Unfortunately jobs do not experiment enough and neither do politics. There are no real "training wheels" kind of jobs that allow one to seriously evaluate merit

Unfortunately jobs do not experiment enough and neither do politics. There are no real "training wheels" kind of jobs that allow one to seriously evaluate merit for many positions. For instance, suppose we're looking for a person capable of managing and devising a high end strategy. How would you even judge someone good at it, with computer simulation games? Definitely college degrees are bad proxy for it. What happens if you prefer certain kinds of merit over others, like today, where people with social skills and connections can easily outmanouevre others? How do you even judge certain kinds of merit, like creativity, critical for art and research jobs? Acclaim is not the same thing as merit. This and other questions make meritocracy actually impossible to implement.