A "Merit lottery" is a half measure when a true lottery is the least discriminatory way to go about things. Every position within society should just be to do a true lottery everywhere such an idea can be applied.
Water treatment plant workers? President? Honors program students? All of these roles are subject to countless forms of discrimination against people for lacking intelligence, lacking the right identity, lacking educational attainment, lacking all sorts of things.
What I tire of this "faux egalitarian, faux equality of opportunity, meritocracy" stuff which almost invariably discriminates against the less intelligent while trying to establish equality over an arbitrary list of attributes such as race or ethnicity or gender or sexual orientation which have been deemed to be especially important, whereas discrimination against the lazy and unintelligent is taken for granted as righteous, and discrimination against the unattractive and short is tolerable. This is in spite of the fact people are born lazy, stupid, short, and ugly, and this will never change.
Thus the only two resolutions I see to the problem are simply thus. Kill absolutely everybody, thus establishing perfect equity and equality. The other solution is to use lotteries absolutely everywhere except for perhaps a special class of lottery runners (an unfortunate meritocracy), in dating, in work, in schooling, that made it so that everybodies outcomes in life was absolutely arbitrary, and thus equal and equitable.
Water treatment plant workers? President? Honors program students? All of these roles are subject to countless forms of discrimination against people for lacking intelligence, lacking the right identity, lacking educational attainment, lacking all sorts of things.