I'm pretty sure there is a significant amount of cooperation when it comes to space exploration. Space missions often carry instruments from different countries. For example, the lunar probe that discovered water on the moon, Chandrayaan-1, carried instruments from different countries. Curiosity carried instruments from other countries too, if I'm not mistaken.
It's just that you don't read much about this in the newspapers, because newspapers would rather make it look like there's a space race going on.
Doesn't look like they're ignoring sterilization techniques.
Quote from an interview with an ISRO scientist: “Maybe it’s because we spend a lot of time working in clean rooms with full suits on, so you can’t tell who is male or female.”
http://qz.com/270346/20-of-isros-staff-you-rarely-hear-about...
We have an extreme case of the merit system here in India. Students who are trying to get into the IITs are judged solely on a composite score of their IIT entrance test results + school final exam results.
There are many 'coaching centres' all over the place that aim to teach students how to crack the entrance test. Students pretty much spend 3 hrs/day at these coaching centres, and more during the weekends. When I was in school, you had to pass an entrance test just to get into these coaching centres. Now, they even target younger kids from 8th grade onwards.
Unfortunately, all of this just distorts meritocracy in a different way. Obviously, these coaching centres are very expensive, and their students come from families that can afford it. These students get upto 4 years of coaching to teach them to pass the entrance tests. A poor, but intelligent student (who probably attends a sub-par school) does not have access to facilities like this and is at a disadvantage compared to his/her less intelligent peers.
It's not as simple as the right-wing boomers dying. There are a few things we need to keep in mind:
- People become more conservative as they age.
- The political right receives more support from crony capitalists.
- Crony capitalism is what's causing problems for these doctors in the first place.
It's happening all over the world. There's a general trend where the right-wing trolls are aligning themselves with the cronies. While the next generation wants to fight the nastiness in racial/sexist/homophobic discrimination, they're not too enthusiastic about doing anything besides paying lip service to structural problems in the way the world works economically.
It's just that you don't read much about this in the newspapers, because newspapers would rather make it look like there's a space race going on.