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Comment by jondubois | Hacker News Reader

I don't buy the genetic argument. Intelligence is worthless.

In this society, a complete idiot with capital can achieve much more than a genius can achieve without capital.

An idiot with capital will, relatively quickly, lose all of his capital through wasteful spending. You see this all the time with lottery jackpot winners, those who receive a large inheritance, etc.

Not so. The reality is that his family banker will invest the money in an index fund like S&P500 for him and then he will see it compound a predictable 10% or so every year, becoming increasingly wealthy without ever having to lift a finger or exercise a single neuron.

More likely the banker will invest it in low performing actively managed mutual funds and slowly drain 1-2% in additional "management fees" out of him...

If you're getting a predictable 10% from your investments, you're investing in a different SPY than I am.

No. You can be extremely frugal while stupid as hell.

Then he will become an idiot, without capital, whats your point?

The point is one might luck into getting rich. Staying rich requires some intelligence, or you're going to make poor decisions. This is even true of dynastic wealth.

One example: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/huntington-har...

Which is why top companies are founded by children of lottery winners and media celebrities, while poor immigrants never achieve anything significant.

Founding a top company is the most visible way of gaining a lot of wealth, but it is by far not representative.

Much more common are ways of starting with a lot of wealth and turning it into even more wealth.

This is exactly the kind of information that will NOT be welcome at Hacker News.

Even according to a source that wants to agree with you, 57% of Forbes 400 started with less than $1 million: http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/ufe/legacy_url/410/Born....

That's exactly why sports stars and rappers with many millions of dollars often go broke and college kids eating ramen start billion dollar companies.

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