I think you're conflating a few things. All meritocracy is, is saying "he gets the job because he's the best" as opposed to "he gets the job because he's my/the

I think you're conflating a few things. All meritocracy is, is saying "he gets the job because he's the best" as opposed to "he gets the job because he's my/the king's son". Why someone is the best, is a completely different question. Talent, effort, genetics & IQ, education, nutrition (possibly one of the biggest contributors to the rise of IQ in the 20th century), ... Now, I think it's prudent, from the perspective of society and/or individual companies, to not just consider who is the best right now but also who has the most potential (to be the best in the future), because extreme innate talent seems to be widely distributed and found in unexpected places (e.g. Ramanujan), so societies that fail to identify and develop that talent are losing out... But then, this idea is orthogonal to meritocracy (e.g. already the Habsburg empire recognized the value of public schooling and literacy of the general population).