The “success isn't based on hard work” crowd
I&#x27;m sure you worked hard writing this, but you didn&#x27;t succeed in persuading me. Your argument consists of a straw man argument, followed by an ad-hominem attack, followed by a weird assertion that hard work doesn&#x27;t work because people don&#x27;t believe it does.<p>The straw man argument: you&#x27;re accusing people of saying &quot;success isn&#x27;t based on hard work&quot;. But the actual thing people are saying in the Pew research study you cited is, &quot;hard work is no guarantee of success for most people&quot;. These are very different statements.<p>In fact you go on to say:<p>&gt; The “success isn&#x27;t based on hard work” article I would like to read is one written by a mother or father of a teenage child. It would talk about how they discourage their child from any hard work, knowing that it’s unlikely to be rewarded.<p>The reason you&#x27;re not reading that, is that <i>that&#x27;s not what anyone is saying</i>. The reason you would like to read that it would reinforce your world view, not that it&#x27;s honest.<p>The ad-hominem attack: you said:<p>&gt; The most infuriating part is that people writing these articles don’t believe it themselves. Take for instance this Linked In post that declares “Success is really more Luck than Hard Work”. The author of the article has three professional degrees (bachelors in electrical engineering, masters in economics and political science and an MBA). He works as head of M&amp;A at a company that has 125,000 employees. Do you think he believes that hard work doesn’t amount to success? Does he state this when interviewing for a job or hiring candidates? Does he teach this to his children?<p>That&#x27;s an abject failure to prove that the person writing that article doesn&#x27;t believe what they&#x27;re saying. You&#x27;re asking these questions as if they are rhetorical questions, but they aren&#x27;t. Just because he&#x27;s successful, doesn&#x27;t mean that he worked hard to get there, or that he  On the contrary, the fact that this person has multiple degrees and is head of M&amp;A at a company with 125,000 companies <i>may be exactly why he believes that success is about luck</i>; he may have gotten those successes by luck or at least perceive that to be the case.<p>You followed up with more ad-hominem attacks:<p>&gt; Saying “I was lucky” is a sort of penance for those who have had success. It’s meant as a humbling statement used to almost excuse their immense success as an accident of fortune.<p>You&#x27;re accusing people who say this of virtue-signalling. ...and:<p>&gt; Whenever I hear that success isn’t based on hard work, it’s almost always coming from a place of privilege.<p>If you&#x27;re going to discount the opinions of people who speak from a position of privilege, maybe start by discounting your own opinion, Mr. very white male who has excess capital to &quot;work hard with&quot;[1]. To be clear, I <i>don&#x27;t</i> think we should discount people&#x27;s opinions who speak from positions of privilege: I&#x27;m merely point that if that&#x27;s your argument, it&#x27;s hypocritical.<p>And now for the weird one:<p>&gt; Society stops functioning if people think that outcomes are predetermined at birth or random.<p>The thing is, the truth is true whether people believe it or not. So if hard work stops being effective because people stop believing it&#x27;s effective, maybe that wasn&#x27;t so true to begin with.<p>The one thing in your article I can&#x27;t argue with is your personal experience:<p>&gt; Most of living the good life is doing what you’re supposed to do. Show up on time, be honest, be faithful to your partner, do what you say you’re going to do. The other part is don’t do things that you’re not supposed to do. Don’t eat or drink too much, stay away from addictive substances and dangerous activities, don’t hurt others.<p>But your experience is very limited. Here&#x27;s my experience: I&#x27;ve watched numerous people in my life be honest, faithful to their partners, and reliable, avoid drinking, addictive, substances, and dangerous activities, and not hurt others. And I&#x27;ve watched many of those people lose jobs or just stagnate in careers because of office politics that had nothing to do with them, or come down with illnesses they can&#x27;t afford to treat. A friend of mine built a business only to have it crushed by frivolous lawsuits when a billionaire wanted the building he was in. Another friend of mine was laid off after over 20 years working up through a company in a narrow field with few job prospects, so the CEO&#x27;s son could have his job. Another of my friends who works at a nonprofit watched one of his mentees get a few years sober, obtain most of a culinary degree, and start his own business, only to be wrongfully arrested for possession of narcotics: charges were later dropped when video showed the cop planting the cocaine on him, but by the time the charges were dropped, he had failed out of culinary school due to non-attendance and lost his business.<p>And my direct personal experience, is that I worked all through my 20s and early 30s with moderate success, and obtained more excess capital in late 2020&#x2F;early 2021 by throwing a few thousand dollars into cryptocurrencies than I did in my entire 14 year career. I&#x27;m doing pretty well, but a little luck has paid off better in my life than all my hard work.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mleverything.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;crypto-decentralized-finance" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mleverything.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;crypto-decentralized-fin...</a>