Pure meritocracy is a myth. Its simplistic formula of “innate talent+hard work=success” ignores the role of luck. Admittedly, any competent thinker cannot totally discount luck as a factor, but we generally tend to underestimate its importance. Malcolm Gladwell’s example of successful hockey players in Outliers goes to show how arbitrary selection criteria can cause participants to be “artificially” lucky or unlucky. No one has to make their own luck if the system makes it for them. However, the role of luck isn’t without its upside. As Nassim Taleb pointed out in Black Swan, a pure meritocracy would actually be unfair because merit is not handed out evenly. Luck acts as an equalizer to give people with lesser abilities (not entirely through faults of their own) an edge over others who are more meritorious (not entirely due to their own effort).