This combines with the observation that intelligence is normally distributed, so the rich people are more likely to be average people that got lucky, because there's more of them than smart people with a good strategy. It also applies in the opposite direction, there's more unlucky average people than true failures.
That doesn't seem to follow, unless intelligence and ability to make money are mostly uncorrelated, which I think is a very strong claim that needs to be substantiated.
> Although such an unequal distribution may seem unfair, it might be justifiable if it turned out that the most successful people were indeed the most talented/competent. So what did the simulation find? On the one hand, talent wasn't irrelevant to success. In general, those with greater talent had a higher probability of increasing their success by exploiting the possibilities offered by luck. Also, the most successful agents were mostly at least average in talent. So talent mattered.
> However, talent was definitely not sufficient because the most talented individuals were rarely the most successful. In general, mediocre-but-lucky people were much more successful than more-talented-but-unlucky individuals. The most successful agents tended to be those who were only slightly above average in talent but with a lot of luck in their lives.
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