This paper determines the characteristics of a society which minimize the tension between an action-based and a talent-based view of meritocracy. Society is modeled as a dynamic resource allocation contest. At each stage, an individual’s likelihood of winning is increasing in his effort and his marginal cost of effort depends negatively on his ability and the resources obtained at the previous stage. Society adopts an action-based meritocracy by awarding more resources to winners than to losers. I determine the resource allocation rule that maximizing the likelihood with which high ability individuals emerge as winners of the final stage, thereby optimizing society’s performance as a talent-based meritocracy. The main characteristics are: (1) the winner’s share is increasing from stage to stage until it becomes one from a certain stage onwards; (2) the difference between the winner’s and the loser’s share is bounded away from zero even when individuals are approximately identical. Surprisingly, when actions become more tightly bound to performance, society should become less meritocratic.