If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance

All of us who haven't achieved fabulous success find this very comforting, of course. But I'm still going to put in effort, because I don't believe in any of this fate crap, etc.

Surely almost everyone realises by adulthood that the real answer is that most people just aren't trying to be rich? It's not the actual goal of the vast majority of people. If everyone were trying to maximise their own wealth, we would have no nurses, no-one would be a firefighter, no-one would be police, no-one would work in the military, etc etc. Vast swathes of jobs would have unfillable vacancies because everyone would work them for at most a couple…

Wealth follows a power law because there is a positive feedback loop. Having some wealth makes it easier to get more wealth. So, if you're smart/lucky enough to get a bit of wealth, you can continue to use whatever smarts you have to get more. The article seems to imply that since other human traits follow normal distributions, then wealth distribution should also be normal if it's determined by human traits. But that doesn't follow because it ignores feedback. Being…

The automatic assumption between “smart” and “rich” is a link made by stupid people or the just plain intellectually lazy. I’ve met smart people who enjoy intellectual challenge but are low in industriousness so don’t desire the process of monitizing the intellect Smart people who are low in orderliness so they are too chaotic to focus enough to monitize. Smart people who have particular skills that a capitalistic society doesn’t value. And what is the definition of “smart” here? The…