Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky
My father and I have somewhat productive political conversations: He&#x27;s fiscally conservative, I tend towards the liberal side of the scale.<p>Drilling in to find what we really disagree about, it seems to boil down to two concepts:  (1) I view success as a matter of luck that your effort can make better or worse.  He views effort as the single most important deciding factor in success in life  (2) I&#x27;m willing to tolerate an amount of &quot;unfairness&quot; in people getting help they &quot;don&#x27;t deserve&quot;, while he finds this very offensive.<p>I honestly feel that if considered luck to be a larger factor and effort to be a lesser factor, his political stances would change pretty dramatically.  (same applies to me in reverse).  I wonder how much the social willingness to accept luck as a factor impacts popular political positions.  (Perhaps not much, as the author in the article promotes a consumption tax, which is generally seen as more regressive)