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Then take a reading class with a prof - where basically you run a specialized "class" of one student (yourself) and you do the assignments and readings that the prof wants you to do. I've done this. I know many others who have done this. I know molliebatmit is doing this right now. You don't need a formal class with lots of other students in order to interact with profs.
Heck, you may not even need the prof at all. You really want to learn advanced material that your school can't provide? Then get the textbooks and read them yourself. Or if the subject is so advanced that there isn't even really a textbook available, then read the latest research papers from EBSCO, Proquest, or JSTOR. If only a few schools in the world offer an advanced graduate course on a particular subject, and you don't happen to go to that school, then you can kindly ask that prof at that school for the syllabus for his course (rarely will you get turned down), and then do all the readings on that syllabus. Sure, you might not learn as much as you would within a formal class, but you can still pick up quite a lot if you're diligent.
What I would say is this. If you are really so good that you can exhaust all of the offerings at any top 50-100 ranked school, and you still have the thirst to learn more, you're probably well suited to get your PhD. And the PhD process requires extensive self-study. There's not always going to be a formal class available that will teach you the things you need to learn to advance your particular research. In fact, your research is supposed to be original, which by definition means working on topics that others cannot teach you anything about (if they could teach you that topic, then by definition, it isn't original). You're going to have to learn how to teach yourself.
Heck, sometimes teaching yourself is often times actually better than taking the formal course, simply because, frankly speaking, a lot of profs are poor teachers. Many times in my life have I found myself in courses in which the prof really didn't add any value over and above what I could have taught myself. Heck, in some cases, they arguably actually subtracted value, in that the teaching was so poor that it actually served to confuse you.
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I made the same arguments as well. I think the main issue is that many students just don't have the motivation (or imagination) to go into the depths that you just described (Even one of the Goldwater scholars at the University of Washington, who was extremely intelligent, did not go into grad courses until his junior year). There are problems with the state system - among them - the socialization system tends to make people conform to the traditional undergraduate education track in the state schools. It's certainly a lot easier to be motivated when all of your peers are highly motivated and when you have grades from difficult classes to motivate yourself. But that sort of motivation is an external sort of motivation that will hurt one's performance in graduate school - researchers should be motivated enough to pursue problems independently of whoever the hell their peers are.
It's certainly a mentality that needs to be changed. It's certainly not helped by the educational system - which subjects people to the mentality that they need an instructor to learn something - which is certainly not helped when the institution has pre-requisites and graduation requirements (students can get past them, especially with the help of a sympathetic professor, nonetheless, few who are capable elect to do so). There are also a number of professors who do get offended when you cut class, and who intentionally cover material in lecture that isn't in the textbook to increase class attendance rates (which is especially irksome when the instructor is a poor instructor).
Even Caltech has poor classroom attendance rates (source: happyentropy and the Caltech Abstract Algebra course). But happyentropy said that the professors generally don't mind that.
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Sure, the process would still be "meritocratic". But so what? The end result would not be a meritocratic class which is what ultimately matters.
Again, as a case in point, I would repeat - I find Berkeley's admissions to be highly meritocratic in the sense that if you have the numbers, you will get in. You rarely have the cases at Berkeley where somebody with superstar numbers gets turned down whereas somebody from the same school with much weaker numbers gets in. But I would strongly hesitate to say that Berkeley's student body to be highly meritocratic, relative to the top private. Again, this is because a lot of top students who get into Berkeley will choose to go elsewhere.
Aedar, you said it yourself - what counts is the quality of the students, and by that, I'm sure you mean that quality of the students who matriculate , not just those you admit. Who cares about the quality of students who are admitted but choose not to enroll? How does that help the school?
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Caltech admissions does the best job it can for the type of institution that it is. As Ben Golub pointed out again - not all of the best students are hardcore into academics. Many of them do care about more superficial features in colleges - such as girls and opportunities to pursue extra-curricular activities.