Ok, so what? It's not used in that context anymore. It's the same pitfall as the master/slave/blacklist/whitelist/etc. arguments: people have a problem divorcing historical meaning from present-day usage. Meanings change and evolve over time. If we follow this stunted logic, then there's going to be a lot of other English words/phrases that need to be banned as well. The only people associating them with their historical meanings are those wanting to ban the phrases. These etymological fallacies do nothing but pointlessly divide people. It needs to stop.

I don’t think this is an accurate summary of the book. The satirical history of the “modern education system” in chapter 3 describes how funding for public education was increased, and students were aggressively streamed into different schools based only on IQ tests. Eventually expensive private schools went out of fashion because they were attended only by students who couldn’t get into the best public schools, so they no longer conferred academic prestige. Early in the book, capital levies are introduced which prevent the building of new fortunes, and in chapter 7, an Equalization of Income Act is passed so that all citizens receive the same basic income. The meritocracy is transformed into an aristocracy not because “merit” is a proxy for heritable wealth, but because “intelligence” (as defined in the book: “the ability to raise [economic] production, directly or indirectly”) is also heritable, and in the book this effect was amplified through eugenics. You can find a more modern and less satirical take on this argument in Fredrik deBoer’s The Cult of Smart.