In 2001, when I was still attending college, columnist David Brooks wrote an essay for The Atlantic called The Organisation Kid, in which he spent a lot of time with young Ivy League students and came away struck by their basic existential contentment. Instead of campus rebels, they were resume builders, accomplishment collectors and apple polishers, distinguished by their serenity, their faux-adult professionalism, their politesse.

I thought at the time that Mr Brooks made my cohort out to be more decent than we really were. But he was entirely correct that most of my peers believed that meritocracy was fair and just and worked - because, after all, it seemed to work for us.