No.
Who gets to determine what counts as merit? If it’s the people with merit already, it’s trivial to corrupt such a system. Think billionares.
And then, is everyone even given the opportunity to display their merit and if they are, is their merit recognised? I’m concerned esp. about people perceived by society to have inherently less merit. Think disabled people, old people, young people, women, people of colour, queer folks, etc.
And then, how does the system ensure that merit wasn’t faked or even just exaggerated, how does it investigate and how does it respond? Does a sufficient amount of merit allow someone to cover up such things? If implemented, can and would this investigation power be used to punish people with low merit, those that are the most vulnereable?
And then, why do people that are not constantly being useful to the system deserve less and esp. if meritocracy is the only system in place, do some people not deserve to live at all? Here I’m talking about people that want to have a hobby or two or want to spend time with their friends and family, basically anything that doesn’t give merit. I’m also talking about people that can’t or don’t want to be useful to society.
Beyond all this, meritocracy aims to replace the people’s purpose in life with “being useful”. And that’s just a really miserable mindset to live with, where you feel guilt if you’re not being useful all the time, where you constantly have thoughts like “am I good enough” or “am I trying hard enough”.
I believe Switzerland has direct democracy, no?