Basically the american idea that deserving people (aka myself) will magically prevail.
You know that, and I know that, but the right wing has been pushing anti-union, anti-worker, pro-corporate propaganda for several decades now. That propaganda also dovetails with the preexisting Protestant work ethic and labor theory of value that have been pretty solidly in the American consciousness since...well, basically before its founding as a country.
All that combined means that for people who aren't raised in a progressive, pro-union environment, and who don't encounter such an environment until their belief systems are fairly well-established, the default background noise is pretty much "Unions? Why would you need that, you pansy? Real Men are islands unto themselves, work hard, and are paid exactly what they're worth for that work. That's how you know the poor deserve to be poor!"
> meritocracy isn't a thing
So now that we've established that meritocracy is obviously a real thing, we have to ask what evidence you have that a meritocracy wouldn't exist in other fields, like programming for instance.
You are free to disagree, of course, but being smug about it is rude.