Without splitting hairs, I think we should avoid normatives when speaking across the board about merit. For example, "should be rewarded" is a bit of an odd phr

Without splitting hairs, I think we should avoid normatives when speaking across the board about merit. For example, "should be rewarded" is a bit of an odd phrase given that the market and other factors will affect the degree of the reward. You can be a very accomplished scholar, but make very little because the market doesn't reward that kind of stuff. Plenty of things escape market reward and it is profoundly erroneous to elevate the market to some kind of supermetric of human worth or merit and reduce all valuable activity to the profitable. I certainly prefer fairness over unfairness as a general principle, but fairness has its place. Whether luck is involved or not is of little interest to me. I think we obsess too much about money and tie it too much with human worth. In part because we like to think of ourselves as meritocratic, some of us feel compelled to justify our wealth differences to ward off the envious (plenty of that to go around). I'm not sure how you tie this into creating a "best society". I think arguments can be made that intersections of money and power/power and ambition are the most dangerous. Indeed, an argument against democratic republics is that those with a lust for power will tend to seek office and once they have it, believe they are entitled to it because they merit it as a result of their own actions. Hereditary monarchs, on the other hand, know fully well that they didn't ascend to the throne through their own efforts and that they are in a position of responsibility w.r.t. their people. (Note that most monarchies were not despotic despite the folklore because they were checked to varying degrees by tradition, the lords, the Church, etc, and were guided by advisers who brought their knowledge to the table, thus divorcing expertise from that bounded and constrained power.)