<p>Meritocratic distributions require a background of equal opportunity to be deemed deserved and legitimate. However, standard notions of equality of opportunity are practically and theoretically unattainable. This places the meritocrat in a precarious position. They can either maintain the concept of desert-sensitive merit at the cost of tolerating some degree of arbitrariness in meritocratic distributions or relinquish the notion that meritocratic distributions must be desert-sensitive to be legitimate. This paper argues that the latter approach, coupled with an anti-bottleneck principle, offers a more viable and justifiable path forward for meritocrats.</p>