It may be true that meritocracy mostly pays off at extremely high levels of merit. The organizations doing affirmative-action hires are hand-wringing about the fairest way to pick from a huge pool of middling candidates. I don't think that's necessarily bad--not every job needs to be done by a rock-star, as much as companies hate to admit it, and working-to-live is fine. The people who say they've always had a burning passion for customer service are either Spongebob or lying.