It's a bit funny that meritocracy has such generally positive connotations today, even though the term was first used and then mercilessly satirized in The Rise

It's a bit funny that meritocracy has such generally positive connotations today, even though the term was first used and then mercilessly satirized in The Rise of the Meritocracy [1]. When different people want different things, who do we decide who is in charge? Should it be based on family and birth, like monarchy and aristocracy? Should it be based on who can seize power by force? What about ethnic and national identity? Or should we have a competitive testing system and metrics that select out an elite? Or maybe we should all vote on a person? Or why even have a person at all who's in a charge? Maybe we should all collectively vote for every decision without any intermediaries? Or maybe we just give an equal portion of resources to every person, and let them individually decide what to do with it. None of these systems are perfect. They all have deficiencies and can be gamed one way or another. Question is which one is the best for the particular situation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy