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Also, building a company is not all or nothing. You could even shoot smaller and likely get to $1M in revenue for a $5M or so company. The odds are much better.
by econner 8y ago
Also, building a company is not all or nothing. You could even shoot smaller and likely get to $1M in revenue for a $5M or so company. The odds are much better.
- ronilan 8y agoThe odds of winning a lottery (lets say the Mega Millions or the Diversity Visa) are, to an extent, evenly distributed. The odds of succeeding in a social endeavour (lets say a business or a Green Card obtained via application) are not. While on average the odds of the latter (the business) may be better, for a given person (which is always me and never an average person) the odds of the former (the lottery) may actually be much higher. On a side note, while it may seem "un-meritocratic" to the HN crowd, having lotteries as gateways to social mobility and resource allocation is a decent idea.
- sean2 8y agoMy concern for thinking of lotteries as a societal benefit is that my (in no way perfect) observations is that the lowest in income, and education tend to <i>contribute</i> the most money towards the lottery which may have had a greater net benefit if each ticket buyer had spent their buy in price on themselves. Also consider that poorer lottery winners are often ill equipped to deal with their winnings and frequently lose the entire sum of money within a few years; they may enjoy spending the money, but it doesn't lift a winners children and community out of a cycle of poverty as I would normally think of "social mobility". Maybe we should randomly force people to get an MBAs instead.