A couple of comments. First of all, I don’t know of a single tech billionaire who didn’t come from at least a comfortably-off middle class family. So they aren’t really the products of inherent merit but rather members of what Warren Buffet memorably termed “the lucky sperm club.” Secondly, just because we can’t all be lucky doesn’t mean meritocracy is a bad idea. What’s wrong is the idea that if we don’t all become billionaires then we’ve “failed.” So let’s not attack the wrong thing in our quest to avoid the madness of contemporary life. People don’t commit suicide because of meritocracy; they commit suicide because of a million stupid messages purveyed by the mass media.