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Comment by remus

9 hours ago

I suspect talent and hard work are pretty well correlated with becoming wealthy (say >$10m), but I think you then need a big injection of luck to take you from wealthy to ultra wealthy.

8 comments

remus

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scruple  8 hours ago

How many are born into it? If I think about the people that I personally know who are worth 8-figures or more they were each born into wealth. I wouldn't ever say that they also don't work hard and have talent, because they truly do, but it doesn't apply to their wealth.

alabastervlog  6 hours ago

Talent and hard work at what is what's missing from these discussions, I think.

I literally don't even know what kind of work I should do if I wanted to make a billion dollars. I think it's mostly delegating, and convincing people to give me ownership of things that throw off money that I get, or to invest in things for which I have such ownership so my ownership becomes more valuable. But in concrete terms, I don't even know what to do to make that happen, like, step 1 of that process, I have no idea. Just being talented at programming and working hard at it (more talented than I am, and working harder than I do, even) doesn't seem to be a great way to get there. You have to focus on and have talent for activities that cause capital to end up owned by you, and I have zero idea where to even start with that kind of thing.

Meanwhile, I was socialized as a kid into a smear of multiple Fussellian "Prole" categories, plus his "Middle", so I have to hype myself up and still feel bad just to hire a plumber and not hover around them because I feel like I ought to be helping (and definitely feel like I've failed on some level any time I choose to do that instead of doing the work myself), and the notion of owning a business but not working at, or just being a kind of hype-man for it mostly for my personal benefit, weirds me the fuck out, it feels fragile and strange. Why would people let me do that and make so much money from it? It's so weird; I get that's how things work, but the idea of doing it feels scary and kinda gross, and I don't mean because of risk of failure.

I think I'd need a huge mindset shift and a totally different skillset to get actually-rich. I'd need to be a different person entirely. Meanwhile there's a long list of things I am or could become talented at, and could work hard at, and that produce real value, that might make me a living but will never get me past seven or maaaaybe with a ton of right-place-right-time luck ten digits of lifetime earnings, let alone net worth.

hnpolicestate  7 hours ago

I think it was a Steve Jobs quote, paraphrase "it's 5% the idea, 95% implementation".

Lots of very intelligent and talented people out there. But when you have the good fortune of coming up with a great idea (Facebook in the mid 00's) you have to use your talent to relentlessly implement it.

This is what separates the plebs from the ultra wealthy. Intelligence + talent + idea + implementation = success

  • -__---____-ZXyw  3 hours ago

    I think it was a Tutankhamun quote, paraphrase "it's 5% the idea and the implementation, 95% having been born into a family who are very wealthy and who also happen to do a good job instilling the innate belief in you that dominating in business is everything".

    There's a shockingly large number of people out there with buckets of "intelligence + talent + ideas" who never get the opportunity to move to the "implementation" phase of anything as they're too busy surviving, and the world is all the poorer for it.

    As if that cruel ignominy weren't enough on its own, we are also blessed with the spectacle of ignoramuses piling up and blaming the "plebs" for a situation they've no control over. What a double whammy.