The biggest problem I feel with "meritocracy" is that we're incurring huge costs on society all to pick up the best and brightest, but with very little returns in terms of societal benefits.

I don't care about the guy who is higher up in the ladder than me, what I care about is the guy who builds more ladders, shorter ladders, elevators or such. And I think that most of our elites don't or can't do that.

The birthrate crisis, the competition crisis, the housing crisis, etc, I don't think these people have the capability to solve them.

> The birthrate crisis,

The cause of the birthrate crisis is ultimately a lack of having fallen in love with humanity. This should be the point of the 'humanities', but if you look at the subjects included in that today, they're either 'science of human management' or a shell of their former glory. It's no surprise that the technocratic class they produce is unable to inspire people to have children and seems perpetually confused how to make that happen.