Meritocracy doesn't seem like too bad of an idea at face value. It's far more fair than inherited wealth or class to base a society upon. Yet meritocracy does have some serious problems, as described in this article (and plenty of other places).

But it's a false dichotomy that these two are the only options.

Egalitarianism is an option that the left strongly advocates for. And I believe it to be the only real moral option in the future.

There's some talk about SAT scores here and how they relate to intelligence, and it reminded me of a truly interesting article I read the other day. It presents the idea that perhaps we shouldn't be ranking college applicants by SAT or any other factor at all for determining whether to admit them. Instead, admit qualified (TM) people based on a blind lottery: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/admit-everybody