So, the first problem is, what is a meritocracy? In Young's original 1958 formulation, we get: "merit is equated with intelligence-plus-effort, its posse

So, the first problem is, what is a meritocracy? In Young's original 1958 formulation, we get: "merit is equated with intelligence-plus-effort, its possessors are identified at an early age and selected for appropriate intensive education, and there is an obsession with quantification, test-scoring, and qualifications." That's clearly not how it is actually used today, but people will still use the term's origins as some proof of original sin. Napolean's definition is a bit better (and older!): the tools to him that can handle them. A modern definition, and one I think all of us here can probably agree is congruent with the spirit most of us use it in, is: A process of governance by which the authority of people is weighted in direct proportion to their demonstrated competence and ability. In theory, such a system is clearly the most reasonable--after all, why wouldn't we defer to people that know the most or that have the best track record? And here's where things get murky. The big issue is that the "track record" is very much subject to the whimns of charisma and reality distortion. Steve Jobs was objectively a liar, a narcissist, abusive, a very bad manager (at least until much later), and a bad father. And yet, he would still be promoted under any modern notion of meritocracy, because he did have the critical skill of conning a bunch of folks into thinking he was actually worth following. A more honest definition of meritocracy might be: A process of governance by which the authority of people is weighted in direct proportion to their perceived competence and ability. Noting the change of one word, suddenly the system is seen as a sham: all it takes is a person to appropriate the accomplishments of one other person, and suddenly they have access to more political capital, which they can use to take credit for others' accomplishments (like Banzi seems to have done with Arduino), and thus unlocking still further capital, and so on, and so forth. This isn't as likely to happen in small groups with equal distributions of skills: at such a stage, perception and demonstration of abilities are nearly the same. As a group grows and specializes, however, the gap between perception and demonstration can widen as people suddenly are uncomfortable or unable to recognize when somebody is getting undue merit. Orthogonal to all this is the question of diversity and of privilege, which is discussed by a sibling commenter stray. There's a deal more to unpack there.