...we'd have to be philosophical about the certainty that the normal distribution of human abilities guarantees that there's somebody better than us at something. Losing shouldn't hurt in a meritocracy.

I think that perhaps the idea of a meritocracy is a surface intellectual layer over purely emotional egotism. We wanna be numbah one, all the time, and it's the ego that gets wounded when we get bested. Note how the idea of meritocracy is pushed so fiercely by Republicans, who are always mortally offended when they lose an election, as if it violates the natural order of the universe. Democracy and meritocracy are alike in that you have to expect to lose just about half the time, and it's childish to whine about it.