When I was younger, just considering the nature of a system that demands hierarchy among the entire population based on a competition it all puts them in, with that hierarchy being one of deprivation for the many losers, was enough for my part. Even if you have some hustlegrinder who is more productive than anyone currently on Earth, if he is in a circumstance of competing only with equals, then they must nonetheless be arranged in brutal hierarchy where he may be at the bottom. If your supposed "meritocracy" has no interest in absolute productive ability but only ability relative to others, with the punishment being what we see on the streets in the US, then yours is clearly an economic system of needless cruelty.

There are many, much stronger critiques, but that is what I was thinking of when my mind really changed.

I would have been saved a lot of bullshit navel-gazing if someone pointed out to me when I was a teenager, idk, "the Transatlantic Slave Trade was mostly carried out by private companies" or some obvious thing like that which is kept out of the view of children who are supposedly being taught American history.