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> I'll show you ten people who who attempted a safe boring white collar job, tried to run a local service business, or planned to save aggressively over decade,
by ux-app 9y ago
> I'll show you ten people who who attempted a safe boring white collar job, tried to run a local service business, or planned to save aggressively over decade, but did not achieve $1mm net worth
For the purpose of this discussion that's irrelevant.
As you yourself stated
> [Survivorship bias is] about falsely attributing a causal relationship between the people's actions and their success
Given that within a 50km radius of wherever you currently are in the world there are almost certainly 1000s of people with >$1mm net worth it would be absurd to think that they achieved this outcome through actions which had little or no causal relationship to their success.
The numbers speak for themselves. In Australia where I'm from there are approx 234,000 high net worth individuals (HNWI) (defined as having more than US$1 million ($1.35 million) in investable assets, excluding their primary residence, collectibles and consumables). We have 8 capital cities. Using a simple naive, even, distribution gives approx 30,000 people per capital city that fit this definition.
This means that being "rich" is relatively common. If it's common, then it's silly to think that all these people got rich through actions that have little or no
>causal relationship between the people's actions and their success
The uncomfortable conclusion which follows from this is that if you're not rich by this definition you're not trying hard enough.
Edit:
and just to put those numbers into further context, In AU there are approx 70,000 flu cases in 2015. In the same year approx 9,000 new HNWI joined the ranks. Becoming "rich" is almost as common as getting the flu!
- ryandrake 9y agoYou're talking 1% of Australia's population. But, hey, let's assume that counts as "common." What I'm hearing is "since outcome X is commonly found happening for people, then outcome X must be attributable to some action taken by those people." I'm not sure how you are concluding this. Cancer is common, too--much more common than becoming a millionaire. Is a cancer diagnosis attributable to someone's actions or is it just chance? Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not.
- ux-app 9y ago> I'm not sure how you are concluding this. 1 in 100 Australians are in the millionaire club. By contrast winning the Powerball Lottery has odds of 76,767,600:1 To win Powerball you need "only" to match 7 numbers from a pool of 40 possible choices. By contrast to become a millionaire you had to make 1000s of individual decisions along the way and yet every year approx 10,000 new millionaires join the ranks. How many Powerball winners are there per year? 1 maybe? It may be comforting to think that luck plays a large part in people becoming rich, but logic dictates otherwise.
- BoiledCabbage 9y agoThe fact that something is more common, doesn't mean it's not still largely luck. Ignore the powerball and look at scratch off lottery winners. There are thousands of people who 'win' at it every day but that doesn't mean it's not luck. You're mixing frequency with luck. Something can occur frequently and still be heavily influenced by luck.
- taneq 9y ago> For the purpose of this discussion that's irrelevant. Actually, no, that's precisely the discussion we're having. > In Australia where I'm from there are approx 234,000 high net worth individuals (HNWI) (defined as having more than US$1 million ($1.35 million) in investable assets, excluding their primary residence, collectibles and consumables). Which is where, precisely? > We have 8 capital cities. Using a simple naive, even, distribution... Have you actually been to Australia? Our population distribution, let alone wealth distribution, is anything but even.
- ux-app 9y agoI live is Australia. I used an even distribution for simplicity's sake. Obviously the wealth is skewed toward Melb/Syd.