style you’re going for. This is especially true of casters, who feel at a loss to define what a good Feat would even look like.In my opinion there should never be any Ancestry Feats past 1st level, but for some reason you just keep getting them, and they feel continually more irrelevant the further in you go.Skill Feats are really neat, but the selection is overwhelming, and depending on what kind of character you’re making it’s easy to feel like you have more of these than you’ll ever need.Class Feats have comparatively fewer issues, being the most clearly guided part of the process, but it never quite feels like you have enough, and the granular structure imposes a very small incremental benefit to them. Starfinder’s class structure may be a much better middle ground.Race is Revised and Now Called AncestryAncestry is the new term for Races, and it’s called such owing to the fact that it’s more loose and customizeable. You get your ability score drawbacks and boosts, maybe low-light vision or darkvision, and maybe one or two other features, but then you have A) a Heritage, which is kind of like a sub-race; and B) a grab-bag of Ancestry Feats which you can use to tweak what you get out of the Ancestry you picked. In essence, Paizo made racial substitution abilities from 1st edition more of a baseline standard instead of making you jump through a bunch of hacky hoops in order to use it.Thoughts: Good idea. Stop awarding these after level 1, and award more of them at level 1. I really only ever need two of them.Goblins Are Now a Core AncestySpeaks for itself. Goblins have been Paizo’s “mascot” for ages, and now they’re playable and have their own quirky, crazy Ancestry Feats.Thoughts: Absolutely onboard with this.Every Level is Max HPLikewise there’s no random component to HP, even as you gain levels. Instead, you gain a flat value each level based on your class plus your Constitution Modifier. Essentially, your HP per level is awarded as if you were rolling the maximum possible roll on a class’s Hit Dice; 10 per level if you’re a Fighter, 12 per level if you’re a Barbarian, and so on. This is on top of your Ancestry providing a small boost of HP at 1st level, so Pathfinder 2 characters tend to have pretty meaty HP pools.Thoughts: No, that isn’t just to placate whiny players, it’s essential to the design of this version of the game. You’ll understand why in a little bit. This was a good idea.Alchemist is a Core ClassThe Alchemist class added in Pathfinder’s supplemental books has graduated and become a fully-fledged core class. Additionally, alchemical items are completely re-structured in order to support the alchemist’s detailed interactions with items, and instead of having generic alchemist bombs, the Alchemist can produce any of them — acid flasks, tanglefoot bags, thunderstones, alchemists’ fires, and so on — as their bombs. This is in addition to all sorts of other elixers and mutagens, which can be produced as standalone items through crafting or as temporary “infused” items that the alchemist can whip up on the spot during combat.Thoughts: Love it. Welcome to the team, Alchy.There’s a Stat Called Resonance that Limits Item UsageYour Resonance stat is contributed by your level and your Charisma, and limits the number of magic items and potions you can use in a day. The Alchemist interacts with it the most of any class, using it to fuel their ability to spontaneously whip up magic items.Thoughts: Apart from its application to Alchemists, this rule really sucks and nobody likes dealing with it. D&D 5th edition’s Attunement is better for managing how many magic items you have equipped, and frankly when you’re already spending the potions themselves it stinks to have to spend the equivalent of MP to use them. I don’t think this rule will survive to the final version of the game, as it seems universally reviled.Edit - Release Version: They got rid of this. Kudos, Paizo.Rangers are Spell-lessThe Ranger has been re-engineered to be a completely spell-less martial class, with fighting styles, animal companions, skills, and the Hunt Monster ability taking up the slack for where spells used to be.Thoughts: I hated spellcasting with Rangers, always felt out of place to me. The new Ranger’s subtlety and emphasis towards more physical combat feels much better.New Proficiency and Level Scaling SystemAt the time of writing, all rolls are done with a bonus equal to your character level + relevant ability score modifier, then modified by your proficiency. A character can be Untrained (-4), Trained (+0), Expert (+1), Master (+2), or Legendary (+3). When 2nd edition is fully released these values might change, but this system for Proficiency applies to weapons, armor, skills, and saves.Yes, by the by — even your AC and Touch AC are heavily level-dependent and factor this in, such that your character level is likely to make up a much larger part of your AC than your armor at a certain point. While not many classes actually advance proficiency in armor, Monks notably get Expertise in unarmored defense to start with.It’s worth noting that monsters function based on this system as well, rather than being based on Challenge Rating. You don’t fight a CR 2 monster, you fight a level 2 monster, and as a level 2 monster it will gain a flat +2 bonus to everything, modified by ability score mods and proficiency. This creates a very hard “tiering” effect between combatants of different levels, such that an opponent several levels above you will feel incredibly hard while an opponent as little as a single level below you will feel very easy.Thoughts: Worst thing in the game. Differentiation between training levels is too small, tiering between levels is too hard.While many have argued that their gating of Skill Feats is what the real differentiating factor is between characters of high proficiency levels, I’ve found that the Skill Feats are often too situational for this to be the case compared with the baseline rolls. There is a kind of compositing that happens wherein your ability score will tend to be higher for skills that you’re more invested in, so there will be a visible spread between the highly skilled and the relatively unskilled — but it feels like this spread is being contributed by the wrong factors. At the end of the day I’m still looking at a level 20 Wizard who’s never benched a day in his life rolling at a +16 Athletics roll, able to handily and easily beat trained warriors, albeit lower-level ones, in martial arts forms that he’s never trained in. Level 20 or not, that’s kind of stupid.The heavy-hitting tiering feels good in some situations. Beating up a low-level mob feels great with the new critical hit system, and it’s easy to judge exactly how much harder or easier an enemy is based on its level. However, it also renders a lot of monsters as-written rigidly impractical at a lot of different levels of play, such that an impetus exists for creating multiple variations of nearly every basic monster for every level. Maybe the most problematic thing, though, is Skill DCs, as the spread of Easy/Medium/Hard DCs each level also keeps changing and necessitates a reference table. It really sucks to deal with.I could do with the level scaling being softer, and I could do with the Proficiency system from 5th edition taking precedence over this one, with Proficiency denoting what things do and don’t scale with level as opposed to assuming that literally everything scales with level.Edit - Release Version: New rules are that Untrained is a raw stat roll, Trained is Character Level + 2, Expert is CL + 4, Master is CL + 6, Legendary is CL + 8. This works out much, much better, giving a much more interesting differentiation between characters in different roles. Characters with no training aren’t inexplicably awesome at most tasks. Definitely works much much better.Critical Hits and Misses Happen More OftenCritical hits happen on a natural 20 or if you roll 10 higher than the DC you’re trying to beat; critical misses happen on a natural 1 or if you roll 10 lower than the DC you’re trying to beat. Some skills, saving throws, and attacks take all four cases — hit, critical hit, miss, critical miss — into account, while some are less sensitive. However, this has a very interesting impact on the game, as saves, skill rolls, and attacks become potentially much more eventful.This comes up especially if you are staging a fight where the players and the enemies are not equal in level. The higher-level party has a higher bonus to everything, the lower-level party has a lower AC and saves, so one will tend to score way more critical hits than the other. If the party is level 5+ and fighting low-level mooks, those enemies will simply melt before their weapons. Likewise if the party is level 5 and fighting a level 10 or 11 monster, they are exceedingly likely to be crushed.Thoughts: Love it love it love it. Holy shit do criticals feel good in this game.Edit - Release Version: Holy SHIT do criticals feel good in this game.The Three-Action EconomyPathfinder Unchained’s three-action economy returns as the standard off which Pathfinder 2nd edition is built. In essence, each turn you get three Actions, one Reaction, and the ability to make Free Actions as they become available. Each ability, attack, or spell you can use can take between 1–3 Actions or might be a Reaction/Free Action, giving each one a sense of variable speed or weight. The net result is that understanding your tactical options during combat is extremely intuitive, and you get a lot more flexibility on your turn. You can move three times, you can attack three times, you can create a combo chain out of three different attacks, and so on.This is the point where I think you probably understand why HP is so generous in Pathfinder 2nd edition — you’re able to make several attacks in a turn at level 1, and at higher levels that translates to dropping a ton of damage very frequently. Simply put, Pathfinder 2 characters need the extra meat in order for combat not to feel stupidly lethal. If you’re worried about losing the sense of challenge, don’t; those critical hit rules can make combat feel very lethal.Thoughts: Best thing in the game. A lot of the martial class experience is vastly improved just by the fact that you don’t waste an entire turn on a really simple action, and you have a lot of room to get creative with how you fight.Spells Use the Action Economy CreativelyTo cast spells you use Somatic, Material, and Verbal actions; you can use one of each of them in a turn. Not all spells use all three of these actions, so some spells take less than a full turn to cast, although depending on which spellcasting actions you had to use you might wind up not being able to cast a second spell anyway. Sometimes spells offer optional spellcasting actions, picking up more power depending on which ones you choose to use. A base one-action healing spell might just give a quick couple of dice to top off a buddy with a touch, but a healing spell pumped full of all three spellcasting actions might become a group heal that can be done at range.Thoughts: At a glance this is a natural complement to the action economy, but in practice spellcasters have so much less flexibility with it that they tend to be at a big disadvantage — yes, really — compared with martial classes. Coupled with aforementioned poor/irrelevant feat selections, spellcasters kind of suck to play in this version of the game. I expect they’re going to get heavily revised for the release version when it comes out later this year.Edit - Release Version: Lots of my issues with casting classes are mitigated by better-designed class features.Spells Are Consolidated into Four ListsThere are four spell lists in Pathfinder 2nd: Arcane (wizardy stuff), Divine (clericy stuff), Primal (druidy stuff), and Occult, which is a new subset emphasizing a mixture of mind-influencing and paranormal abilities. Whatever spellcasting class you’re using, it uses one of these four spell lists. The Sorcerer is especially interesting, as depending on what bloodline you choose, it can change which of these four lists you end up using for your spells. Otherwise the Bard, strangely, is the only class that uses Occult magic.Thoughts: Not sure how I feel about the exact listings of the spells, but I like this in principle. I wish that “Occult” were more defined in terms of its identity, and I wish the Witch class were around to use this list.There Are 10th Level SpellsWish and its vastly overpowered ilk have been moved to a 10th level of spells, which tends to become available as a level 20 capstone ability.Thoughts: None. I’m pretty indifferent about this, although I guess there’s something reassuring about the game not going completely to Hell when 9th level spells drop.Spell Points and Powers Exist as Alternatives to SpellsMagical or mystical abilities that aren’t spells are called “powers,” albeit they have entries similar to spells. These include Paladins’ Litanies, Monks’ traditionally ki-based abilities, and Sorcerer bloodline powers, among other things. Classes that use them get Spell Points, a literal MP pool to fuel them with as opposed to the slots used by typical Vancian spells. Basically it’s a unifying mechanic for non-spell magic abilities.Thoughts: “Spell points” are used for all the abilities that are explicitly not spells. This is confusing nomenclature and I want someone at Paizo shot out of a cannon for picking it. Otherwise the idea is sound and works okay at the table, but give it a unique name for each class. It’s silly that the Monk doesn’t call their Spell Points “ki,” for instance.Edit - Release Version: They re-branded this as Focus, re-branded the special spells that use Focus Points as Focus Spells, and it’s much much clearer. Definitely like Focus Spells in their final form.Downtime is a Core SystemThe Downtime system was one of the most popular additions to Pathfinder 1st edition from its supplements, with good reason — specifically enumerating and structuring the stuff that players do in-between adventures is a great way to keep the game going at a solid pace and gauge the players’ investment into things like training and crafting. Sensibly, it makes a return here in the core rulebook, and is mostly familiar to what you’d expect.Thoughts: It’s how the game should’ve been written from the beginning. And now it is!Crafting is Much More DetailedPartly to help put the Alchemist over and partly to help fill out the Downtime system, crafting gets a lot more time and attention in Pathfinder 2nd edition’s rules. Characters possess or can find formulas for items, making the knowledge on how to craft an item a treasured commodity, and there exist a whole set of Crafting-based Skill Feats to open up options for magic items, alchemy, and specializations for specific types of items. It’s about the best and most detailed crafting system there’s been, helped by the fact that each item has a level and therefore translates easily into a DC.Thoughts: Largely indifferent. As something to support Alchemists it’s definitely a good idea, but I’ve yet to see a group get invested meaningfully in crafting.Perception is No Longer a SkillInstead of Perception being a skill that you can assign Skill advances to, Perception is a separate stat similar to saving throws, with specific classes receiving advances with it while others don’t. Rogues start off as Experts with it, while most other classes start off merely Trained. This gets around the fact that everybody would always advance Perception given the chance, simply fitting its value to fit each class’s relative dependence on it. In an interesting twist, Perception now also serves as Initiative for combat instead of Dexterity — though there are rules whereby you might use some other stat or skill for it instead, depending on the type of encounter you’re running.Thoughts: Very happy with this, as I often complain about the act of not taking Perception being something that fundamentally punishes players. It’s too universal to be ignored, so making it universal and scaling it based on class is a great idea.Skills are Super DetailedEvery skill in the game has a lot of detail, explicitly enumerating what kinds of actions you can use with them Trained versus Untrained, and expanding on what you can do with them based on what level of Proficiency you’re at and which Skill Feats you have. Many skills have or can gain combat-relevant application through this system.It bears emphasis that skill-based builds are absolutely a thing in this game; you can create an Intimidation Rogue, for instance, who utilizes a combination of Skill Feats and Class Feats based on Intimidation to demoralize and menace the battlefield. A friend of mine created a Performance-based Monk for my test game, which was in a gladiatorial setting, playing the crowd while also distracting enemies from his allies. There’s a lot of things you wish you could do with these skills in other versions of D&D that now not only can you, but they can be downright awesome thanks to the dynamics of the action economy. When you don’t sacrifice your entire turn trying these out, it’s a lot more appealing to throw in these little roleplay-esque flourishes. The only drawback is that there’s so many Feats that it’s hard to navigate your way through a sensible build.Thoughts: Ambivalent, but generally more positive than not. It’s a bit overwhelming to grasp, but the hard guidelines got players in my game using skills a lot more often, and the opened-up relevance to the action really helps.Weapons are Also Very DetailedWhereas 5th edition D&D made a lot of weapons barely a lot more than a cosmetic choice and a damage type, Pathfinder 2 goes all in making weapons more tangibly detailed in terms of how they influence your character’s fighting style. Various different traits make some weapons more suited to multiple attacks, some more suited to single emphatic attacks, and some more utility-oriented. The whip has become a hugely practical choice owing to the fact that making a trip or disarm attempt no longer necessarily eats your entire turn uselessly. Moreover, weapon groups have a “critical specialty” ability associated with them that adds additional effects when you get critical hits; while you don’t get access to them automatically without taking some Feats, they have some fun implications for characters whose builds are heavily invested in the critical hit system, Rogues included.Thoughts: Love it. Too much to go into, but the added tactical versatility of weapons feels great.ConclusionsIt’s hard to make any “real” conclusions since the version I’m going off of is the 2018 playtest and not the final release, which is yet to come out. Right now it’s definitely looking a bit rough, such that I hard-switched back to 5th edition when I realized it wasn’t going to work past a certain point. Some things about Pathfinder 2nd are great — the tactics and dynamics of physical combat have never felt better in any version of this that I’ve ever played. Some things are… less great. I don’t think they quite nailed a consistently rewarding level progression, I think the level scaling hampers and stifles the game a lot more than it helps, and spellcasters are just awful in the rules as written so far. Overall, though, the direction that Pathfinder 2 is going in captures the same kind of tactical depth that the original game was known for, but with a much cleaner presentation and much more potential fun during actual play, as opposed to the false depth that the original tended to emphasize during character sheet management. If the final release cleans up the rough edges nicely, it could become my game of preference.Edit - Release Version: We’re switching from 5e to this for the next game, let’s see how this goes.