Musk is the best possible evidence of this - an incredibly stupid, fragile edgelord born to other peoples' wealth, lucked his way into more on the backs of others' work. Now, everything he touches loses billions.
A cat could be dropped into the job, spend the whole day licking its arsehole, and still do a better job than Musk. All he had to do was shut his dumb mouth and spend his money, but he's incapable of even that.
Not an Elon Fan but saying the richest man is the world was just incredible lucky is a little ridiculous.
I am sure luck played a part but I don't think Musk is the Inspector Clouseau of the business world. At least not in the 90s and 2000s.
Yeah I agree, I don't think it's all luck either. But I do paint him in a bad light for not doing well with what he had in his hands. I'll probably never know what kinds of unseen pressure one tends to experience as a billionaire but he's really not doing well, to put it kindly.
It is a meritocracy .... whoever can be the most ruthless, greedy, selfish, egotistical, ignorant, arrogant, immoral, unethical and wicked can more easily become enormously wealthy.
For someone with a bit of ability, knowledge and training, they can easily make thousands fleecing the elderly, poor people, widows, or the mentally challenged. It takes a really ruthless person to do it but it is relatively easy money.
You can also become a drug dealer and buy trade and sell illegal, immoral and life destroying drugs and easily make a lot of money fast.
Someone in a developing country can also start a small business based on slave labor, children or indentured workers paid little or no money.
And that's just the bottom of the barrel. Professionals in first world countries deal with these people to generate wealth for themselves. Then billionaires sit on top making more money on those below them ...... all the wealth if you follow it is based on taking advantage of weaker individuals. The whole system is based on taking advantage of lesser people.
It's a meritocracy ... a meritocracy of immortality, whoever can become the most depraved gets to win the world.
EDIT: .... it's amazing because I just finished watching this the other night
Basically a con artist that stole money from elderly, physically disabled and mentally challenged people, made millions and now lives the lap of luxury outside the country and no one can do anything about it. The infuriating part of it is, it wasn't just him, there was a whole chain of lawyers, bankers, financial people and professionals that either enabled him, supported him or just allowed him to do what he did because everyone was making money .... off of poor people!
The rich don't magically get rich by being nice to others ... they get rich because they abandoned their morals a long time ago and collect their money from as many poor people as possible, either directly, indirectly, secretly or distantly. And the wealthier they become, the more easily it is for them to do it and get away with it.
The system is built for abuse and moral depravity .... is it any wonder we are destroying ourselves little by little.
I think all the temporarily embarrassed billionaires are downvoting you. In their meritocracy they will be considered the worthy who can take everything, not these imposters like bezos. (bezos is a cunt...)
While the system does select for psychopathic behaviors, it's not a meritocracy because you don't need to be exceptional at being ruthless, greedy, selfish, egotistical, ignorant, arrogant, immoral, unethical and wicked to become enormously wealthy. There are plenty of deplorable people who never make it big under capitalism. It's mostly just a birth lottery. People who are lucky enough to be born into money, who end up having family connections, and are plugged into the oligarchy are the ones who statistically make it.
And there are actual studies showing that luck is the major factor
He was VP of a hedge fund, and assigned the project of investigating the potential of online commerce on the nascent Web by the company. He did so, and concluded that there was enormous potential, but after his report, the company decided to pass on it.
Clearly, he was right about the potential. If he'd been better at his job/more persuasive, D.E. Shaw & Co. would have invested in the Web, and he would not have had reason to leave and start Amazon.
I would do so much to improve the world if I had even one billion dollars. Rocket ships don't help the homeless. Mars won't solve the lack of money in education. A car flying through the void of space does not create public transportation. A mega yacht doesn't feed the hungry.
Please let me handle your money, billionaires. You'll look so good at the end of it.
While Musk is undeniably a massive dickhead, let's not devalue space exploration because of him. Many things we rely on today such as GPS, certain types of medical treatments and drugs, even eye surgery, were only possible due to the advancement of space technology.
Rocketships don't help people directly, but for isntance, they put satelites in orbit that help farmers have a more precise control and understanding over their crops, putting more food on our plates.
I mean the super rich generally did a lot of things on their way there. The wake up call is usually around the things they do and people they exploit, not equating the difference to dumb luck.
Millionaires often worked for their money. Billionaires often worked for their first millions too. Problem is, difference between a billion and a million is about a billion.
On the other side of the argument, the amount of people that work harder and smarter than any given billionaire and have nothing is simply staggering. If it wasn’t down to luck, they’d all be billionaires.
So yeah, it is dumb luck. Randomness is not uniform, and someone ends up being close to the time and place of a local spike.
Even the rich (not the super billionaire rich), yes they had luck but there is definitely more. Like I work as a freelancer in software development. Lots of people I have worked with are smarter and more talented than I am, but I still make more money. Because they never took the risk of going freelance and keep working for a company that takes halve the money a client pays.
Some people just don't like to take risks
These super rich people usually took big risks, worked for almost free for a while until it started to pay off. Of course for every billionaire there a 1000s of people that took the same risk and completely failed.
If you can take multiple large, failed, risks without ending up on the street then you have immense privilege.
It's hard for most people to "learn from their failures" and keep taking "big" risks, unless the risk to their own life circumstances was never actually that "big".
I'd say luck will sometimes make you rich, and being good at what you do will sometimes make you rich. Being good at what you do and also lucky has more of a chance of making you rich
It's *usually not entirely luck, you generally have to sort of know what you're doing
Obviously some people inherit wealth, people win the lottery, and there’s even a lot of evidence the correlations above start to fall apart at the very top end of the distribution implying some degree of luck. But to explain away every single person that’s rich is just someone who got lucky is not living in reality.
I was born in America and had to do absolutely nothing to be better off than at least 3 billion people. I'm very lucky and this system is completely unfair
Seems like the conclusion of the article ends up admitting luck plays a large role. From the article you linked:
"It is important to note that this research can not explain why a particular individual does well or poorly financially. Luck, timing, parents, choice of spouse and many other factors play important roles in shaping an individual's circumstances."
Here's the catch: When we say "wealthy" or "financially successful," those are really squishy terms. One person may mean the attorney down the street bringing in a cool quarter million each year from her practice. Another person may mean billionaires.
The linked study mentions correlations between IQ and earnings in the 5 figure range for the highest IQs. Wealth inequality is so out-of-control, the curve so steep, that the highest IQ people have an annual earnings advantage in the dollar range of what the super-rich collect in mere seconds.
The billionaires would need to have 5- and 6-digit IQ scores for the correlation to hold up. Bill Gates does seem pretty smart, but not that smart. Jeff Bezos seems slightly above average. Maybe. Elon Musk has an IQ above room temperature, for sure, but clearly not by that much.
So, given that wealth inequality is so stratospherically high, I read these memes as complaints about the super-rich, not your cousin who owns a large plumbing contractor business.
I guess if you think about it that way then everything is luck and we live in a deterministic world where none of your choices matter. That still wouldn’t support the argument in the OP meme though.