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It can't.
It's a logistical nightmare. In order to be rewarded for your efforts, you need some system of evaluating the worth of every effort. Any societal system that exists is made by at least one person, and every person had biases and ambitions.
There's no way to prevent cheating, because any rule to prevent cheating will be ignored, because that's what cheating is. Any rules to make cheating harder only make it harder, not impossible.
Oh look, it seems the act of deciding a person's worth to society is 100 times the worth of a labourer. And the worth of a writer for Batman is 20 times the worth of a writer for Spider Man. Oh, my physicist girlfriend just broke up with me... Looks like that's practically worthless now!
Wait, what's a youtuber? Is that a new thing? I made my value system back in 2002, so this is all new to me! You're not on the list, so I guess you're not worth anything? I guess we could make the list again, and while we're there, my opinions on Batman have changed, so we can tweak some other things too.
Ah, the problem is that a person's worth is entirely subjective... But what if we press it down into clear and objective statistics? What if we limit it to a single statistic, and a person's value is entirely related to raising that statistic? We can call the statistic... Capital!
So a person's value in society is entirely tied to their ability to obtain as much capital as possible, no matter what they do. Ah, meritocracy.
You said a lot of words but only convinced me that you think very highly of your own judgment.
I'm not convinced you actually read my comment before responding.
I don't even think you wanted a discussion. I think you just want to say your belief and have it treated as fact.
I did. It was a whole lot of assumptions backed up with anecdotes all designed to come to one single conclusion.
Okay, you definitely didn't read my comment if that's what you think it was. Let me sum it up for you:
I explained all of that without a single anecdote.
Yes yes, nothing can be done. All is futile. It's always the same shit with you people.
I don't think I said "nothing can be done". I just said meritocracy is impossible. And since it's impossible, we need a different system we can actually achieve. It won't be without flaws, but we can still aim to have LESS flaws than currently.
You don't improve by pretending nothing's wrong.
Why would I want to discuss anything with someone who will contradict themselves in the first two sentences they mutter.
There are options other than "meritocracy" and "nothing", you know. It's worrying that didn't occur to you.
This is the common definition of meritocracy:
Yes, I dismiss you off hand for the very bold claim that meritocracy is impossible.
You made the bold claim that a system could be designed to prevent cheating, then asked if a meritocracy could exist. I said no. I also backed up my claim with actual reasoning, while you just stuffed your fingers in your ears and made loud noises.
Did you actually WANT people to respond to you, or did you just want people to agree with you? Because we don't.
Show me that claim. I don't know why I suffer through this idoicy.
Okay, you're clearly not even reading your OWN comments now, so I don't know why I expected you to read mine. You clearly don't want people to respond to you, so I won't. Goodbye.
Learn the difference between a premise and a claim. Or is that the problem here, you assume all premises are actually claims?
From which semi-tautological contortions we can conclude that, uh, capitalism probably isn't the problem, after all.
First, my conclusion is that meritocracy is impossible. Your conclusion was something you came up with on your own.
Second, capitalism isn't the ONLY problem. It's still a problem. Greed will corrupt any system, but capitalism is a system that openly rewards this corruption.