[tomp]

To make it a smart argument, you’d need to prove (or at least attempt) that being further away from a worthwile goal is better than being closer. Personally, for a lot of these “social systems”, I’d argue the opposite is true; a bit of democracy (Russia) is better than no democracy (DPRK, Soviet Union), and even for the counterexamples (e.g. China vs India) personally I’d still prefer to live in a democracy. Same with meritocracy, making each step towards a worthwhile goals is worth it.

By attacking the goal, you collapse the whole argument. Meritocracy is bad because it results in super-inequality. Representative democracy is bad because it collapses all policy dimensions into one. Of course, it’s also helpful to propose an alternative; I’m a big proponent of direct democracy; no idea what’s better than meritocracy.