1378 Productivity vs. Luck

The most productive, hard-working, intelligent guy in the world can’t produce 20 times more than another productive, hard-working, intelligent guy. Anything more than that is simply a jackpot. Jeff Bezos isn’t smarter, wiser, or more experienced than me, and he didn’t work harder or longer. In fact, I wrote a White paper in 1993 while at Microsoft, titled “Buying Blue Jeans on the Internet.” It was ignored to Microsoft’s discredit because they could have been Amazon. It was chance that Bezos got a Vulture Capitalist who recognized his concept and had endlessly deep pockets to finance the company for 20 years while losing money to discourage competition; in fact, Amazon’s the worst kind of predatory Capitalism. Bezos gets credit for the part of his success that wasn’t luck but that doesn’t make him better than a million other people who could have done the same thing given the circumstances. Some percentage of capable & productive people also get fabulously lucky, and their liberty means the rewards are theirs during their lifetime, but our understanding, respect & forbearance ends with them, not their heirs. Don’t enshrine luck into an aristocracy with unfettered inheritance. If a lucky-productive person acts nepotistic during their lifetime, that’s bad enough, taking opportunity from more meritorious candidates, but extending luck & nepotism into infinite generations is society-destroying.