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Comment by YinglingLight | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me that luck plays a huge role

The concept of Talent Stacking: https://personalexcellence.co/blog/talent-stack/

Those who accrue and leverage a variety of skills tend to get 'lucky'. This is why you could strip most entrepreneurs of all their money and assets, and not be surprised to see them enjoying success in 5 years. You put into place a system that makes making the right decisions inevitable, and learning from the wrong decisions.

To believe that your success is out of your hands is incredibly disempowering. I understand it's primary function is to help you empathize with others, but it subconsciously has a hold on you. A very limiting belief, I'd 'yeet' it immediately.

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Your idea isn’t backed up by statistics. The vast majority of successful entrepreneurs come from upper-middle class or richer families. If it was just about “building a talent stack”, then the distribution would be relatively flat across all family income distributions. You also missed the part in the article that described how hard it is as a poor person to just find the time and resources necessary to learn those skills.

Of course you need to put the work in, but the deck is stacked in your favor if your family is very well off (and frankly you need to do far less work, due to nepotism and everything else), and massively stacked against you if you come from a poor family.

do you have data on this? Are you talking about tech entrepreneurs? My understanding is many self made millionaires come from the trades (plumbing, electricians) starting their own company. I can't find my source, thats why I'm interested in your source.

there is the similar distribution of self starters in all areas of society, there is a survivorship bias towards upper middle class and upper class people because they get to try again over and over and over again. whereas someone that "makes it out" has pretty much one chance or else they have to pay off all the debt they accrued financially or to society for the next 10 years (or more). let alone if they get a little lonely and create obligations.

Remove them from their network and see what happens.

Sure, but social capital is an asset you build like anything else. Remove a big chunk of anyone’s wealth - liquid, paper, social, health - and it’s gonna be painful and disruptive.

The point isn’t that they’d be poor if you took away what they built... it’s that they succeed in building it in the first place! That process of building wealth in all its forms is the key.

It’s not easy. It’s definitely not fair. Some people start out way ahead. Some people start out way behind and don’t even have role models to show how it’s done. It always takes time. My view is that you just have to accept people where they are, respect their efforts, politely look past their structural (dis)advantages, and deal with them as human beings who deserve love and support for their own sake.

I think a big part of it is also the moral choices people are willing to make. Most people climb to success because they are incredibly talented (rare), incredibly lucky (nobody likes to admit it), or because it's always bowb your buddy week to them.

Sometimes they are able to do a minor hurt to a vast number of people (marketing, some sales, etc...) and they don't feel like they are doing anything wrong. Sometimes they are just conforming to the standards our society has set, (everybody is doing it).

I myself try to do the best, but I've discovered the only way to advance is to job hop my way to a decent salary. I'm sure this has caused problems for others, but it's accepted in this industry. I've seen others who won't job hop languish with much lower salaries.

What I find sad is that there is a bunch of low hanging investments that improve the "luck" probabilities for all people. Well designed built environments, access to power/refridgeration/medicine, access to information. Obviously there are political barriers to achieving these small investments, but the most successful societies will these basics into existence, and the groups overall quality of life is higher.

I find the developments of cheap solar power + low latency satlite internet + digital banking(access to stable currencies + inflation hedges + global transactions) as essential to deliver the services that the most successful and privileged have used, to the poverty stricken around the world.

As these people join the fold, do we prepare them documentation, do nothing, or set up roadblocks?

Why not go further? Remove their arm, leg, eye. Put them at most disadvantage. See if they can succeed!

I think its about seizing the opportunity once luck strikes. According to sociology its very rare to switch class. If you start out upper class and make some bad decisions you will still likely be upper class. Same with poor, you can make the right choice every time and still end up poor.

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