Meritocracy doesn't exist, and believing it does is bad for you

Simply holding meritocracy as a value seems to promote discriminatory behavior.... Most people don’t just think the world should be run meritocratically, they think it is meritocratic...
the belief that merit rather than luck determines success or failure is demonstrably false... Talent and ... “grit” depend a great deal on one’s genetic endowments and upbringing... In competitive contexts, many have merit, but few succeed. What separates the two is luck...
believing in meritocracy makes people more selfish, less self-critical, and even more prone to acting in discriminatory ways... having the idea of skill in mind makes people more tolerant of unequal outcomes.... remembering the role of luck increases generosity...
companies that explicitly held meritocracy as a core value assigned greater rewards to male over female employees with identical performance evaluations... “paradox of meritocracy” because explicitly adopting meritocracy as a value convinces subjects of their own moral bona fides...
Meritocracy ... justifies the status quo, explaining why people belong where they happen to be ... people prefer to believe that the world is just... Meritocracy is the most self-congratulatory of distribution principles... transmutes property into praise, material inequality into personal superiority.