Most crucially, a true meritocracy would fire people at will whenever a better applicant surfaces for any position. What currently happens is that we get many "

Most crucially, a true meritocracy would fire people at will whenever a better applicant surfaces for any position. What currently happens is that we get many "has beens", or people who seemed ok at the time but are actually getting bad results. Plus, to judge results you would need either objective criteria or average of many opinions like in democracy.