I would say what family you are born into has a greater influence than the location of birth. Born into the right family in any location on earth can provide opportunities but just being born in the right location to the wrong family doesn't help as much.
This is only true from a fixed mindset point of view; as in "you get the cards your dealt with and that's it". Whereas I believe that whilst there are different starting points, progress does not have to be down to this myth of "natural talent".
Natural talent is the end product that we like to worship and glamorise. When in truth, natural talent is no more than somebody being intensely into something enough, to really practice and get good at it.
We look at someone like Michael Jordan, and laugh at those early coaches that cut him from various teams. Because we feel they should obviously have spotted his "natural talent".
However the fact is, Jordan and many of his ilk, inside and outside of the world of sport. Simply put a hell of a lot of effort and work into their craft.
You might say; "but yes, there are people who are better at some things than others."
To that I'd say; sure there are, but it's only the ones willing to go that extra mile and fail a few dozen times, who will ever "make it".
Cg
And I guess we disagree on this point. Natural talent, you can lift weights all you want and you might never be the next Mike Tyson or Brock Lesnar without taking steroids. Why? Because the amount of muscle fibers you have is set at birth, and the amount of muscle you can hold on your frame is set genetically. People resort to using steroids to bypass this genetic limit but the fact is some people have a natural ability to put on muscle easily and that is an example of natural talent.
If you are born with the ability to have persistence, the genes to make you want to work hard, to give your brain the right amount of dopamine so you'll push and push, this too is a result of you winning the genetic lottery. There are inevitably people who have a more effective natural brain chemistry than yours, and people who have less effective, for the goal of being productive.
Take for example Bruce Lee? He worked extremely hard, and his exploits are legendary. He didn't get to his level of success from natural talent alone but also because he dedicated his life to applying it to martial arts, to acting, and in essence he had natural ability to hyper focus on a goal.
You can learn the right way to do something but the natural motivation to want to be the best at something is also genetic. It's not taught. That is my point. Yes it is true that at times in life you might not know yourself or you might have someone who told you to always try to be the best, but to be able to then push yourself every day for years, for decades, that's something you can't teach.
People like Michael Jordan, Bruce Lee, Muhammad Ali, are some of the most competitive human beings in recorded history. These sorts of people always push themselves even if it's not necessarily healthy to do it because they put 100% of themselves into their craft. Nothing is wrong with this but let's not pretend like everyone can do this or that everyone has the necessary traits. There is likely a spectrum and some people have more of this quality than others but if we were to take the attitude that people with this quality deserve it then how is that any different from picking out any other genetic trait to highlight and say people with those traits deserve it?