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Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

This is why I have some trouble with the term "winning the birth lottery". On one hand I did nothing to earn my good circumstances, but on the other hand, my immigrant parents worked extremely hard to afford me the huge advantages I have today. To me, labeling this as just "luck" seems disrespectful to my parents.

So while I do not necessarily buy in completely to the idea of the birth lottery, I do believe that I do have a elevated level of responsibility to do good with the advantages and resources at my disposal.

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I think immigrants should appreciate more than anyone the sheer luck involved. My dad grew up in a village in Bangladesh, and with 150 million people in that country, the overwhelming odds were in favor of me growing up in a village in Bangladesh. That I didn't is purely luck on my part.

Somebody worked hard. It wasn't you, but they did it for your benefit. If you take that advantage and build on it, you can make it even better for your son/daughter. I cannot even frame this into the concept of an addressable "unfairness" unless you literally do not think that people should try to make a better life for their kids specifically.

Someone else in Bangladesh didn't do shit for their kids, and their kids are still there. Was that bad luck for the kid? Yeah, but for the dad, he could have done something about it. Pure cosmic chance that you were born to dad A instead of dad B didn't negate the fact that somebody's hard work paid off and someone was there to reap the benefit that happened to be you.

Sure there is still a level of unfairness in this, it's not purely hard work. But how much unfairness do you want to really address? Dad C is a Yanomamo indian in the Amazon basin. He worked his ass off twice as hard, but his son is never going to end up in America working a high tech job. Does anybody care about addressing this inequality? Hundreds of generations of Yanomamo, and they still wear leaves and live in the jungle. Hard work alone won't get you out of that. They never built a system that lets you build on the work of others. Bangladesh did, America did, and here you are. People worked hard to get you here. It wasn't luck, _except_ for you.

Didn't you win the lottery in the sense that you were lucky enough to be born to hard-working parents? When people talk about the birth lottery, they mean that the baby was lucky to be born to those people (or in those circumstances). I don't think anyone means that the parents were lucky necessarily.

I don't think that's the normal interpretation of the "birth lottery" term. My parents, and especially grandparents, lived through extreme hardship, worse than you'd see in many lives in modern third world countries, but it would generally be considered that I've come from a "privileged" lineage.

Also, I personally believe extremely strongly that Western culture's ability to "get along" with their neighbors, and the willingness to personally sacrifice for the sake of the greater good of their local community, has a lot to do with our success as a society, or so called "luck".

sure, but _you_ did not contribute to any of that. this is why it's a lottery. the winning ticket is a family with resources.

Since a lot of people are commenting on what you said saying that being born to such parents is a form of luck, let me give a similar but very different situation.

My father was a brilliant alcoholic who died when I was 17. I moved to his homeland when I was 16. So when he died, we were dirt poor. I was stuck in another third world country, with stifling cultural customs that I didn't understand, believe in. I wanted out because I could see myself withering away as a human being there. Sheer fucking desperation got me into a school in America with a full scholarship. Sheer fucking desperation because I worked my ass off in a research lab where I used to be up till 4 AM working on shit. Not being smart. Just the thought of getting out.

So the part where there was one massive piece of luck? I don't really see that. Funnily enough though, I think the one thing that made me desperate and want to get out was my dad finally dying. Because I realized that was the last straw. So was I lucky to face such adversity? I am not quite sure I would call it luck. But has it made me keenly aware of what poverty and desperation means? Yes, Sir it has. It will mean that I have a very very high achievement drive. But this is simply only one of the cards that I hold. Some of them are bad. Some of them are good. I can only play with the cards that I have. While I have sympathy for the hardship of others, flippantly stating that everything is pre-determined and hard work and persistence don't matter sincerely offends the fuck out of me. Because the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Nobody is saying "everything is pre-determined and hard work and persistence don't matter." People are saying that many important characteristics are predetermined. Consider your own background: is it your fault that your father was an alcoholic? No, that's luck, specifically bad luck. Correspondingly, is it to your credit that your father was brilliant? No. That's also luck.

Moreover, calling it "luck" discourages others from adopting these repeatably beneficial habits and ideas for pulling a family out of poverty.

How could I make sure my offspring have a better life than I did? If my only option is "luck", then why bother trying?

Working hard is making sure you don't toss your winning ticket away. More people, working to keep their families out of poverty, changes the odds of the lottery.

But that doesn't change that it is a profound fortune to be born into such a family.

I agree with your points, I have seen people use similar justifications for why they have not improved their lives. Which is unfortunate but I think it's the wrong battle.

Many more times I have seen people from middle class or better backgrounds talk about how they got where they were because of hard work or drive or whatever. And then use that as justification for why some social program should be cut, like food stamps. The way I look at it, the "might as well not try" argument harms a few people who have the least influence in society. The "I worked hard and made it so we don't need social programs" argument is made by some of the most influential people and the programs they cut effect millions.

Yes; calling it a lottery is disingenuous. Some families have worked up to a good position in society. Its cultural, not random nor luck.

I would go even further. Calling it a lottery is to completely disregard all the hard work and intelligent decisions of a person's ancestors.

As they should be. They were lucky to be born into a family of 'hard work and intelligent decisions.' They _themselves_ had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Well, except by genetics and upbringing they share all those hard-won advantages. Its selection of a sort, like it or not. Unless we're talking some spooky-lukey soul lottery or something, then we're all our parents' children.

Labeling it luck also seems somewhat disingenuous as it assumes there is some distinction between people and the nature+nurture that makes them who they are. As someone commented elsewhere, the claim that people are exclusively a result of a combination of their environment and genetics is simply a statement of determinism. If that is the case, there is no luck involved. There is nothing one could be other than the person that he is.

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