The Mobility Recognition Game: Why Meritocratic Ascent Cannot Correct Itself

Upward mobility under meritocratic conditions is analysed as a recognition order in which a single cardinal metric of credentials and ranks rations standing and access. The paper’s central mechanism is ‘signal decay’, the fall in the value of an attained position as the strategy for reaching it crowds, a result that holds even where credentials build real capacity and that is distinct from both positional congestion and rising inequality. A stylised assurance game shows the conforming order to be a stable equilibrium collectively dominated by a plural alternative the population cannot reach unilaterally, with its degradedness rising in the tightness of the gate. The order cannot correct itself, because its would-be correctors are the winners the metric selected, so the corrective never reaches the evaluation layer and the reforms it can pass deepen signal decay on the positional margin. When ascent fails, the outcome is reported as the verdict of the metric rather than owned as a judgement. The paper offers a discriminating prediction that separates its mechanism from inequality. It reads the order against the European Union’s prohibition on social scoring, and proposes an external corrective that restores answerable judgement while keeping the metric as a check.