A belief in meritocracy is not only false: it’s bad for you

Meritocracy produces moderate social mobility.

Making success (income, etc.) uncorrelated between generations would require a lottery. This includes a lottery for parental care, for DNA, for attractiveness, and so on. It really isn't possible. Getting close would require severely restricting choice. We'd have to assign employment and spouses by lottery.

Going the other way, making success fully determined by parental success, would also require severely restricting people from choosing their own lives. It might be a bit less extreme. We'd still have to assign everything to people, but it would be according to parental success instead of a lottery.

The closest we've gotten to those extremes seems to be communism and feudalism. Either one forces people into choices against their will. Either one creates inefficiency.

The article in no way says that being a good programmer is sufficient to become a billionaire. It states that there were long-shots and coincidences that led to Bill Gates's stellar rise as Microsoft's founder, beyond his programming and business skills (It's not denying that his programming and business skills didn't contribute). The article states that, in competitive contexts, many have merit (programming + business skills, in the context of Bill Gates), but few succeed. What the article is effectively trying to say and the point you seem to miss is that, the the link between merit and outcome is tenuous and indirect at best.

Articles always miss that Bill Gates takeoff with DOS was thanks to his mother having ties with IBM CEO John Opel.

So that example has nothing to do with meritocracy.

>If I work really hard digging a giant hole in my backyard and no one pays me for it, If I work really hard and with people with same interest and nobody pays me for it. At least I've made good friends