I think it's easy for people to make this error because humans like heroes; heroes simplify things. We want to believe that the people who are succeeding are succeeding because they're virtuous, not because (just spitballing here) the mechanisms we use to evaluate success are fundamentally detached from (if not opposed to) "virtue" as most people would understand the concept. if the latter is true, the world is far messier.
Sometimes it takes all those people voluntarily sitting at the same table as a convicted, unrepentant, and unpunished sexual abuser for the outside observer to "get" it.
Perhaps the still-open question is "Now what should one do with that knowledge?"
I’m well aware of that, no need to get all pedagogical. The system is quite far from what I favour. I’m saying that we shouldn’t be shrugging and saying “well that’s just what they are”, it’s no excuse.
Their forebears, sadly, did not. Specifically the ones who worked at IBM, but others as well.
