3 ms·

You can't see the luck in having a life experience that motivated you to become financially successful? I mean, I know financially successful people and they go

You can't see the luck in having a life experience that motivated you to become financially successful? I mean, I know financially successful people and they go around judging poor and middle class people for their bad financial decisions, and I'm just thinking--well, maybe they did not have the education to help them do that, or they did not have a life experience that woke them up, because it is actually possible to be perfectly content with being poor/middle class or for it to never occur to themselves to question their circumstances? Already, we can make an example of you--you can't think beyond your own circumstances, and you think that just because you made a choice to better your life and succeeded in it, then people whom you don't deem successful must simply be choosing to not make the choices that you did. I'm sorry, but even if you come from a painful background, that doesn't give you a pass to say that your path to get where you are is supposed to be the same for everyone.

AmericanChopper 4y ago
Luck determined the circumstances I grew up in, I didn’t control than. My choice to lift myself out of that environment has nothing to do with luck at all, that was explicitly a deliberate choice I made. My mechanism for accomplishing it had nothing to do with luck either, I moved out of home (and subsequently removed myself from that environment) by getting a job as a bartender.
- kiba 4y ago
  Pretty much at every stage of your life involves luck. You can't merely escape it by exercising any agency, only make some outcome more probable than others.
  - AmericanChopper 4y ago
    Everything is up to chance if you take such a reductivist view. But if you choose to do the things that increase your chances of success, and choose to avoid the things that decrease your chances of success, then success is merely a matter of time.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 4y ago
  It's still luck that you had: 1. The ability to move out of your house. There are places in the world where people don't have as much freedom of movement because they are not as democratic as countries in the west. 2. Been hired as a bartender. Need I say that this is not a choice that you made, but by your then-employer, or that it was possible for such a job to exist in the first place because you found another town with enough economy to create such jobs, while many other places in the world are not as fortunate? Good for you wherever you are in your life right now, but I hate to break it to you buddy--you didn't do everything yourself, and you were lucky to have an environment that enabled your growth and to have other people to play a part in your success.
  - AmericanChopper 4y ago
    I have worked across many places in the developing world, and every place I’ve been to (apart from perhaps North Korea) has opportunities for people who want to improve their own lives. In many places the path would look different than it does in the west, but I know hundreds of people who have pulled themselves into the middle classes of emerging economies simply through hard work and commitment. Getting a basic, entry level, no skill job has barely anything to do with luck. I guess I’m lucky that I was born, and that my mind and body works. But that’s all the luck you need to attain that level of success, nearly everywhere in the world.
    - AstralStorm 4y ago
      If you can call working many hours, creating nothing, earning just enough to get by a success. It also ignores others - human relationships. This is why so many people push it back onto their children to have it better, but it typically does not work for either them or their kids. Having minimal means to survive, including health, is but a necessary condition for being a whole, successful person.
      - AmericanChopper 4y ago
        That’s a rather smug and ignorant way of looking at somebody pulling themself out of what was basically a ghetto. Being able to take financial responsibility for myself was a tremendous success for me at the time, and it was an absolutely essential first step for me to take in building a much better life for myself.
WalterBright 4y ago
> must simply be choosing to not make the choices that you did And they are. I see a lifetime of people making choices.

AmericanChopper 4y ago

Luck determined the circumstances I grew up in, I didn’t control than. My choice to lift myself out of that environment has nothing to do with luck at all, that was explicitly a deliberate choice I made. My mechanism for accomplishing it had nothing to do with luck either, I moved out of home (and subsequently removed myself from that environment) by getting a job as a bartender.

kiba 4y ago
Pretty much at every stage of your life involves luck. You can't merely escape it by exercising any agency, only make some outcome more probable than others.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  Everything is up to chance if you take such a reductivist view. But if you choose to do the things that increase your chances of success, and choose to avoid the things that decrease your chances of success, then success is merely a matter of time.
rTX5CMRXIfFG 4y ago
It's still luck that you had: 1. The ability to move out of your house. There are places in the world where people don't have as much freedom of movement because they are not as democratic as countries in the west. 2. Been hired as a bartender. Need I say that this is not a choice that you made, but by your then-employer, or that it was possible for such a job to exist in the first place because you found another town with enough economy to create such jobs, while many other places in the world are not as fortunate? Good for you wherever you are in your life right now, but I hate to break it to you buddy--you didn't do everything yourself, and you were lucky to have an environment that enabled your growth and to have other people to play a part in your success.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  I have worked across many places in the developing world, and every place I’ve been to (apart from perhaps North Korea) has opportunities for people who want to improve their own lives. In many places the path would look different than it does in the west, but I know hundreds of people who have pulled themselves into the middle classes of emerging economies simply through hard work and commitment. Getting a basic, entry level, no skill job has barely anything to do with luck. I guess I’m lucky that I was born, and that my mind and body works. But that’s all the luck you need to attain that level of success, nearly everywhere in the world.
  - AstralStorm 4y ago
    If you can call working many hours, creating nothing, earning just enough to get by a success. It also ignores others - human relationships. This is why so many people push it back onto their children to have it better, but it typically does not work for either them or their kids. Having minimal means to survive, including health, is but a necessary condition for being a whole, successful person.
    - AmericanChopper 4y ago
      That’s a rather smug and ignorant way of looking at somebody pulling themself out of what was basically a ghetto. Being able to take financial responsibility for myself was a tremendous success for me at the time, and it was an absolutely essential first step for me to take in building a much better life for myself.

WalterBright 4y ago

> must simply be choosing to not make the choices that you did And they are. I see a lifetime of people making choices.