Any and everything that can create dependence are being desperately induced by those that parasitize collective production, because that parasitism is their only potential source of that wealth and power. The laws of physics can't be tricked, can't be turned into something else, and parasitic losses are insuperable when they can be avoided. This economic reality is a hard end for obligate parasites.
Merit will create wealth, and nothing else will. Because decentralized means of production that eliminate parasitic losses increase productivity, them with merit will adopt them to increase their wealth. This infantilism is inflicted in order to prevent that transcendence of centralization, to create dependence on overlords, the masters that feed their slaves, because that is the only mechanism that can prevent merit from having it's effect and increasing sovereignty and prosperity. But I don't think this has even remotely the potential to prevent a nominally substantial population from meriting their wealth by making it. It's not even mathematically potential that non-productive dependents can sustain the wealth of them dependent on parasitizing collective production, because those obligate dependents aren't productive at all.
Only merit is the way forward.