I fail to see how this is related to what I said.

It's related because you said "you can't rule out luck" which is basically casting doubt on the whole idea of hard work having an impact on success. Well, no reasonable person would say hard work guarantees success, or that all success is luck. The truth is luck and serendipity affect all outcomes, but to use that to question the impact of a human's agency on their own life outcomes is an insidiously disempowering perspective.

Sorry, to me it looks like a lot of words that say nothing.

Obviously, if you don't do, you don't do.

> to use that to question the impact of a human's agency on their own life outcomes

I'm not doing that at all. I am not saying that the effort put into achieving something is worth nothing. What I am saying is that whenever someone is successful, it means that they have been incredibly lucky (and on top of that they worked a lot, maybe). Whenever they compare themselves to someone else who also worked hard but was not successful, the first conclusion to make is that this someone else was not as lucky.

But the first thing that happens when someone gets successful is that they forget how lucky they are, and just start talking about merit. My point is just that whenever you talk about merit, just remember that you were not born in a poor family in a war zone, and that does not make you more deserving.