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Comment by soared | Hacker News Reader

This isn’t really true except for random edge cases. The people leading countries go to school and get law degrees. People leading business got college degrees or worked in business for decades.

You can pull edge cases like Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard, but even then he spent a lot of time in his 20s running his business.

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If you define 'leading countries' narrowly enough, everyone in that category becomes a random edge case.

Less flippantly, you should expect people running high-variance strategies to be overrepresented at the top. The people leading countries may go to school and get law degrees, but if they stay the path of doing what everyone else does but better, they end up an unremarkable partner at a law firm or something, not POTUS or Bezos or Musk. They don't have to literally do life-threateningly dangerous things (although I'm sure the propensity correlates and that's what the previous poster was talking about), but they do have to be willing to risk the comfortable life that was all but guaranteed for them.

> they end up an unremarkable partner at a law firm or something, not POTUS or Bezos or Musk

This doesn’t make much sense because people inherit their parents’ wealth and businesses all the time.

People also inherit their country’s political leadership e.g. political families and monarchs.

To suggest that it requires a special breed of people to get these positions without proof is rather silly

This logic would work if competition didn’t exist and no one ever made huge unforced errors. In the world as is Buffet, Gates, Bezos and Musk are among the richest people ever. Their parents were wealthy but nothing remotely comparable. The Carnegies and Rockefeller families are still rich but even if you add all of them together they’re not a shadow the importance the founders of the fortunes had.

Political dynasties are important but competition erodes them too. Who’s the most important Kennedy under 40? Whoever they are they’re not that important.

Within this comparison, will the various children of Musk or Gates or Buffet be as memoriable as their parents, or will they end up like the Kennedys, where yeah they exist and probably have a bunch of money, but they're "not important".

I'd guess those children will be even less important than the Kennedys. Among the voting public, last name recognition plays a large role. When publicly traded companies choose a CEO, last name recognition is much less important. Gates is also giving away almost all his wealth so his kids won't get it. For the others, inheritance tax will take a significant fraction, and the money will be divided between multiple children.

I'll believe it when I see it. During the timeframe where he said he'd give away half of his money he did spend a whole lot on charity(idk if it was half of the initial amount but i doubt it) and avoided a lot of taxes that way but he also tripled his wealth. He's also the biggest single person landowner in the US I think which I don't see him handing over soon.

Coming from wealthy, well connected families isn't the only reason those people are where they are today, but it certainly helped. They had the resources they needed to start their companies readily available.

"Who’s the most important Kennedy under 40? Whoever they are they’re not that important. "

Well, the most famous Kennedy right now is probably Robert F Kennedy Jr. But he is over 40 and luckily is not a succesful leader. But he probably dreams about being one (fighting against the system of evil vaccination).

I trust he was talking about people who like Martin Luther King, Jr. not just good in common way.

Maybe it's true for remarkable people. Not true in general for "leaders".

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