 Hayek has an important point. Among his core concerns is the “mirage” of thinking that justice requires rewarding people for supplying inputs rather than for supplying outputs. Admittedly, if we leave customers to their own devices, output is what they will reward, which is what Hayek wants. By the same token, when people left to their own devices choose to reward us for our output, their behavior will not be utterly insensitive to merit. The tendency of market rewards to track merit will be merely a tendency, but meritocracy being merely a tendency is not the same as meritocracy being a mirage. A key element of the success of a system in promoting prosperity will be that in rewarding excellent output, it will be rewarding the hard work, courage, alertness, and commitment that makes for excellence. It will be rewarding luck too, to be sure, but typically not sheer random  fluke.[9]  Hayek speaks as if merit has everything to do with trying hard, and nothing to do with achieving excellence.