And "woke" originally was used in a positive sense, but does it matter? Lots of terms change their meaning or get adopted because they are useful. Meritocracy is a useful shorthand for a system in which individual skill, effort and achievement are what matters for outcomes. If we didn't use that word we'd need another but what would it be?

And apparently everyone thought the book was satirical and embraced the word as a positive concept. :p

(But then, of course, you realize that you've merely shifted the game of haves and have-nots to other kinds of "have" and feel the hubristic urge to socially engineer your way to equal outcomes.)

People bought into the seductive lie of fairness is what happened, even when the sentiment was the opposite.

Compare "blood is thicker than water", which was rooted in the opposite conclusion, that the blood of the covenant is thicker than water of the womb, i.e. your relationships and social bonds outcompete genetic ties.

The failing of meritocracy is that it is tautological; those who succeed did so because they must have been successful. It can't bear scrutiny because, as it turns out, we can have neither fair nor equal grounds for competition (if we're measuring results as comparative, which is the case here), but people secretly desire unfairness as long as there's a chance they will benefit, even if they are not the beneficiary of a given instance or result. See monarchies, lotteries, CEO pay discrepancies, etc... what matters is there was an arbitrary chance you're dealt out at the top.

I think the problem is created by strong connotations of the word "loser", otherwise being poor would be no worse than inability to draw.