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Why do you think that grit or predisposition to hard work is less determined by genetics and environment than iq or physical ability? It seems to me that judging anyone’s value by iq, hard work, physical ability, nationality, height, or skin color hold level of inequality. For me, meritocracy is not about the fairness, but rather about efficiency in utilizing resources.

The usual problem is of defining merit and testing it.

The critical step that is almost always missing is testing the measure - matching it and results. Reality is much more messy than most everything used to decide merit - ultimately even third party judges can be biased or the sample taken might not be representative.

> why should you be rewarded for

It's not that you 'should'. It's that other people will more likely give you their money because you're more likely to create value for them.

It's not a reward. If we give the same to a 60 IQ person as to an 150 IQ person the world would be vastly different. trillions of dollars would be wasted purely on incompetence. I can't even fathom desiring such a world.

> Additionally, why is a meritocracy even desirable? You don't choose your parents, you don't choose your genetics, you don't choose to be born able-bodied or not, so why should you be rewarded for those things over somebody else?

Why do you think in terms of rewarding? Isn't the point to have people doing things they're most suited for individually?

I guess you could say that meritocracy isn't compatible with free market economy.

An interesting thing to think about is that having the best person possible for a job is usually incompatible with that person having the job they are best at. In a "meritocracy", which one predominates?