And I say this as someone who HAS worked hard -- incredibly hard -- to be where I am (which is plenty successful). My hard work is absolutely an important ingredient in my success. But if all I had was my hard work? I'd most likely have been fucked.
1 -- natural gifts matter. I was born with a pretty damned effective brain. It's not much different than any number of athletes being born with great legs, a strong right arm, what have you. I could work all my life, 10X harder than VY did, and I would never be the QB he was, because he was born with a whole lotta gifts that I wasn't in that respect.
2 -- help from others matters a lot. My parents were really dedicated. My mother read to me relentlessly from birth. They sacrificed to send me to good schools. They made sure that I was healthy, that I had food on the table, that I was safe from danger, etc. Other family members helped and were important. I had some very influential teachers and coaches who helped me see opportunities, and encouraged me.
3 -- the state apparatus matters. The State of Texas paid for my entire undergrad and law education. That investment put me in a position to get a first-rate education without crippling my family or me financially. A stable society with the rule of law meant that no greedy baron took my parents' shit, kicking us out on the street. Functioning infrastructure meant that my parents could get to their jobs that paid well enough. It meant that food made it to our grocery store's shelves. Functioning emergency services meant that we weren't on our own if one of us had a medical emergency, or the house caught on fire.
4 -- luck matters. My dad never died in a car wreck, leaving my mother and me destitute. None of us had a life-threatening illness. No natural disaster destroyed everything we owned. We were able to live in an area where we weren't as likely to be victims of violent crime, and we got lucky that major crime never found us.
In the layer cake of "success," "hard work" is one of at least 5 layers -- there are probably others that I left out. It's an important layer. Shit, you can have all of the things I listed, but if you squander them, you fail. That's actually the point. Lose any ONE of those things, and you can easily fail.
It's "easier" for someone disadvantaged in the US to reach success than it is for someone disadvantaged in Haiti to do so. True. And nifty. And so what? WITHIN this society, someone who has all four of the things I listed above is WAY ahead of someone who just has "I'll work hard." Not a little bit ahead -- light fucking years ahead. Looking at someone who doesn't have one or more of the four things I listed and just saying "work harder" is asinine. Sure, some folks succeed even without 1, 2, or even all 4 of those things. But the odds are progressively worse. And, plenty of people worked as hard as humanly possible, and STILL failed because of one or more of those factors going against them.
No matter how hard I try or train, I was never going to be a QB who led Texas to beat USC for the title. There was too much to overcome (seriously, watch me run my fastest....it's.....not good). Yelling at me to "work harder!" wouldn't have helped.