You have a lot of incorrect logic. I will only comment on one.
> In order to raise the average, you have to give everyone what they need to
> max out their potential, even if one's potential is lower.
Wrong. There are limited resources and it is not feasible to give every person every opportunity. "Let's give everybody a chance to become an opera singer, an Olympic 100m winner or a lotto winner, to see how they will use that chance. Even if they won't be any good at this and waste money, at least they will raise their starting position, improve on their potential and raise the average!". This is just silly. No, it is mathematically impossible to give every opportunity to every person.
If anything, giving extra resources to worse people (with lower potential) is a waste of resources (money, human). It makes no sense to make a potentially brilliant mathematician an below-average kindergarten teacher, while forcing a good teacher-to-be, to become a 20-years-in-a-making-junior-vibe-programmer. This is a terrible idea for economy, society and individual people (including the ones that DEI are trying to promote). People have different preferences and different abilities (some have in many areas, many have in a few, some are terrible at everything). Maximizing potential should be based on an individual's merit. Fair and equal opportunities will naturally lead to different results, because people are different. You can't simultaneously have equity and equal opportunities, discrimination (racism, sexism, DEI) and inclusion, equity and efficiency.
"Give everyone what they need to max out their potential" is not "give everyone every opportunity". That’s a strawman.
Floor, not ceiling. We set a floor of real opportunity (nutrition, basic health, safety, functional education, accessible selection processes). It doesn’t promise bespoke elite tracks for all. Removing constraints is different from subsidizing every aspiration. By doing so, you lift the average, and allow the best to develop to their fullest, growing society's total output.
If the signal of ability is suppressed by early disadvantage, you’ll misallocate talent. Low cost, well aimed supports (early literacy, assistive tech, unbiased hiring screens) improve matching, which is exactly what meritocracy needs to place the brilliant mathematician in math and the gifted teacher in the classroom.
We have noisy priors shaped by wealth, networks, and bias. They need removed so that comparative advantage can actually surface. That raises both the mean and the max.
We're talking about true meritocracy: merit, not circumstances.
Funnily enough, we agree:
> giving extra resources to worse people (with lower potential) is a waste of resources (money, human)
That's exactly my point, currently we spend resources on a bunch of people that are only circumstantially better, remember pro-sports before black people were allowed?
Spend your resources to realize the best to be the best, and to make even the worse better. That gives you full global maximum.
> In order to raise the average, you have to give everyone what they need to > max out their potential, even if one's potential is lower.
Wrong. There are limited resources and it is not feasible to give every person every opportunity. "Let's give everybody a chance to become an opera singer, an Olympic 100m winner or a lotto winner, to see how they will use that chance. Even if they won't be any good at this and waste money, at least they will raise their starting position, improve on their potential and raise the average!". This is just silly. No, it is mathematically impossible to give every opportunity to every person.
If anything, giving extra resources to worse people (with lower potential) is a waste of resources (money, human). It makes no sense to make a potentially brilliant mathematician an below-average kindergarten teacher, while forcing a good teacher-to-be, to become a 20-years-in-a-making-junior-vibe-programmer. This is a terrible idea for economy, society and individual people (including the ones that DEI are trying to promote). People have different preferences and different abilities (some have in many areas, many have in a few, some are terrible at everything). Maximizing potential should be based on an individual's merit. Fair and equal opportunities will naturally lead to different results, because people are different. You can't simultaneously have equity and equal opportunities, discrimination (racism, sexism, DEI) and inclusion, equity and efficiency.