
Opinion: Getting rich has more to do with luck than talent - rbanffy
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170525-opinion-getting-rich-has-more-to-do-with-luck-than-talent
======
clavalle
Hoo boy the tone in this article is toxic.

The truth is that, yes, there is luck involved but a lot of hard work, too. It
is a rich spectrum.

Lucky is buying a winning lotto ticket. Luckier still is finding one on the
street.

The same is true for life.

Someone works hard in school, gets very good at mathematics and finance, and
takes the money from his father's successful life in the restaurant business
to start a HFT firm just at the right time to take advantage of inefficiencies
in the market while also having access to previously unavailable technological
tools to put his ideas to work. He makes a billion dollars.

There's a lot of luck there. But there's also a lot of hard work. Someone
sitting at home watching Simpsons reruns is not going to get there.

We shouldn't be so hostile to success but we should also recognize the places
where luck can be mitigated and work to do that.

In the example above, the person had a fairly wealthy father. That helped but
how can we make that less necessary for the next talented hard working
individual that comes along? He got a good education partly because his family
could pay for it. Again, how can we make the luck of birth less of a factor?
He was able to develop his talent because his mother was able to keep an eye
on him and make sure he had a stimulating childhood. Same issue.

We can work to level the playing field and make the rules fairer without
tearing down the champions operating under legacy rules. We can acknowledge
luck and work to put people in a position to be more lucky. People can learn
from the success of others without waving away their hard earned
accomplishments by chalking it up to mere luck. Luck is a description of
circumstance not the circumstance itself.

~~~
eru
The article's tone and the general attitude in society echoed seems partially
caused by a false dichotomy:

Lots of people think first that success and wealth are zero sum games. And
second, that we have to decide between extensive social safety nets and a
dynamic economy.

Just the opposite, of course.

About the second: the trick to get over the apparent trade-off between welfare
state and dynamic economy is to realize that we don't have to tax labour nor
capital to provide. Taxing land values works just fine.

More discussion on Georgism here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10442929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10442929)

Also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11158398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11158398)

~~~
AnimalMuppet
About the second: You don't need to think about taxing land, or anything like
it. You just have to realize that, if we don't have a dynamic economy, we
can't afford the safety nets (at least not for long).

~~~
eru
Yes, that point is true as well.

In general, most real world policies are far from the kind of efficiency
frontier where trade-offs between growth and safety net have to be made. Eg
the US could replace the subsidies for employer provided health care (with eg
a budget neutral tax credit for everyone or more radically a budget neutral
slim UB) and improve both efficiency and safety nets.

But, of course, policy is seldom driven by efficiency frontiers amongst its
ostensible goals. Politics is harder and more complicated.

Though know I do wonder if a general programme to simplify taxes and close
loopholes would have a better chance of passing step-by-step if every such
bill came with a budget neutral per-head tax credit. The sound-bite "Senator
Smith proposes to give YOU an extra $100 a year by closing obscure loophole
exploited by a few corporations!" would certainly do well with the general
public?

------
vannevar
I'm much less concerned about the role of luck in getting rich (since luck,
after all, is presumably uniformly distributed), than I am about the pervasive
economic feedback loops that reward the rich simply for being rich. It seems
to me that the latter are a much better justification for more sharply
progressive taxation than the luck argument.

~~~
pmiller2
I'm more concerned about the feedback loops that punish poor people for being
poor. Stuff like monthly fees on bank accounts, being thrown in jail for
failure to pay child support (in the process losing one's job), etc. It's
expensive to be poor in the United States.

~~~
eru
British retail banking is by all accounts even worse. (It's certainly bad
enough in an absolute sense. But I never had first-hand experience with the US
system to compare.)

------
downandout
While I agree with the general sentiment of this article, there is something
that articles with this theme always seem to miss. For those not born into
wealth, hard work and applied intelligence in an endeavor where it is at least
_possible_ to make tremendous amounts of money is generally a _prerequisite_
for financial success. Luck may well be the deciding factor in the the level
of success that those _in this group_ attain, but the vast majority of the
population never does what is necessary to be a part of this group.
Accordingly, most people have almost no chance of obtaining vast wealth,
regardless of whatever "luck" they may or may not have, while the small
percentage that are in this group have a very high (relative to the general
population) chance.

~~~
vannevar
_For those not born into wealth, hard work and applied intelligence in an
endeavor where it is at least possible to make tremendous amounts of money is
generally a prerequisite for financial success._

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. Why do we believe this? I suggest
that it's because we see examples of people who worked hard and got rich. But
what if the truth is that most people work relatively hard---ie, keep busy at
something. What if the pool of truly lazy people is actually rather small,
which would make the pool of lazy, lucky people even smaller? Then it's
entirely possible that success is all down to luck, but it would seem to us
that most of the lucky people were also hard-working. But we would be wrong in
associating the hard work with the success.

I firmly believe that hard work and applied intelligence is a key factor in
making a decent living---doing a bit better than your neighbor, say. But
getting rich, to the point where you're making 10x, 100x, 1000x the average,
requires some extraordinary intervention somewhere along the line. I'm not so
sure there is a strong correlation between the two phenomena.

~~~
downandout
What I meant was that, for example, your pool cleaner probably works hard, but
is not engaged in an endeavor where it is possible for him to make millions of
dollars. His earnings are directly proportional to the number of hours that he
works. Therefore he has essentially taken himself out of the competition to be
highly successful. Looked at in this light, only a small percentage of the
population has any chance at tremendous success.

~~~
vannevar
_[Y]our pool cleaner probably works hard, but is not engaged in an endeavor
where it is possible for him to make millions of dollars_

My pool cleaner, like most of us, has a finite lifespan. While it's certainly
theoretically possible that he _could_ have been a hedge fund trader for
Goldman-Sachs, I think we can both agree that to accomplish that would've
required a fair amount of luck somewhere along the way. He might, by grit and
discipline and sacrifice, have managed to become a lawyer, and make more than
he is making as a pool cleaner. But to become independently wealthy by age 30,
he also would've had to be very, very lucky.

 _Looked at in this light, only a small percentage of the population has any
chance at tremendous success._

Not only that, but only a small percentage of the population has ready
_access_ to the positions that offer the financial leverage necessary for that
kind of success.

------
bryanlarsen
Luck and hard work / talent are both required. Which is more important is a
silly question -- they're both required, they're both essential. If you have
one, then the other is more important. If you have neither, acquiring just one
won't help.

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity - Seneca

------
juliangoldsmith
Key word: opinion.

Getting rich most likely has to do more with grit than with either luck or
talent.

~~~
vannevar
Why do you believe it is "most likely"? And how do you define grit in this
context?

------
sega01
Being Jewish helps.

~~~
dang
We ban accounts that post this way to HN and have banned this one.

~~~
eru
Jerkass might have a point though. Compare the ever enlightening Slate Star
Codex ([https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-
consid...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-
as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/)).

It's hard for us goyim to keep up with those genetic advantages in brain
power. (Though sega01 was probably suggesting something like a secret cabal
keeping down everyone else..)

