Intelligence, conscientiousness, affluence/social capital- pick any two and you get success on average. That’s about all there is to it. Success could look like making a bunch of money, starting a business, doing research, making interesting art. The point is a smart, hard working person can pretty much choose to do anything and an intelligent person will do fine with an infinite runway regardless of work ethic, etc. To the extent that college used to be a strong signal for those attributes it was also a strong proxy for success. Continually expanding college weakens the signal and the proximate worth of a college degree. In so many words, college for everyone confuses cause for effect - cynically, it’s not universities that make people successful, it’s that people who will succeed in life are overwhelmingly selected by and go to college- moreover, better colleges tend to matriculate people with greater quantities of those attributes. If college ceased to exist, the same cohort would still come out on top. See also, the vast majority of graduates don’t work in their major (education as a signal).

This is painting a bit too broadly - a degree still shows that you can jump through pointless hoops which is valuable to employers and some degrees are valuable in and off themselves because they gate professions that are necessary for society (medicine/engineering). I’d also point out that colleges historically ignored large pools of candidates from certain demographics for political reasons. I suppose there is probably some learning that manages to happen once in a while too, which is worth something if not the cost to society of fueling the higher ed apparatus.

> Intelligence, conscientiousness, affluence/social capital

Agreed that these are important factors in success, but in practice they don't seem to be equivalent in importance.

An unsuccessful person who lacks intelligence or conscientiousness but was born into affluence in the US is more likely to remain higher on the socioeconomic ladder than a successful person who has both intelligence and conscientiousness but was born poor.

That said, I believe that with hard work and intelligence it is possible for someone to move up no matter their starting point and we should celebrate the famous outliers who lept up the ladder. But it's also responsible to acknowledge that they are famous because they are outliers and that most people seem to end up within a rung or two of their parents.

> An unsuccessful person who lacks intelligence or conscientiousness but was born into affluence in the US is more likely to remain higher on the socioeconomic ladder than a successful person who has both intelligence and conscientiousness but was born poor.

Are you using the same scales here? If the affluent person was 1% you should take a top 1% person in terms of intelligence or grit. If the affluent person was top 25% in intelligence then the other person should be in a top 25% income family. (top 25% intelligence isn't even 110 IQ, so not high at all)

It isn't fair to take a bottom 10% person with top 2% intelligence and compare that to a top 0.1% in terms of wealth and top 25% in terms of intelligence, but that is the kind of argument people usually makes.

It's a bit hard to use a consistent scale given the non-linear utility of money/intelligence/grit and the subjectivity of measuring the latter two.

But another way of thinking about it is to look at the research on economic mobility. [1] For example, someone whose parents were in the top quintile is more likely to end up in the top quintile than anywhere else, followed by the next-highest quintile, etc and is much less likely to end up in the bottom quintile. Whereas someone born in the bottom quintile is more likely to remain in the bottom quintile, followed by the next-lowest, etc and is much less likely to end up in the top quintile.

One way to interpret that data is through the lens of the just-world hypothesis. This assumes that the United States is a meritocracy and that people will eventually end up at the correct quintile based on their personal effort and characteristics. And if there happens to be generational social stratification then it's probably due to intelligence and grit being hereditary.

Another way to interpret it is that the people with resources have instituted rules and systems that increase socioeconomic inertia so that they can pass as much of their status on to their children as they can while still allowing for enough mobility to prevent a revolution.

Having met, worked with, and taught people in the top and bottom quintiles, I do not find the first hypothesis compelling. That's not to say there is no movement, and those people I have met who have climbed the furthest are also some of the most intelligent, hard-working people I know. But telling them fairy-tales about meritocracies is not helpful -- they need to be prepared to fight long odds and work significantly harder to climb up than someone who is basically already there.

[1] https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/~/media/images/...

>I have not noticed a strong relationship between "the ability to DO THINGS" and someone's social or economic status.

Are we talking status relative to others or relative to the starting position?

There will always be the deadbeat child of someone wealthy who's still wealthier than you but all the "doers" I know have climbed the socioeconomic ladder at least a couple rungs in their adult lives.

The quoted statement was referring to absolute socioeconomic status.

I agree that relative movement is possible and I also know a lot of extremely hard-working people (both rich and poor) who have been successful and climbed a rung or two in their lives.

My point was more that the average wealthy person I know doesn't seem to have a particularly greater or lesser "ability to do things" compared to the poor people I know. Whereas if the "ability to do things" was really a substantial socioeconomic equalizer then I would have expected that DO-ers would be over-represented the higher up the socioeconomic ladder you climb instead of evenly distributed at each level. Perhaps it's different at the very top and the very bottom?

(As a contrast, in the military I found a positive correlation between an officer's rank and their ability to do things. Most of the colonels I worked with had an impressive intellect and drive, and even moreso with the generals I met.)

"Equalizer" was probably the wrong word. It's probably more like, you start somewhere, and do-ing is one of the biggest components in the delta between where you start and where you end. That doesn't mean that in one generation you overcome someone else's head start. But it's still a good, beneficial thing to strive after.

I would agree that do-ing is a major component of the delta, along with ability and a fair bit of luck. I guess my mental model would be that someone's socioeconomic status often comes down to:

starting point + (hard work * ability * luck)

(where any one of those may be positive or negative)

The real problem with this line of thinking is this conversation needs to revolve around things we can put on a political agenda, and there's no way to put "make more kids that do things" on a political agenda. We can put access to education on that agenda, and did, back in the 90s.

I don't know what the next societal band-aid will be, but it probably won't get us any closer to actual equality of opportunity. Still doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

Access to capital? The small business loan system could be modernized to support a wider variety of businesses, could incorporate grants, could be more generous - especially if we wanted to advantage certain groups - like first time entrepreneurs.

"Are we talking status relative to others or relative to the starting position?"

And what of it? There has never been a time in human history where starting position has mattered less. NONE!

Don't just take my word for it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOiQgleiRtU

Also - think of what a better place it would be if that Don Lemon who was tired of race bating had survived and had got his wish? How sad we are where we are today - and ironically he's one of the front line contributors to it too!

OP said it's the great equalizer, which I take to mean tending to make equal, not make equal - any more than education ever did.

Class still exists with its advantages, from BS (e.g. who you know) to real (e.g. security to invest in yourself long-term).

Your anecdotes not withstanding, it is a myth that most rich people inherited their wealth.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/majority-of-the-worlds-riche...

Maybe you don't trust this source but there are many others like it.

This bizarre push to make everyone think that there's no meritocracy, which I guess goes hand in hand with the fashionableness of being a victim, is cynical poison being driven by people with radical political agendas.

Your example is like saying playing NBA basketball makes you taller.

His point was that there are plenty of people that don’t become wealthy even though they work hard and have hustle. And there are plenty of wealthy people that didn’t need to work hard to get it.

Looking at the self-made wealthy will select for people that “do”, but that does not imply that “do” makes you wealthy.

For any given individual "do" is almost surely better than "not do". That's the choice facing an individual as they contemplate how to live their life.

I completely agree. But I there's a middle ground between "nothing you do matters" and "you can accomplish absolutely anything if you put your mind to it". People at either extreme of the spectrum are more likely to end up disappointed with their lives than someone in the middle.

I have just decided to be four inches taller than I am /s.

I have depressed friends that I believe can’t reasonably be expected to just decide to “do”, and I have other friends that seem to naturally have an abundance of “do”.

Yes, we can learn the skill, or we can be taught the skill, but otherwise your statement seems unrealistic to me.

I think one important thing that we, as a society, need to respect is that the amount of "do" it takes a given person to do a given task is very different from the amount of "do" it takes another person to do that same task.

For example, it may take somebody who's depressed the same amount of "do" to get out of bed and eat a yogurt as it takes a go-getter, "neurotypical" [0] person to get up, cook a healthy breakfast, go to the gym, take a shower, get to work, and get through their first couple tasks of the day.

[0]: I put "neurotypical" in scare quotes because I'm not sure neurotypical is even really a thing, it's just the term we use for people whose mental makeup fits well into our society and work culture.

IMO both you and GP are correct, ultimately whether the decision to "do" helps or not relies on individual circumstance and context plus on chance factors.

Im not sure what your point is. Your statement

>>> His point was that there are plenty of people that don’t become wealthy even though they work hard and have hustle. And there are plenty of wealthy people that didn’t need to work hard to get it.

is a trivially correct, banal point. The parent comment was implying with his "I know even more people who are rich and lazy" comment something that, while it may be true for the people he encounters, is not true for society at large.

You said “it is a myth that most rich people inherited their wealth”, which you introduced as a subject, and I don’t think his comment was trying to say anything about your point exactly, either way. He said he was talking anecdotally, i.e. he was explicitly talking about his experiences which are true by definition, and not generalising to what your experience might be.

"The parent comment was implying [...] something that, while it may be true for the people he encounters, is not true for society at large."

Do you have a source for that?

> it is a myth that most rich people inherited their wealth.

No one here has said that. More importantly, your link doesn't dispute that either. It simply says that billionaires, who are on the extreme, don't inherit most of their wealth -- despite the fact that 45% of them at least partially did so.

I've long argued that until we send all kids, rich and poor, to academies at birth with no further contact or tracing to their parents, we won't really understand the full impact of advantages bestowed by wealthy parents.

I have only met one of the "world's richest people" on the list you linked and he is very hard working but I think the conclusions drawn from extreme outliers may not be applicable more broadly.

I think perhaps we're talking about different things? I don't think it's fashionable to be a victim or that people have no control over their fate. Hard work (along with intellect and luck) generally helps people move up in life, and the people I know who have moved up the most in their lives are generally also the smartest and hardest working, so it would make logical sense that most people at the very top have worked hard to get there. After all, not many people out there can fall down a couple rungs and still be at the top of the ladder, right?

But beyond those extreme outliers, most people in the US (which ranks 27th in social mobility according to the world economic forum[1]) seem to end up within a rung or two of where they were born. So I suppose how "meritocratic" the US is probably depends on what you mean by the word.

[1] http://reports.weforum.org/social-mobility-report-2020/socia...

Would you please define "self-made"?

From your link: "“As our society has become more meritocratic, we’ve simply replaced an aristocracy based on title, class, race and gender with a new and equally persistent aristocracy based on genes, education and parenting,” Pearlstein continued. “Unless we are prepared to engage in extensive genetic reengineering, or require that all children be brought up in state-run boarding schools, we must acknowledge that we can never achieve full equality of opportunity.”"

These studies almost always point to a very limited set of the "wealthiest" for their study. And if you think about it, it's obvious that the very top of the pyramid will mostly have people who were able to concentrate wealth somehow, rather than inheritors. Often, inheritance is split between more than one person. That alone would account for a lot of inherited wealth not meeting an arbitrarily "wealthiest" category. So naturally there's going to be a lot of churn at the top.