How rich?

The only requirement for what? Financial success? Celebrity?

Seems your example only applies to a very narrow demographic: wealthy socialites. Does it apply to doctors, lawyers and software engineers? How often does it apply and how often does it not?

I think these nuances are important to answer before generalizing.

> >This is a fair point, but in many cases you need to be rich, hard working, and smart.

> Like Paris Hilton, Kim Kardasian, etc.? No, rich is still the only requirement. Those other things just give you more options.

For every person you cite as being wildly successful only because of the money they were born into, you could also cite people who came from nothing and became multi-millionaires. Or people who were born rich and didn't succeed.

You're not wrong - there are people who only needed to be rich to begin with. But giving examples like you have doesn't counter the above point.

If you have 10 rich people with a 50% shot of making it : 99,990 people with a 0.005% shot of making it then the number of people with both backgrounds who made it is reasonably balanced. But, in no way is this a meritocracy.

There are probably 10,000 who only needed to be rich for every self made multi-milli)onaire who came from nothing.

I'd lump beautiful women and gifted athletes into the "smart" category. While not necessarily the same in practice the effect of being either is basically the same as being incredibly smart except there's more luck involved. Neither are common enough to get their own category IMO

Being gifted is being gifted, yes, the area is important but secondary. And there is no more luck involved. It's probably the same mechanism, too (low mutational load).

I'm not saying those women aren't "smart", I don't know them personally. I'm saying it doesn't matter if they are or not.