I hate the argument that boils down success to just being lucky. A person's success in life is due to many things like environment, opportunity, intelligence, and work ethic. Positive increases in those things are going to increase the odds of success, so I do agree with the rest of the author's arguments that the poor are at a disadvantage usually coming from a bad environment and an area that lacks much opportunity. Unfortunately the US government seems to be geared to taking care of the old rather than enriching the lives of the young.
>I hate the argument that boils down success to just being lucky
I don't think that that's the real argument being presented in the editorial. Rather, it's that for a large portion of humanity, success means overcoming tremendous odds. When your parents sit home and drink 22oz Milwaukee's Best Ice all day, how do you even learn what you need to do to be successful?
It also goes other way round. Just as bad behavior cause economical problems, economical problems cause social and behavioral problems.
If you live in a place with huge unemployment rates, not much to do and little hope for future, you are more likely to start drinking or get into trouble. The effect can be seen when local economy goes down the drain while the people stay in place - problems goes up usually.
To add to it, when people try and fail multiple time, they often give up entirely. Then they are unable to help themselves even if it is actually possible (learned helplessness). If your changes to succeed in whatever you have been trying as young were too low, you might have concluded that there is no point trying anymore.
The overall "temperature" in an area is the mean income of an area. Colder is poorer. You may be able to apply some heat here and there, but any source of heat (money) is drained and attempts to balance out with the ambient cold temperature. And given the expanse of a cold mass, a localized heat source is nary enough to raise the ambient temp by fractions of a degree.
This cold temp is what we would call a blight or distressed neighborhood. The way to fix this is to raise the temperature everywhere by broad injects of money/goods/services.
I agree. There are hundreds of millions of people born into the American middle class. There are tens of millions of people born into the "global 1%". On average, the richer are going to better, because you average out all other factors, like work ethic. So if I'm "floating" through life, putting in the average work into everything I do, I think it's pretty obvious that I'm going to benefit from having rich parents to save me from the random pitfalls that I may fall into.
However, the huge problem that I have with these arguments is that so many successful people are statistical outliers, in terms of hard work, natural talent, ect. They aren't going to follow the average behavior. Lionel Messi is not a good soccer player just because he got lucky. There were millions of people brought up with the same means, but through whatever personal work ethic he has, he's become one of the biggest statistical outliers in soccer. Sure, you could make the case that for "soft skill jobs" like CEO, luck comes into play quite a bit, but for someone like Mark Zuckerberg, he simply would not have gotten lucky if he didn't lock himself in his room and code for 6 hours a day at Phillips Exeter (which is something he actually did, he was very asocial, at least at Exeter). In the end, I think for the same reason OKCupid's match percentage is nearly useless in terms of finding a "soulmate", I think you can't really attribute average statistics to explain why someone was successful, they are both going to be outliers, "black swan events" to borrow from Nassim Taleb.
It is certainly true that productively developing a valuable skill set will set you apart from the vast majority. With a few helpful insights, the right attitude, and an ability to quickly overcome obstacles, you will be an exceptional person, without a doubt. If you assign credit for success to a person's attitude and perseverance, then certainly "luck" had little to do with it.
Where things get dicey is when you ask the next set of "whys". I.e., "why does this person have such a helpful attitude? why do they have such perseverance?". To what do we attribute these qualities? If it's genes, then it's luck (you can't take credit for your genes). If it's parenting, then it's luck (you can't take credit for your parenting).
Perhaps it's neither genes, nor parenting, but instead "spirit" or "will". So, whence these qualities? The person's "soul"? Something immaterial? Anyone who provides these kinds of answers is necessarily endorsing brain-mind dualism, which (near as anyone can tell) is almost surely false.
Does this mean that everyone can disclaim personal responsibility for their actions? Surely not. Choosing to believe in one's own agency in turn empowers one's own agency. But everyone's believing in a fiction, no matter how necessary or adaptive this fiction happens to be, doesn't render it true.
You are taking the concept of luck to a place where it has no meaning. Everyone alive is lucky Earth exists, that it did not get wiped out by an asteroid, that the climate is habitable, etc. In a world where everything is determined by just luck, the countries with the most people would have the most successful people. We can clearly see that is not true, the world's richest list is not dominated by the Chinese and Indians even though they contain a vast amount of the world's population.
> brain-mind dualism, which (near as anyone can tell) is almost surely false.
Professional philosophers might disagree with the certainty of your statement. Certainly, a substantial fraction of them do not agree with pure physicalism (as of a 2009 survey [0]).
So, what? Do you think the universe is deterministic (I'm guessing from your remark about brain-mind dualism)? Then doesn't that settle it - everything that happens to you is by chance, i.e. luck (if circumstances are fortunate)?
But isn't work ethic largely a product of "luck" based factors?
Namely intelligence (figuring out the link and steps required between working hard for low pay now and having a larger payoff later) and environmental factors.
For example a kid like Zuckerberg (with a dentist father and psychiatrist mother) is going to get get the message "hard work is rewarded" reinforced much more strongly than the son of a blue collar worker who worked hard at low pay for years and then got laid off after a work related injury.
a kid like Zuckerberg (with a dentist father and psychiatrist mother) is going to get get the message "hard work is rewarded" reinforced
I trust that Zuckerberg, a member of a prominent family in White Plains and a Harvard alum, knows full well that he owes his success to family and university networks. Hard work is for the peones.
Well, it's both. The smart part is working out where to apply one's limited capacity for work hard. Zuck could have followed in the footsteps of many college students (including many rich ones who don't need the money) and learnt work ethic by working hard at Mcdonalds during his time at Harvard.
Zuck figured out that working for free building a way for Harvad men to hobnob with each other was a better use of his time and resources.
There are also plenty of soccer players who worked hard, trained as much as they could and did not became famous players. The same goes for any well developed sport. Hard work is a must, but so is the right body type, support in make difference age and, well, luck.
