We've yet to establish such a system, so I'm not holding out much hope (and anyone who has been through a handful of tech interview loops ought to realise this)

We can? I'm pretty sure companies have spent billions trying to achieve this and failed. The best they can do is maybe sort of sometime hire people that are good enough

Sometimes those are directly out of the DEI playbook when you see discrepancies in hiring.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_audition

I'd wager that most directors thought they were picking the person with the most merit, and they seemingly were not.

This is also sounds like mystical thinking or some kind of idealism. What safeguard prevents the interference and subversion by the class(es) that already control hiring and cause the problem that society desires to solve?

A meritocracy would of course, benefit everyone, but in creating systems that decide merit, we demonstrably have always created biases that preserve the control of someone involved in creating those systems.