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A person, the professor, who put in the work to learn an advanced subject with the potential to advance society, evaluated two others who also put in the effort to push the boundaries of knowledge and engineering.
Together, they wanted to bet on being able to develop something with a ton of utility. And they did.
There is an argument for insufficient social safety nets or excessive wealth/income gaps due to insufficient wealth/income/property/estate tax, but this example is not evidence of an unfair system.
Who was born in Canada in 1951 near one of the best engineering universities in the world, perfectly suited to benefit from economic liberalization and was lucky enough to be interested in computers at a time when almost nobody was and as a result was able to be around the best computer science people.
So yeah I'd say born pretty lucky - made a lot of really timely calls that lined up. Lets not pretend this was $10B of hard work - they aren't comparable
>> Who was born in Canada in 1951 near one of the best engineering universities in the world,
He was born in Vancouver; Waterloo, ON is more than 4000 kms away, so not really close. Waterloo was also not the globally recognized institution we talk about today. It was a relatively new school.
>> perfectly suited to benefit from economic liberalization
He graduated from UBC in 1973, in the middle of a recession with economic stagnation and high unemployment. With a degree in mathematics he likely had no choice but to go on to grad school.
>> lucky enough to be interested in computers at a time when almost nobody was and as a result was able to be around the best computer science people.
I'm not sure how you're "lucky" to be interested in a subject deep enough to pursue a graduate degree, but regardless, in the 70's computer science was still not held in the same regard as mathematics and other pure sciences in most of academia. He was obviously driven by a deep desire to explore an emerging field despite this.
No one is saying he earned $10B through hard work, but discounting the luck he helped generate is really petty and unfair.
I think we are lucky that geeks are also getting rich and may do geeky things (such as things for the greater good), with some of that money.
So yes you’re correct, this is precisely the problem.
I definitely remember the tone of the NYTimes around this sort of thing. It took some real moving against the grain to be positive about the potential that tech had, in the timeframe that this investment happened. It took a lot to even get to be in his position. We were not at all making fat six-figures back then.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/cisco-buys-granite-s...
Do you really think people like Andy Bechtolsheim and David Cheriton give an F what NYTimes thinks of investing in technology, or that it was "moving against the grain" (???) for a Stanford CS professor to invest in his bright young things?
However I agree with you regarding the "luck" business. I believe most, though not all, people who are seen as lucky (or even see themselves as lucky) are simply those that take advantage of opportunity. Many of us (raises hand) are either oblivious to opportunity or have mastered the art of squandering them. Then we complain about being unlucky or how others are "so lucky".
Why do some smart people go into obscure fields. Who knows, there are so many variables. One of my absolute favorite cs geeks is John Backus. Do you know how he got into computing in the '40s? He was walking down the street and liked the look of the street level display of the IBM office and walked in and began his career in computing. And granted, he was a unique and somewhat strange bird, but that is one of the variables mentioned. I honestly don't think people like him really pay attention to what the liberal arts crowd ("intelligentsia" /g) thinks about technology.
I’ve been around long enough to see who gets “success” and it seems to be a pretty random walk within certain groups, and those who take multiple chances “At bat” are more “lucky.” So yeah sure you have to work hard to get into the game but again even that is largely chance based on your upbringing.
As it happens rich kids are the ones who get more chances at bat cause they have fall backs etc..
However, I do agree that we should keep the rest of humanity in mind.
People B did the initial legwork.
People C paid for the growth (which came from work they did elsewhere).
In the end, person A disproportionately benefited on the backs of persons B and C for the amount of work they did in the entirety of the outcome.
Yeah, person A is arguably merited a ROI, but the insane amount is what some people find is unmerited here.
That is the risk of losing the entire sum of what they put in.
Taking on that risk is where the disproportionate ROI comes from. Person C took way less risk.
In addition, I believe "Person A" in this case actually gave more help than just funds, ie legwork.
I believe there also lots of other versions of the same thing. For example if you bought lots of Bitcoin/Ethereum early on in its first year. It's just that its too risky for people to do that.
I also did mention that there was work put in in addition to the check as far as im aware.
To put it another way, even for the professor it wasn't really being in the right place at the right time - that was not enough.
Risk is correlated with reward. People who invest $100,000 with a 0.001% chance of even getting their original capital back, should see massive returns when the investment works out.