It requires significantly greater extremes of wealth before luck plays a more frequent role. I know people well into 8-figures who were never anything more than blue-collar grinders. They worked hard and smart for decades with nothing that you could identify as being particularly lucky.
Can you elaborate? I don’t see how that’s possible unless they started work in their early 20s, have been maxing their retirement, never had an accident or have been unemployed, made incredible investment decisions, and are now 60+? Even then I dont see how it’s possible for blue collar folks. Well into 8 figures is like … at least 30 million.
Having been involved in small businesses, it's exhausting and often times it's simply impossible to transition from "doing" to "overseeing" (hiring people to do things is much harder than you'd imagine) and there are plenty of easy ways to accidentally blow the whole thing up. But if it works out, it can work out really well.
I have a few of these in my extended family and seen how they've done it over my life. It is repeatable but I don't think many people would put in the level of work required and it is a slow, long game. Maxing retirement is easier but it also won't buy you beautiful estates on three continents. The people that do this also never really stop doing it in my experience, their work becomes a part of who they are.
How can you “hard work” yourself into any of that?
Blue collar grinds to wealth are mostly fantasy. There is a large amount of luck involved: friends/family helping build the business, market conditions, location, etc. That hard work is also required doesn't mean luck didn't play a role (and outsized at that).
Being born in, or allowed passage into, a society that allowed one to do so in the first place is considerably lucky.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/warren-buffett-says-being-a-...
Simply avoiding major adverse life events is also a form of luck, as are a whole host of other environmental factors.
Besides that, one must be incredibly lukcy to land a FAANG job. Every applicant knows they have to do the leetcode grind and be up on their highly scalable distributed systems design knowledge. There are hundreds of thousands of wanna be FAANG engineers. To be one chosen out of any given round of hiring is sheer luck. The hard work is also required--but it's no harder than any other applicant worked.
It is not about working hard. It is about working smart, i.e. working on the right things. You choose those things, it is not luck.
You're making a distinction without difference. I literally had no idea whether the company I work for was even going to go public, much less how successful (or not) it would have been. There was no skill or intelligence involved in picking it. It was pure luck.
No lotteries there.
Success is mostly attributable to luck, and ignoring that is just an exercise in outsized ego & shows a sense of agency that borders on the absurd.
Did they "come across" it in their mom's basement?
> The fact that they were born with the genetics to be smart enough to contribute to it was fully within their control?
You don't need to be a genius to be successful. Doing drugs and alcohol is also sure to reduce your smarts.
> The fact that they weren't killed in a car accident when they were 12 was due to their agency?
You can blame your parents for your life up until 18. After that, it's up to you.
> Success is mostly attributable to luck, and ignoring that is just an exercise in outsized ego & shows a sense of agency that borders on the absurd.
Baloney. Successful people 1) make their own luck 2) make it easy for luck to find them.
No, they came across it by being in the right place at the right time, supported by habits and behaviours that were mostly determined by their environment.
> You don't need to be a genius to be successful. Doing drugs and alcohol is also sure to reduce your smarts.
Some people are just not born with the brains to "make it". I know people who will never be able to contribute to a high growth field like ours who are excellent nurses, childcare workers and teachers. This, yet again, isn't decided by agency but by circumstance.
> You can blame your parents for your life up until 18. After that, it's up to you.
I'll remember that the next time a drunk driver tbones me.
> Baloney. Successful people 1) make their own luck 2) make it easy for luck to find them.
Our attitudes, talents and disposition are a sum of the actions we have taken, and experiences that have influenced us. Those actions are informed by our previous attitudes, talents and disposition. The experiences aren't in our control completely either. It's a feedback loop that we have minimal control over.
You can't honestly tell me that you'd come to the exact same conclusion that you are now if you hadn't had gone through what made you you. Just as I couldn't claim to come to my conclusion if I didn't have my experiences.
You're obviously successful mate. Just remember that even if some people can make it to your position, that doesn't mean everyone will. Most people do the best they can given the hand they're dealt, and that's okay. Enjoy your full house.
Yeah, I can. There is nothing particularly special about me or my background (lower middle class). I know lots of people with the same attitudes I have - all have survived failure and went on to success.
> I'll remember that the next time a drunk driver tbones me.
My dad told me he was once driving on a 2 lane country road, when a drunk passed him at high speed in a corvette. There was a stop light up ahead, and the drunk stopped at the light. My dad cautiously stopped about a quarter mile behind him. Good thing he did, because the drunk took off at full throttle in reverse.
More generally, there is a technique called "defensive driving", which is not merely following the traffic laws, but keeping an eye out for threats. I don't drive drunk, I don't get in a car with drunk drivers, I watch for erratic drivers and stay well clear, I wear my seat belt tight at all times (that one saved my life), and when I brake I check my rear view mirror, and have pulled off on the shoulder as the driver behind me hit the guy in front of me. I look both ways when crossing an intersection, even when I've got the green. I stay off the road on New Years Eve, and am generally on extra alert on the road after the bars close.
> It's a feedback loop that we have minimal control over.
You can change your thoughts and attitudes. They are under your control.
People aren't doing the best they can if they believe their lives are victims of chance rather than consequences of their choices.
I bet if I knew the details of your life, I could point out the choices you made that decided things for you.
Yes, however those attitudes aren't derived from the ether are they? They'd be informed by circumstance and background. You can "choose" to take an attitude towards something much like a rock "chooses" to fall when dropped. If your prior beliefs and experiences would have led you down the same rationalisation for that choice every time, is it actually a choice?
> re: defensive driving Defensive driving covers both how to avoid bad situations and how to recover from them IIRC. The implication there being that defensive driving is risk mitigation, not elimination. You're still relying on factors outside of your control to keep yourself safe.
> You can change your thoughts and attitudes. They are under your control.
idk man, hormones are a bitch and genetics predisposing people to addiction and suicide say otherwise. You do the best you can, but looking at every situation and stating that everything is a consequence of choice is assuming that some people's faculties aren't compromised from the start. Things like CBT can help, but not everyone is self aware enough to understand that cognitive distortions exist let alone treat them.
> People aren't doing the best they can if they believe their lives are victims of chance rather than consequences of their choices.
I'm sure you would find dozens of people per successful person with the same mindset as you described, purely due to a knowledge or talent gap. They'd see the same choice, make the wrong one where we'd make the right one and then suffer for it. Feedback loop, little control.
> I bet if I knew the details of your life, I could point out the choices you made that decided things for you.
So could I, but only because I made the bad choices based on the available information and influences in the first place. It's a feedback loop.
I mean, I eat dinner every night now so it's not like I'm not successful.
People choose their attitudes. I changed several of mine that were unhelpful.
> hormones are a bitch and genetics predisposing people to addiction and suicide say otherwise
I never said making choices was easy.
> I made the bad choices based on the available information and influences in the first place
It's always someone else's fault? The Marines have no tolerance for excuses. One takes responsibility. I'm not a Marine, but I admire them. I've had the privilege of working with some, and enjoyed their "no excuses" attitude and behavior. I'm not surprised the Marines are winners.
> it's not like I'm not successful
You also get to choose what success means for you.
The literal idea that people can change is one you have to learn on either reflection or outside influence. You do realise that, right? If that idea isn't in your vocabulary, it just isn't an option.
>> hormones are a bitch and genetics predisposing people to addiction and suicide say otherwise
> I never said making choices was easy.
When in that position, the most "logical" choice is usually a hit or a noose. It feels like you ignored the point about reasoning capacity being compromised in the first place due to whatever reason. Alternatively - I met a street preacher who was convinced god wanted him to do things he didn't want to (homelessness, etc..). Did he meaningfully have a choice, or does this fall under the "no excuses" doctrine too?
>> I made the bad choices based on the available information and influences in the first place
> It's always someone else's fault?
I'm not asserting fault here. I'm just talking about state diagrams.
Are you implying that people can make choices without knowing they exist? You only learn about possibilities and consequences from either external influence or experience. The mere idea of "no excuses" expects people to grow from their _previous experience_. You know, taking feedback from previous experience and having it inform future ones. Coming to reasonable conclusions based on that experience. It's a feedback loop.
> You also get to choose what success means for you.
I mean, besides my issue with the whole choose thing yeah, expectations for success moderate what you consider successful.
Yes.
> You only learn about possibilities and consequences from either external influence or experience.
You can choose to do research.
I’m wealthy now: very wealthy by any standard (mid 7-figure net worth). I came from humble beginnings (nearly homeless frequently as a youth with a single mom), but I am quite intelligent (PhD in physics) and I worked hard. I would have retired with the same 401k any other white collar worker would have but for the sheer luck of choosing the right company at the right time to win an IPO lottery. I wouldn’t have got hired without the work I put in: but there’s no doubt in my mind that my wealth is the product of luck more than that work. Literally billions of people worked harder than I have in that same period of time and have nothing but poverty to show for it. But to hear my engineer peers talk you’d think luck was negligible. They simply don’t want to discount their hard work and bias toward putting much more weight on it than is merited