> meritocracy isn't a thing

One of many examples I can give to disprove this as I'm sitting here watching Croatia & Morocco in the World Cup, is looking at some of the contracts some of these players get from their clubs. Wide disparity and definitely seems to be based on a meritocracy. Taken further, why are none of these fans in the stands, many of whom who also play for fun not equally compensated or even compensated at all? After all, they can kick a ball too.

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.