Meritocracy is what the democrats believe in, in all honesty. Its modern incarnation is basically a form of technocracy, where doctors, scientists, engineers, psychologists, etc have the most input. Its basically surrendering control of the populist aspects of the state, for the deep state. The entrenched technocrats and bureaucrats run things. "We know better how to manage your life for you, so let us".
The democrats may be flawed, in that they award these positions to people simply entrenched in the system, but even at its best, technocracy with out government the way it currently is, is not something I'm a fan of.
Id propose something else. Turning back the clock.
In some ways, requiring land ownership to vote is a form of more elitist democracy, that plays on meritocracy, though it doesn't limit who can be voted for to the technocratic class. I'm actually surprisingly fine with an elitist form of democracy like this, under conditions.
Every man, woman, and child has a right to decide how to best live their life and do with it as they will, as long as they are not infringing upon other people's. Thats the way things used to be in the United States, with a much smaller government stepping much, much less into people's individual lives. The things that people voted on used to be foreign policy issues, or state security (whether internal or external), and what state security used to mean was a limited military, protecting people from native raids, and much less military spending. Theres plenty of debate on how big government should be,
but if you want a meritocracy where people with "merit" are the only ones who vote, and who vote on only higher level things, military budget, foreign entanglement, etc; and the state largely does not have any dictation over the individual person's life, I'm fine with that.
Individuals deserve representation if the state is to have significant dictation over their life, and theres no way around that. If you castrated the state and its ability to affect the average person's life, maybe then you could justify people with merit's monopoly over its remaining higher level functions. Frankly, thats how the US used to operate, with the state having nil to do with someone in the middle of the Kentucky territory, them not caring, and the fed just being around to represent the states at a higher level diplomatically, manage a smaller military, decide on federal laws that were largely hands off, and to make sure that states wern't at eachother's throats and act as an arbitrator.
