[immawizard]

Why do you think that grit or predisposition to hard work is less determined by genetics and environment than iq or physical ability? It seems to me that judging anyone’s value by iq, hard work, physical ability, nationality, height, or skin color hold level of inequality. For me, meritocracy is not about the fairness, but rather about efficiency in utilizing resources.

[AstralStorm]

The usual problem is of defining merit and testing it.

The critical step that is almost always missing is testing the measure - matching it and results. Reality is much more messy than most everything used to decide merit - ultimately even third party judges can be biased or the sample taken might not be representative.