I think there's clearly a spectrum. Giving your kid $100K while my kid gets only $25K doesn't make the society not a meritocracy, even though your kid got 4x as much. If your kids gets $100K and mine gets $100M and then we see what happens, I agree that that's not a meritocracy with respect to those two families.
Personally, I came from a family of public schoolteachers. Even though many families had many millions more than we did, I think our society, as experienced by the median and mode citizens, is far more a meritocracy than a plutocracy.
Does everyone get a full reset and the exact same starting point as everyone else, as if life were a board game? No, of course not. Would the world be better if it worked that way? It would undeniably be more "fair", but I think less desirable.
Personally, I came from a family of public schoolteachers. Even though many families had many millions more than we did, I think our society, as experienced by the median and mode citizens, is far more a meritocracy than a plutocracy.
Does everyone get a full reset and the exact same starting point as everyone else, as if life were a board game? No, of course not. Would the world be better if it worked that way? It would undeniably be more "fair", but I think less desirable.