"A meritocracy 'actually based on merit'–actual skills and actual performance–would be preferable to the current one based on college credentials and SAT scores."

The economy would be more open to people with usable talents. Status would be impermanent–nobody would know who would end up where in life, since they wouldn’t be sorted out at the start, some being rewarded with fancy go-anywhere degrees (often mostly in recognition of their skill in acquiring fancy go-anywhere degrees). Since the knowledge needed to advance in a dynamic economy would always be changing, it would be hard to confuse discrete, particular skill sets with some sort of general rank. A good surgeon would just be a good surgeon, a good SEO-optimizer would just be a good SEO-optimizer, a skilled machinist a skilled machinist. They’d all make good money, thanks to the market, but financial success would be harder to confuse with general, permanent superiority–a sense of perspective that would come in handy when advances in robotics put surgeons, SEO-optimizers and machinists out of business.