In 1958, British sociologist Michael Young coined the term “meritocracy” in his satirical novel, called “The Rise of the Meritocracy.” Its point was simple: When intelligence and effort are selected by any society as the basis for success or failure, those with such merit begin to comprise their own class. That class hardens into an elite that brooks no dissent and stratifies society. As Young would say in 2001, “It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit.”

This general point has become the basis for illiberal thinkers. Philosopher Michael Sandel, in his latest book, “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?” argues that the very notion of a meritocracy carries with it an unescapable and unsustainably selfish moral judgment.

This argument can be marshalled on behalf of right-wing and left-wing critiques of the current capitalist order.

The debate over meritocracy, however, depends on a crucial failure to distinguish between economic merit and moral merit.

The term meritocracy itself does a great disservice in smudging this distinction. Instead of linking “merit,” with all of its moral implications, with intelligence and hard work, we ought to instead use the term “skillsocracy.” Any economic system that rewards skills produces positive externalities.

A person who works hard, who innovates enriches not only those involved in the voluntary trade and the society at large. Every innovation is quickly followed by competition, by the spread of that innovation to a broader and broader market.

By contrast, any economic system that prizes an alternative set of values has negative externalities. Should we adjudicate economic distribution by race? Creed? Religion? Simple ethical preference?

This does not mean that those who are most dexterous should “run society.”

To create such a system would, in fact, undermine the skillsocracy itself, since it would allow the centralized will of some to undermine the innovative efforts of all. Economic mobility must remain predicated on skill, or the skillsocracy is undermined.

This also does not mean that the skillsocracy actually acts as a measure of moral good. Intelligence is largely inborn, and thus not a moral attribute per se; propensity for hard work may be partially genetic but can be cultivated. But in a moral society, we find noneconomic ways of treasuring virtue. We cultivate friendships; we provide honor and respect; we build communities on virtue and exclude those people who do not abide by such moral standards.

This means that a skillsocracy ought not be at odds with a virtuous society.

Far from it.

The so-called “meritocracy” need not devolve into a moral measure of intelligence and hard work; indeed, in a healthy society, it must not. But by the same token, we must never destroy the skillsocracy as a supposedly expedient way to revive moral living.

That effort would be both unsuccessful and wildly counterproductive.