alt Hacker NewsI say this as a former First Class scout, the entire thing is a racket. The "point" of Boy Scouts is to make you associate pointless meritocratic flair with actual accomplishment. It is a conditioning and propaganda pipeline with the purpose of stimulating enlistment.
The Boy Scouts were not an apolitical fun-fair, which became pretty glaringly obvious when the Army recruiters came by to meet with middle-schoolers. If you didn't enlist, you probably didn't stick around to earn your Eagle scout.
I think there's some value basic survival skills, but this is pretty removed from modern scouts. It's mostly a recruitment tool and tbf the shift has been awkward in trying to capture the market that "Girl Scouts" carved out.