That's part of what the piece is attacking, though, the notions that society currently does work as a meritocracy. Very few people argue that it should work that way, but the author picks up on the (shockingly common) belief that the world (in particular, the capitalist global market) is a meritocracy. This belief is, in my view, omnipresent even among HNers. A common argument against non-market ways of organizing society is that because the market distributes rewards according to merit (in the sense of "equality of opportunity") then a non-market way of distribution would be unjust. This is simply a re-hash of the "equality of opportunity" versus "equality of outcome" argument, and the concept of equality of opportunity (and its dim-witted cousin meritocracy) has been attacked[0] on many fronts by all kinds of people - let alone its (perceived) implementation in modern life in the market.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equal-opportunity/#EquOpp...