I found this bit at the top revealing in a way…

I had my own venture-capital firm, and there was this weird way where I felt like I had succeeded at climbing the ladder of meritocracy, but I had also found the values of the meritocracy, frankly, deeply wanting and deeply lacking

If he’s being honest, at least in the terms of his motivations, he’s confusing meritocracy with capitalism. He “succeeded” at capitalism, and mistook that for having been judged to be some quality of merit, and then became disillusioned by meritocracy- probably because he succeeded without any real merit. A lot of his current ideology seems to be based on the rejection of something he fundamentally misunderstood.