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> Surely being born to Harvard professors in America is the ‘luckiest’ play but most of them are not billionaires. Most people regardless of their background a
by smadge 7y ago
> Surely being born to Harvard professors in America is the ‘luckiest’ play but most of them are not billionaires.
Most people regardless of their background are not billionaires. Background certainly increases the chances, though.
> Strange idea. Elon musk started in SA.
Strange idea. There are people born into privilege all over the world. '"We were very wealthy," says Errol [Elon's father]. "We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe."' 'Errol returned to South Africa with a half-share in a Zambian emerald mine, which would help to fund his family's lavish lifestyle of yachts, skiing holidays, and expensive computers. ... It was that lifestyle, Errol says, that turned Elon into the kind of merchant adventurer who would later break the rules of the motoring business with Tesla, then go on to change spaceflight with SpaceX.'
- sdenton4 7y agoCorrect. I'm a little bit disheartened that no one in this thread has linked to actual data... There's a LOT of study on this topic: Social mobility in the US is measurably atrocious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...
- roenxi 7y agoLets just enumerate the options: 1) Success is determined by luck. People will complain that one person being more successful than another is grossly unfair. 2) Success is determined by extrinsic deterministic factors or uncontrolled intrinsic factors. People will complain that people aren't doing anything to 'earn' their success - it was in some sense inevitable. 3) Success is determined entirely by intrinsic deterministic factors that are in the control of the individual. More morally palatable, but suggestive that any gradient of accomplishments is actually reflective of a sort of selfish 'technique hoarding' (I'm not quite sure what to call it) by successful people. They should really be forced to share their techniques until everyone is equal. The underlying issue here in this thread isn't how success is achieved; it is the concept of different outcomes for people. Which is a good philosophical point but not practically useful - nobody can point to a system where equal outcomes have led to anything like the material comforts of a world where a gradient of different outcomes is encouraged. The world simply isn't very fair and we've all got to roll with that.
- someguyorother 7y agoThat said, some places with material comforts are more fair than others. Consider e.g. the Nordics vs somewhere like South Africa.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- stevespang 7y agoElon Musk was not the original brains behind Tesla, it was Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, Musk merely was "the money man", the one who was able to eventually wrest control from the founders.