Making success (income, etc.) uncorrelated between generations would require a lottery. This includes a lottery for parental care, for DNA, for attractiveness, and so on. It really isn't possible. Getting close would require severely restricting choice. We'd have to assign employment and spouses by lottery.
Going the other way, making success fully determined by parental success, would also require severely restricting people from choosing their own lives. It might be a bit less extreme. We'd still have to assign everything to people, but it would be according to parental success instead of a lottery.
The closest we've gotten to those extremes seems to be communism and feudalism. Either one forces people into choices against their will. Either one creates inefficiency.
[1] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium
In new and fertile territory (random) variations that offer small (unforseeable) advantage can and often do dogpile until total victory is achieved, but I would hardly say the rest of the field flounders. Populations of 1%er's begetting the next don.
So that example has nothing to do with meritocracy.
