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Comment by grabcocque | Hacker News Reader

One of the worst things about rich people is their incredibly damaging refusal to admit the primary cause of their wealth is blind luck.

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Science seems to support this view. From https://tedsummaries.com/2014/09/05/paul-piff-does-money-mak... :

> Paul shows us footage of a psychological experiment – a rigged 2 player monopoly game where they randomly pick one player to be more wealthy. The wealthy player starts with more money, gets double the income for passing GO, and moves more often. [...] After the game they were asked why they won – and they’d talk about their own actions & strategy, rather than reflecting on the advantages given at the start.

Jesus, that sounds like a few billionaires I know.

Blind luck implies it was a metaphorical dice roll in which the person had absolutely no impact, which is demonstrably false. Sure, there are plenty of folks on trust funds or with large inheritances who basically won the genetic lottery. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's not who we're talking about.

Even people like Gates, Musk, etc would probably agree they had a healthy amount of luck. Being in the right place at the right time, starting a conversation with the right person, being in the right college course or being at the right college. But saying that the primary cause of wealth is blind luck eliminates almost all the personal agency and hard work that actually goes into being a successful person. Maybe they wouldn't have gotten where they are without some luck, but the same amount of luck + being lazy would leave them just as poor (or worse).

Being rich allows you a good few more rolls of the dice. If I was to quit my job and fail at a startup, that would be me back to stage 0. I would need to work my way up the ladder slowly. If my parents were rich, they could just give me another 100,000 to try out my next business.

Luck happens when preparation meets opportunity. Don't use blind luck as an excuse.

The amount of those two vary widely in the rich population. More importantly, most people outside of it will never see any good opportunity on their lives. And even more important, a lot of preparation requires a good amount of opportunity.

> Luck happens when preparation meets opportunity

Plus location of birth. I'm pretty sure being born in a developed country, as opposed to somewhere like the DPRK, qualifies as blind luck.

That would be part of the opportunity part, right? That's literally where phrases like "land of opportunity" come from.

You make your own luck. If you never put yourself into a position, you'll almost never get lucky. There's a certain luck involved, absolutely, but that luck is not blind.

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it." - Thomas Jefferson (supposedly)

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison.

You miss 100% the shots you don't take. -Wayne Gretzky

Neither this statement nor any variations thereof have ever been found in Thomas Jefferson's writings

https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/i-a...

Hence the "supposedly", although I suppose it's silly to think I could avoid the famous HN pedantry.

I agree with you to an extent, but thing like being born in somewhere like North Korea are going to seriously limit the amount of opportunity you can create for yourself.

Not always, though, for example, a refreshing interview with Hank Green: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2-4MwCzJdA

Partially true. It's not luck they chose to participate in the arena. However, luck is very much involved in succeeding once you are in the arena.

It can largely be luck that they have the resources to participate in the first place, however.

Is that an indictment against the author?

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