In my opinion, all talk of meritocracy, when applied, is irrelevant. I mean, it sounds good in principle, but in most applications, there is no simple way of determining the "best" candidate in any given situation.

Yeah, sure, we have some highly specialized environments, such as sports, where we have parameters to select from, but as much as no team has won by selecting players who are good enough, few teams if any have won by just selecting players who are the best in a narrow metric. You need leaders, you need players with specific skill, you need role players, you need people who can inspire etc.

Same when hiring for a job position - Determining who is the "best" candidate is near impossible. The best, according to which metric? Most years spent at uni? In the business? How do you control for biases that have given one candidate undeserved praise and another that has gone unrecognized? How tdo you value social factors, etc?