I blame hacker culture, were to gain with little input effort, aka a parasitic existence is cherished. Its prevalent in lots of places now, including the financial sector, were leveraging is more important then long term investment. The good thing though is, its self destructive, and the resulting riots will know who they want to take it out on.

Even if you have notional meritocracy, you're still screwed long-term if migration and reproduction patterns are dysgenic.

Meritocracy is biased for people with money, especially if you were born with significant sums.

Still it seems to have better results than outright aristocracy or primitive tribalism.