Successful people toss coins in games where the odds are in their favor. Saying if they win it's just luck is pedantically true, but if you keep playing those kind of games you'll win. Keep playing the lottery, and you will lose.
Successful people I know don't buy lottery tickets.
> Successful people I know don't buy lottery tickets.
Are we talking about typical "work hard, relatively successful people in middle class" or "extremely rich people" here? Because the latter, I can guarantee, is typically due to pure luck, despite all what we want to believe.
Gates, Bezos, Jobs, Musk, etc.? They were sitting at home, chillin' with a beer, and rubbed the bottle they bought from the thrift store, and Shazzam! 3 wishes each!
> Gates, Bezos, Jobs, Musk, etc.? They were sitting at home, chillin' with a beer, and rubbed the bottle they bought from the thrift store, and Shazzam! 3 wishes each!
If you read a little bit about what happened in each of their cases, they were at the right place at the right time (and with access to computing resources that most people did not have) usually before anyone else could be. That's what "luck" is all about. You couldn't have become Bill Gates 5 years after he was around. That does not mean that none of them had great skills or great ideas, but that's just not enough to become massively successful.
While generational shifts are a pre-condition to becoming _that_ wealthy, they're not enough. Plenty of people were alive then (and had the resources required to bet big), but there's only a handful of Gates and Bezos. To make it that big you need to:
1. be at a point in history where you can bet big
2. have the resources to do so
3. be right
4. put in the work
All are required. I feel like supporters overemphasise 3. & 4. and detractors hammer on 1. & 2.
Now, the good news is you don't need to reach tech-billionaire levels of worth - and virtually everyone here won't. If you're happy with an orders of magnitude lower net worth (which is still in the 99th percentile), there are other ways to get that which don't require 1. You still need 2,3 and 4. That's good news because there aren't many opportunities for 1. (off the top of my head, trends that _look_ like they'd fit the bill currently are crypto, VR, space stuff, fusion energy, ESG, human longevity)
5 years from now, you will rue today as you didn't see the opportunity in front of your face. Someone is in a garage right now becoming the next billionaire that you (and me) muffed.
Oh, but I have read about them. What they did was recognize the opportunity in front of them, that everyone else did not see.
Nobody remembers Lotus, which for many years was a much bigger company than Microsoft. Lotus eventually failed because of some terrible business decisions, not bad luck.
They also all worked their asses off.
Tim Patterson was another who was in the right place at the right time. Nobody remembers him. He wrote the original PC-DOS. He didn't know what he had, and sold it to Microsoft for a song.
Gary Kildall was in the right place at the right time. He blew it.
I was in the right place at the right time, several times. I blew it big time, because I did not recognize the opportunity. So have many others I personally know.
Want to look at Jobs again? He had not one, but three incredible success stories. The first Apple Co., Pixar, and the Apple we know today. With Pixar and Apple, he turned both companies from inevitable bankruptcy into incredible success.
Just want to chime in and say: samesies. I wish I could say more, but eh. Some of us were ready, willing, and able, and some circumstance or opportunity was unrecognized or ignored or not taken far enough. Probably a lot of us. But I also want to say that we cannot be reasonably bitter about this. Chin up, fella. We have witnessed miracles and wonders.
Under certain circumstances, playing a lottery is a completely rational idea. Even if mathematical expectation of a win is negative, taking into account utility function can turn it positive. After all, mathematical expectation of buying insurance is negative too, but we don't talk down on those who buy insurance.
I don't buy collision insurance on my car. Haven't for 40 years, because my car was totaled 40 years ago and the insurance payout was so meager I realized that self-insurance was a far better deal.
Buying insurance on appliances and other devices is a waste of money, too.
You are a fool if you believe you have much more chance than winning the lottery. You can play the lottery all your life and never win anything, and that's a hell of a lot more likely than gaining anything from it.
