Blind auditions for orchestras, randomly assigning numbers prior to grading papers and the Vickrey auction are all ideas with merit that serve up merit for the most part. I'm a little more concerned with creativity, as a measure of human achievement in the long run, but merit is important as well.

At any instant in time one person is stronger, faster and more agile than another. To issue just compensation is a phantasm. It can't be done if only because people don't know their own brains. If we have to revert to justice to achieve a meritocracy I'm pretty sure we are doomed.

No one human is equal to another. Let's circle the wagons there and celebrate our differences rather than spending time ordering our contributions based on merit. That is where the hope lies.

I was going to say something linking meritocracy with monarchy, then realized that would make nonsense. Monarchy's foundation is nothing more than the ancient divine right of kings, so a monarchy is self-sustaining, even in the shadow of the cold hard truth of its' absence of ruling power ( British royalty, for example). No, meritocracy, at bottom, is reliant upon competition, seems to me. This is one reason why capitalist economies eschew socialistic practices;why people in the United States thumbed their noses at FDR's advocacy of social security, making socialism a distasteful notion: we need to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, even though that roundly defies physics. There are no skyhooks or boom crutches. There are social democracies, but virtually no one believes that could work here. I have said it would be doomed because of diminishing returns: too many people to help and to few resources to help them. So, like it or no, competition forces us into meritocratic reality, while more prosperous nations with far fewer people can afford to supply greater aid to their populous. Our addiction to capitalism, and the power and prestige that brings, are necessary evils for maintenance of our world status and overall way of life. Addictions have their downsides. We have learned to take the good with the bad. The bootstrap symbolism is an empty metaphor. But it was not the first, nor will it be the lasr.

Scratch what I previously said about the M word. I am far more comfortable with the above remarks, other notions notwithstanding. Sorry for any typos. though. I just don't see so well now. These sorts of questions invite diverse opinions. That diversity is based in many things. Preferences, beliefs, opinions, expectations, desires and other propositional attitudes, posited by Donald Davidson. As a band-mate said, many years ago: we all have our own album to do. The content and substance of that album depends on the experience and background of the artist. There is no one size which fits all. Philosophy has proven this for centuries. Every time someone thinks he/she has it sussed, someone else steps up to challenge the status quo. This is why philosophy is an imperfect science. If it were perfect, it would be boring. Tedious. Uninteresting...I don't think meritocracy is a problem. Not, in any practical sense anyway. This assessment does not change my views on socialism. Because, as previously asserted, socialism has limited utility. It simply cannot work in countries with large populations, for the reason(s) previously advanced.

I’m sorry, perhaps I’m just a little slower than most. But your so-called “solutions” seem trivial and specifically, as far as your second solution, an empty formalism.

Many years ago a U. S. Supreme Court justice said that the law ought to do only what it can do. First, your first solution is no solution. That’s because it already part of the meritocratic ideal. Moreover, as Tim Smith alluded, obviously irrelevant factors are in generally rooted out as much as possible through rational procedures, like “blind auditions”, or made illegal like nepotism and bribery. I note the federal prosecutions for celebrity cheating to gain admission for their children to prestigious universities. So, okay, that’s not a solution, that’s how ideal meritocracy is supposed to function!

Second, so-called justice tempered linking is incoherent except as an empty formalism. I.e. “...mechanisms of reward for performance, while never perfectly in accord with what just deserts would be, could still be made more or less just.” Sorry, but it sounds to me like either you threw in the towel or just announced that we ought to try to make rewards more just. Okay, how? Don’t you owe us some details?

We’re not your original issues;

1. “Given that meritocracy as traditionally defined is practically impossible, is there any point at all to appealing to meritocracy as a social ideal? 
 
2. “...if the answer is no, then there is the further psychological question of why so many people find the ideal so appealing, given its impossibility.”

Appears like you threw non-solutions at #1 and ignored #2.

Well. I did not see much to the meritocracy issue before,thinking, in my fundamentalist way that the idea has obvious flaws .I'm no expert on the question. Don't know if anyone is or claims to be. But, Matti offers food for thought, whether wrong or right.. Notions about the pros and cons of merit always rang hollow for me. The remark on law only doing what it can do was poignant---especially so in current turbulent times. Another aspect of merit we might think about is does recognition of merit feed peoples' expectations of entitlement? There are disturbing indications this is so: the din of advertising for Medicare, featuring a retired NFL quarterback hammers away at the entitlement lure. I have known the limits of Medicare for years. Anyone, of a certain age, if they have average intelligence, is at least equally aware of those limits. Propositional attitudes are just that. Expectations cannot always be met.