You might be interested to disinter and read some of James Fallows's old writings on the baneful "blessings" of meritocracy and elitism. He disarticulated meritocracy in a moderately long article that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly some 20 years ago. Might be worth bugging your librarian to dig out her Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature and hunt it up for you as a service of the library .... might also be listed in Lexis/Nexis.
WOW. Showing you age there bub. That went out with the card catalog.