You are predicating your entire premise on merit already existing. The surge in articles recently dig a little deeper.

What is merit? Is it merit if, because someone is of faith, they donate food to those without? That person who is receiving the food has more than they did prior, the person who had the food has less.

Merit is a metric, and in contemporary culture, it is one used to reinforce ownership and capital. Yet in the above overly-simplistic example, we can see that not all human interactions are, nor should, be overfit into the idea of “merit” nor “ownership of capital or goods.” In the above scenario, “merit” conveniently tries to avoid disclosing its ethical structure.

It’s a fallacy. More folks are waking up to this fact[1].

[1] Avoiding the whataboutisms discussing “talent” or “skills” and other bogus terms.