I'm being completely serious here.
In a caste system, the only way you can move between stations, all of which serve an extremely important part in keep a nation stable, is through a rigorous ritual process that not only tests if you have the capacity to move beyond what you were born into, but also has an extremely spiritual meaning that, once again, ensures societal cohesion.
The real joke is that when you account for the fact that outside of an extremely minor portion of the population, what people are going to be able to do for the rest of their lives in order to survive within a society is governed almost entirely by their birthright, there's not even that much difference between a meritocracy and a caste system outside for one: in a meritocracy you have the illusion of choice and, maybe if you're extremely lucky, you'll find a job that not only suits you, but pays you enough money to keep you happy and makes you enjoyed just by doing it, and in a caste system, you never have that illusion of choice; you accept the hand that god deals you, and you do that job to the very best of your ability, which in the vast majority of cases, is something that everyone has no problem with. and if you have ambition, then you need to demonstrate that it's not whimsical by going through the rite of passage-literally the ritual by which someone would move beyond their station in life, hence rite of passage between castes.
The main reason we're fucked right now is because a bunch of overambitious merchants who wanted power for power's sake ousted all of the families that genuinely cared about serving their civilisation as stewards-the original role of the aristocracy-and then took their place, corrupting the system into an oligarchy, and from that point the spiral towards entropy, and towards the rule of the mob, is inevitable. In a way it shows one of the major flaws of the caste system.
You should try reading Plato some time.