Sure, but it's not analogous, because your scenario has significant downside. A person with the correct skills can choose to work at a charity or at say, a wel

Sure, but it's not analogous, because your scenario has significant downside. A person with the correct skills can choose to work at a charity or at say, a well paying software job. One choice gives them more money than the other and there is no luck involved. This is self evident really, I assume that you also do know this, but then it's confusing when people focus on luck as if most people are even playing the game at all. edit: Actually, that's probably a better way of framing it. The upper bound on wealth for a person is very much luck based, but almost no-one is operating remotely close to their skill cap, so in practice it doesn't matter that much. You might need luck to make a billion, but to make a few million just needs dedication barring some obvious handicaps such as e.g. being born in North Korea.