[frgtpsswrdlame]

Not really... I've known hard workers, they work hard, no success, they work hard, an unlucky event intervenes, they work hard, still no success, so on and so on and so they ask: what's the point in hard work? Can you blame them? Even to be a hard-worker implies that you've been lucky enough in life to see a correlation between hard-work and success.

[dsacco]

What does "no success" mean in this context?

[frgtpsswrdlame]

I believe this comment is going to trigger my rate-limit so apologies for not being able to give further context. But to one: how about being poor, working hard and then staying poor?

More importantly why should it matter how someone defines success? I think the false and self-perpetuating notion of meritocracy is massively benefitted by the lowered expectations of the lower class. If I'm born poor, making it to lower middle class could be a huge success for me, if I'm born rich that same outcome would be a massive failure. Even to acknowledge that that is true is admission of how massively tilted opportunity is. If the poor and the rich had the same visions of success, they dreamed the same dream, do you think we could still say with a straight face that, really, hard-work is the most important factor in success? I don't think so.

[Retric]

Let's go with homeless. Plenty of hard workers end up homeless.