The nearest approximation I would like to use is meritocratic social democracy or efficient welfare state but both terms (welfare state, social democracy) have come to mean basically bread and circuses for the masses rather than genuine concern for optimally increasing citizens welfare.

In a sense this comment rings true. I don't really care how people do compared to each other in a relative sense as long as everyone is sufficiently better off in absolute sense. I generally agree with John Rawls on this, though I do value equality in itself a bit less. However I realize that sometimes relative inequality is important because it determines the distribution of zerosum goods like power, prestige and respect. I therefore value equality in a instrumental sense since some equality is necessary for feelings of well being. I propose we accept less efficiency in government than in the private sector to like I previously said exploit people's progoverment bias to redistribute zerosum goods with less impact on nonzero sum goods than is otherwise possible. BTW Let me point out that generally people use "equality of opportunity" to mean a fair chance whatever that is and that generally a ideal of meritocracy is a about the closest reasonable approximation one can make without stretching the idea to necessarily mean equality of outcome. People generally mean the latter when they just say equality. Its quite intuitive that if you don't get a job because you don't belong to the right group this creates feelings of being wronged, popular notions of fairness often have elements of meritocracy interwoven. An appeal to equality of opportunity is often a appeal to such a fuzzy concept of fairness.