I would offer the friendly suggestion that perhaps the concept of fairness is not even relevant here. We want the most competent people to be in positions of r

I would offer the friendly suggestion that perhaps the concept of fairness is not even relevant here. We want the most competent people to be in positions of responsibility. This is not a fair distribution of responsibility. The fairest system would be a lottery: picking people completely randomly, without regard to socioeconomic status or "merit". Given that we want the most competent people to be in positions of responsibility, "winning the genetic lottery" is ok, because some people are just born with natural talents. But "winning the socioeconomic lottery" is not ok, because there's no apparent correlation between the wealth of your parents and your personal competence. Again, fairness is tangential to this problem.