Okay, well I apologize if I misinterpreted what you're saying. When you say > Designing laws around statistical outliers seem idiotic. The Dubai prince case is

Okay, well I apologize if I misinterpreted what you're saying. When you say > Designing laws around statistical outliers seem idiotic. The Dubai prince case is certainly not the norm. I take you to be implying that outside of outliers, wealth is largely a matter of hard work, and poverty is largely a matter of laziness. But that's the claim that I'm not aware of any evidence for. The Earth is full of extremely poor people who work nearly every waking hour. There is no doubt some portion of the variance in wealth that's explained by hours worked after you control for other variables, but if your claim is that hours worked is a strong predictor of wealth, then that requires empirical support. It seems unlikely to me, but I'm not ruling it out.