While I’m not sure I’m following you 100%, luck takes a bigger part the higher the wealth. For example, existing billionaires have a way higher chance of having inherited a huge sum than the average population. If you take sound financial decisions you might get up to a million or a few, and above that it will be always more luck than skills. 100000x that is a huge lot of luck.
Hey thanks! I was curious to see if handling the topic of luck did vibe with people. Thanks for taking the time to mention this, as it's very valuable to me
I read something by Richard Branson that said--and I'm paraphrasing--that everyone is given about the same amount of luck. It's all about what we do with the luck when it falls in our lap.
Just read this article. Very cool how the researchers simulated the role luck plays in society with some neat models. The conclusions they reach are fascinating and counter-intuitive e.g.
>"[I]f the goal is to reward the most talented person (thus increasing their final level of success), it is much more convenient to distribute periodically (even small) equal amounts of capital to all individuals rather than to give a greater capital only to a small percentage of them, selected through their level of success - already reached - at the moment of the distribution."
My two cents from being an entrepreneur: everyone needs luck to succeed but those who are fortunate to have wealth and a support network get far more opportunities for luck to come by. Or, put another way, those with a fortunate background have more chances to fail and find luck eventually than others. Life is not fair but so it is.
I remember another study that looked at people who had made it very rich, and they saw that luck was something like 'being educated in a field just when that field is about to make a huge impact in the world' - in other words, great timing in addition to raw talent. I don't have the link to hand now though.
If you really believe that luck plays such a big role in making you wealthy, why not quit your job, spend all the money you have on blackjack and lottery tickets, and hope for the best?
Tearing down the wealthy because they happened to be lucky in some way is hostile.
Statements like 'Most wealth is appropriated from others, not made.' are hostile and toxic.
Not just toxic but toxic along several axes.
First, it obfuscates the real problems. The problem isn't inequality of income or assets -- it is when that inequality leads to monopolistic situations for the have's or desperation for the have nots. This is a much easier problem to solve than forced equality thus making a surmountable problem seem much more intractable than it is.
Second, it unfairly vilifies an entire group of people. For the most part, in functioning societies where wealth is generated through voluntary exchanges of value, the wealthy are, generally speaking, doing a ton of good in the world. If we discourage people from taking that path by vilifying it, we are doing much more harm than good.
And finally, it allows people to feel good about doing little. If the wealthy are only wealthy because of luck, well, not generating wealth is as good as creating value for other people and generating wealth, right? Wrong.
Luck is a factor in wealth generation, no doubt about it, but luck is a secondary characteristic. Focusing on it, especially while discounting all of the other factors of financial success, is a mistake that hurts everyone.
I heard it put this way: hard work, intelligence, and other factors increase your surface area for luck. Think of yourself like a luck gathering net and you want the net to be large if you want to have a high probability of getting lucky.
Of course this also partly explains why wealth tends to flow uphill: the rich have large nets.
Luck is probabilistic. Persistence allows one to exponentially reduce the chance of a negative outcome. If you fail, try again. And again. And again. Of all the self-made rich people that I know, their one common trait is persistence. They failed a lot. They didn't let bad luck stop them.
> you can increase your "luck surface" by doing certain things
....and your chances of being able to do those things (without severe risk of poverty and homelessness) are increased dramatically by having been lucky enough to be born wealthy, or at least upper-middle-class.
Everything's about luck. Are you smart? Luck. Are you good looking? Luck. Are you rich? Again, some combination of things that are all essentially about luck.
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