
The self-made man - dkoch
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2014/09/the_self_made_man_history_of_a_myth_from_ben_franklin_to_andrew_carnegie.html
======
calinet6
Aside from the political discussion bound to happen here, I was surprised and
happy to see the story of Hilltop highlighted. I used to buy filet mignon
there for $7 a pound back in 2009 when I was living in Chelsea, as a recent
migrant from California. I was very sad when it closed, and never knew the
story.

It highlights a more general point: we, as humans, have a profound
_attribution bias._ It's psychological. We tend to attribute success to our
own individual characteristics, actions, and free will. Americans
significantly more
so.[[http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2786780?uid=2&uid=4&si...](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2786780?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104247453601)]

This would be fine, if it were true; however this attribution bias causes a
significant departure from reality. When people succeed, we tend to focus on
their personal attributes and actions, instead of looking at the situation
surrounding them. When we do that, we tend to think of them as "rising above
their situation," or "using their advantages well." We like to think we can do
the same, but it is truly a kind of collective delusion.

We have to recognize that this is simply fantasy. It's not backed up by truth.
Statistics says much the opposite: that most people who try will fail, and
that people will be significantly burdened by failure, and that people who
have failed _or succeeded_ are extremely affected by external effects; that
most successes are the result of both individual _and_ significant historical
and contextual factors. Externalities are more important than we want to
believe. They're not everything, but they deserve much, _much_ more attention
than they get, which is often nil.

We would be a different kind of society were we to match our perception of
success and failure with the reality of that success or failure. We don't have
to give up our sense of individualism and the respect for personal growth and
contribution; we just need to back it up with a recognition of the surrounding
factors that are extremely real and highly influential on all our lives. I
know we would be a better society if we did.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
I think you're right, but it's equal parts being prepared to when the
opportunity arise and purposefully putting yourself in situations that
increase your odds.

E.g., nobody ever got laid staying at home, no matter how pretty, nice, rich
or lucky.

~~~
calinet6
I'll repeat this again even though I posted it below, because the analogy is
so applicable, and I like having thought of it so well:

A wire is connected to the electricity, which powers the bulb. The bulb cannot
light without the electricity, and it cannot light without the wire. Is the
success of the bulb attributable to the wire, or the outlet?

~~~
ghostwriter
The success of the bulb is the result of (and to the extend of) its internal
design. Change the bulb to a cork and you'll never see the light, whatever
wires and outlets you have for it.

~~~
calinet6
This is flat out false.

What of a perfectly designed bulb without a fixture that holds it correctly
for electrical contact?

What if no cord is attached to that fixture?

What if the cord is not plugged in?

What if the cord doesn't have a plug that fits the outlet?

What if the internal wiring of the building doesn't support the bulb's
voltage?

What if the electrical grid is not attached to the building?

What if the transformer that turns the grid voltage to one the bulb can use
has blown or doesn't do its job?

What if the grid is overloaded, or not correctly handling the appropriate load
for the time of day and electrical demand?

What if the power plants themselves are not producing the planned and
coordinated output?

What if the supply of coal or oil to power the plants is disrupted?

And on and on.

The bulb absolutely depends on the stability and function of systems
surrounding it; systems that are hundreds of millions of times larger and more
complex than the bulb itself. The bulb's success is due to both its intrinsic
properties and quite literally hundreds of external factors that you cannot
take for granted.

The pervasive ignorance of this seemingly obvious facet of our daily lives is
astounding.

More astounding is that people fail to apply it to individual people—or to
themselves—equally. It applies equally—without question.w

------
lukifer
Humans have a problem with complexity and compound causality in general; any
person who succeeds does so by some combination of both individual grit, and
support from society and loved ones (even if indirectly), regardless of what
the proportions happen to be (if one could even measure such a thing).
Thinking that success must derive exclusively from either society or the
individual is sheer absurdity, driven by a need to impose an idealized
narrative upon messy reality.

~~~
300bps
Yet there are some people that work 60 hours per week and some that choose to
not work at all. The people in the first camp are typically more successful
than people in the second camp. Articles like the OP discount their efforts
and accomplishments completely.

~~~
seren
I certainly does not work as hard as the cleaning lady getting up at 5 am to
clean my desk. I just sit there typing lightly on my ergonomic keyboard, in my
air-conditioned office and in the end, I will probably end better off, even
though she might have crossed a deadly desert to come here and won't see her
relatives for a long time. I just have the chance of being born around.

Hard work == success, is probably a variation of the just world bias [0]. It
provides a reassuring and motivating narrative, but in the end, it is quite
simplistic. I am not saying that hard work is not a necessary condition, but
it is far from being sufficient.

Another example : with all the discussions about European debt, it has been
reported multiple times that on average Greeks were working much longer that
Germans. It does not do them much good.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-
world_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis)

~~~
rayiner
> I certainly does not work as hard as the cleaning lady getting up at 5 am to
> clean my desk

No kidding. I was in the office at 10 pm the other night, and the cleaning guy
came around to empty the trash cans. He's like "man, still here at 10?" And
I'm thinking "well so are you."

~~~
newppc
Hopefully he didn't start till 6pm though :)

------
twoodfin
I'm pretty skeptical of the study on which this essay bases its premise that
economic mobility in the U.S. is limited compared to, say, France. The most
detailed information I can find online is the executive summary[1], which has
to handwave that it found Italy with a strongly _negative_ correlation between
parents' and children's economic outcomes! That suggests to me that their
methodology is not particularly robust.

I've found similar attempts to establish parent/child economic correlation
equally suspicious when, for example, they measure income correlation with
percentiles rather than in adjusted dollars (it's much easier to be "mobile"
if there's only $10K in income separating the 40th and 60th percentiles!)

[1]
[http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_as...](http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2011/CRITAFINAL1pdf.pdf)

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
The same results have been reported by many other studies. The facts are clear
- for the poor the US is a land of economic handicap, not a land of
opportunity.

There will always be individual exceptions to this, but they'll be single data
points. Put crudely, for every heart-warming success you see interviewed in
Forbes, there will be millions of failures no one hears about.

The most useful picture is broad-based and statistical, and studies like this
one:

[http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/](http://www.equality-of-
opportunity.org/)

show that mobility depends as much on _where_ you were born as _to whom_ you
were born.

Broadly, inequality has exploded since the 1980s and in areas with limited
social capital - including good free education - it's now more difficult than
ever to work your way up from the bottom.

But this is balanced by increased opportunities in other areas - mostly
affluent, mostly urban - which have created a halo effect for the poorer
communities around them.

So average mobility has remained approximately constant, but only because bad
areas have been balanced by good areas.

Meanwhile average mobility in the US continues to be worse than mobility in
other countries.

~~~
twoodfin
_Meanwhile average mobility in the US continues to be worse than mobility in
other countries._

What's the best study you can find that demonstrates this? I haven't seen any
that don't appear to succumb to the flaws I mentioned elsewhere in this
thread, such as measuring relative mobility instead of absolute mobility.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
We should probably define terms first.

Which definitions of absolute and relative are you using? (There are a few,
and they're not identical.)

~~~
twoodfin
I would define absolute income mobility in terms of some globally comparable
good. Dollars, PPP adjusted or not, for example.

Relative mobility to me means mobility within some particular income
distribution: Moving from, say, an average household income in the first
quintile to an average household income in the fifth quintile.

I prefer absolute mobility as a measure of economic mobility for the same
reason that any rational actor would prefer to win a lottery for the
difference between the income of an average bottom 20% household and an
average top 20% household in the U.S.[1] vs. Sweden[2]. According to OECD,
that's $75K vs. $37K.

[1] [http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-
states/](http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/united-states/)

[2]
[http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/sweden/](http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/sweden/)

------
nateabele
> _" Or is it more like a mass delusion keeping us from confronting the fact
> that poor Americans tend to remain poor Americans, regardless of how hard
> they work?"_

The language used here is interesting. Wasn't the labor theory of value thrown
out a while ago?

------
justintocci
yeah but I'm always struck by how many successful people started out through
some criminal act. Andrew Carnegie apparently committed fraud to get his
start. That was a new one to me.

