When I was a kid I pressed the “return coin” button on a vending machine at a rest stop and 50¢ came out. Gotta check every single vending machine now.
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.
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 don’t think it’s immense privilege. Like when Zuckerberg started Facebook he was 19. When I was 19 I lived with my parents and had almost no costs. I also just partied and didn’t even try to start anything.
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.
Please reflect on the fact that until you joined the discussion,
Please lets not be condescending here. I will rephrase, instead of success I will say wealth. I used the two interchangeably as many people judge your success based on your wealth.
we didn’t talk about equating success to luck.
Didn’t you say this here.
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.
Wealth itself is a stronger predictor for future wealth than individual performance.
That quote of mine doesn’t talk about success, nor wealth itself for that matter. You’re ignoring everything in the message to argue against a statement that was never made in the first place.
Our neighborhood has the Magical Chicken Wing bush. The dog thoroughly inspected it for months afterwards, and still checks on it now and then just in case.
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.
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
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…)
The joke is US conservatives like to blame absolutely everything on Biden, especially “lax border security” like what terrorists exploited at the northern border yesterday, as some pieces of shit claimed before the facts were in (Lake since deleted it, Kinzinger was a hero and snagged a screen cap first).
I tried to correct someone’s grammar and someone else wrote a multi-paragraph response on why “should of” is an acceptable alternative to “should have”.
There was a 82 year old man who had to pee and couldn’t hold it in, so he went to a train track to do it. While he was pissing, a cow from the air crushed him. His death certificate literally says “Death by a flying cow”. It turned out that cows were crossing a track and the train hit one of the cows full speed, so it was sent flying right towards the man. He ended up passing away.
memes
Oldest
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.