[yequalsx]

I'm not missing the point. You are. Take a person with a 30 IQ. This is a person with severe mental retardation. That person clearly will never learn enough to command a high salary doing software consulting. That's an extreme example. There's a spectrum of ability and talent. Not everyone is capable to learning a given topic. No matter how much time/effort they put into it.

Peoples' personalities are also not always so malleable. My wife is a psychiatrist and she deals regularly with people who simply do not have the choice to change. Forces inside their brain are beyond their conscious control.

The Marine Corps sometimes turns weak individuals into respectable men. And sometimes it pumps out assholes. It doesn't work for everyone. This is obvious.