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Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

nautil.us

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Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#131

Post by Hasu »

chrishacken wrote: post #68

Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think any one denies the role luck plays in one's success or not. However, to completely discard effort and determination is selling everyone short. I'm running a successful company partially because of "luck", I happened to start it at the perfect time, but also because I pour every ounce of money and time I have into it. My nights and weekends don't exist. Some people aren't willing to…

This is exactly what the article is talking about. You're not acknowledging how much of your success comes from luck, you see yourself working hard and you don't like being told you're lucky. You're not only lucky because you started your business at the correct time, you're also lucky because you had the resources and connections to be able to start a company in the first place. Most people never have that opportunity.

I have no doubt that you work hard and put in the hours. But part of the reason that you do that is because you've been lucky. I'm sure you know that most business ventures fail. Some of those businesses, maybe the people there didn't work hard enough, and that's why they failed. A lot of them did work really hard, though, and they failed anyway, for myriad other reasons. Many people work hard and fail anyway. That doesn't exactly encourage further hard work. You're lucky that your hard work is turning into success.

The position that "You are able to make your own luck to an extent" is one of extreme privilege that can't exist without having already had loads of luck that you didn't make yourself. You wouldn't tell people starving in Africa and India that they're just not working hard enough to make their own luck, would you?

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#133

Post by downandout »

iagreeentirely wrote: post #127
downandout wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because breaking out of poverty is a hard thing to do. It is certainly possible, beginning with a focus on achieving at a high level early in school (which can be a difficult task when dealing with life issues imposed by poverty). Doing extremely well in high school, which can lead to college, scholarships, etc. is one of the few exits on the freeway to adult poverty for impoverished children. Once that ship has sail…

I would disagree with your luck statement. I broke out of poverty. My parents were both unskilled labor, we were on assistance at least once that I can recall. Part of what allowed me to escape is luck. Yes it required that I developed early and so was ahead of my peers in education. It also required hard work to capitalize on that lead. However, what kept more than one of my cohorts from escaping was bad luck. A fam…

In my original comment, I said that there's no reason to be poor, with a couple of exceptions - including bad luck. With hard work and discipline, you don't need to have especially good luck to break out of poverty, but yes, any bad luck can wreak havoc on the life of anyone in almost any socioeconomic circumstance. This is why it's still important to have social safety nets, even if the general public doesn't like the fact that these nets will save both the very unlucky and irresponsible people/those that simply don't want to contribute to society.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#134

Post by mac01021 »

jcoffland wrote: post #86
mac01021 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to implement a consumption tax is to measure everyone's income and then subtract out whatever they've saved in the bank or otherwise invested. That doesn't mean such a tax is not ridiculous for other reasons, though.

There are plenty of ways to scam such a system. For example, you could create a phony investment fund which always collapsed at the end of the year creating a loss which hid your expenditures.

That might be true. I don't actually know how much more auditing of funds and brokerages than what goes on already would have to happen in order to prevent that sort of thing.

I don't think the problem is obviously insurmountable, though.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#135

Post by guscost »

osti wrote: post #13
Raphmedia wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather believe in Existentialism. I come from a very poor background. Much of my childhood friends are either dead, in prison or working minimum wage. If I would have "acknowledged" the truth, like most of them did, I would have ended in the same position. Humans are not animals. We can evolve of our own free will. Statistics do not apply at the individual level.

And what caused you to not acknowledge the so called truth. Determinism implies that even this acknowledgment was beyond your control, even though you feel like it wasn't.

Aaaand you've just disappeared into a philosophical rabbit hole.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#136

Post by dv_dt »

ergothus wrote: post #33

My father and I have somewhat productive political conversations: He's fiscally conservative, I tend towards the liberal side of the scale. Drilling in to find what we really disagree about, it seems to boil down to two concepts: (1) I view success as a matter of luck that your effort can make better or worse. He views effort as the single most important deciding factor in success in life (2) I'm willing to tolerate…

There is a saying about seniority type systems that goes: The longer you live with the seniority system, the more you grow to like it. I think it applies somewhat here in that you are more likely to believe that effort always yields rewards if you were were always rewarded for your efforts.

I think by demographics, your father was likely in a generation that was much more often in a position to be consistently rewarded for their efforts. The generation that was at certain ages in the Great depression, or the dotcom crash, and more recently the Great Recession has a different formative experience than experiences in the Baby boom generation.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#137

Post by iagreeentirely »

downandout wrote: post #133
iagreeentirely wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree with your luck statement. I broke out of poverty. My parents were both unskilled labor, we were on assistance at least once that I can recall. Part of what allowed me to escape is luck. Yes it required that I developed early and so was ahead of my peers in education. It also required hard work to capitalize on that lead. However, what kept more than one of my cohorts from escaping was bad luck. A fam…

In my original comment, I said that there's no reason to be poor, with a couple of exceptions - including bad luck. With hard work and discipline, you don't need to have especially good luck to break out of poverty, but yes, any bad luck can wreak havoc on the life of anyone in almost any socioeconomic circumstance. This is why it's still important to have social safety nets, even if the general public doesn't like t…

Luck is luck. Whether you call it bad luck that they had an adversity to overcome that I did not, or good luck that I did not have that adversity, you're still talking about fortune.

In any case, whether you say it is that the parents are poor or that they are drug addicts or don't care or whatever, you're talking about things outside the control of the individual. I cannot choose the parents I was born to.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#138

Post by crdoconnor »

lisper wrote: post #128
crdoconnor wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than considering whether an 8% return is "reasonable" perhaps we should be considering whether distributing unearned income unequally is a good thing at all.

If you don't, how are you going to convince anyone to invest in anything?

1) By trusting in people's self interested desire to magnify their own earnings rather than their desire to capture the value of somebody else's work.

2) Via the same community which invests in roads, schools and (in other countries) hospitals.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#139

Post by MikeTLive »

the first thing that impacts your future success is the luck of the conditions of your birth. you have no control over this. hard work MAY make up for this, however having a "better" birth condition plus this same hard work does not negate the value of that first starting position.

this is lost on many successful people who wrongly attribute the entirety of their success to their own efforts and presume that anyone who is not successful has simply not worked hard.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#140

Post by [deleted] »

iagreeentirely wrote: post #137
downandout wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my original comment, I said that there's no reason to be poor, with a couple of exceptions - including bad luck. With hard work and discipline, you don't need to have especially good luck to break out of poverty, but yes, any bad luck can wreak havoc on the life of anyone in almost any socioeconomic circumstance. This is why it's still important to have social safety nets, even if the general public doesn't like t…

Luck is luck. Whether you call it bad luck that they had an adversity to overcome that I did not, or good luck that I did not have that adversity, you're still talking about fortune. In any case, whether you say it is that the parents are poor or that they are drug addicts or don't care or whatever, you're talking about things outside the control of the individual. I cannot choose the parents I was born to.

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