[frooxie]

If we tell people the dangerous false idea that hard work is the main factor that makes someone rich or successful, we could end up with a terrible society where the rich feel they have no responsibility to help the less fortunate (by e.g. providing universal healthcare), because they must simply have been lazy – even though most rich people started out rich, and even the rich people who started out poor and worked hard still owe their success partially to being lucky enough not to have been randomly afflicted by some disease, by growing up in a society that provided them opportunities for education and business, etc.

So if your kids turned out more successful than others, don't tell them it was just because they dreamt big and worked hard. While hard work is important, their success was also partially due to luck and the work of others, and they should never forget that.

[mindcrime]

While hard work is important, their success was also partially due to luck and the work of others, and they should never forget that.

Agreed. My problem is with this meme that seems to have become pervasive over the last year or two, which seems to posit that, effectively, everything comes down to luck. Clearly the actual truth is somewhere between the extremes of "it's all luck" and "it's all hard work". My response here is a reaction to what I perceive as a swinging of the pendulum towards the "it's all luck" mindset, to a degree that I think is damaging.

[chc]

I think the thing is that the luck is much more make-or-break than the work. Luck can make how much work you've done irrelevant, but no amount of work can make luck irrelevant. For example, the "cash me ousside" girl didn't do any work, but now is more successful than I am by sheer weird luck. Meanwhile, lots of people have put in stupendous amounts of work and still ended up with bad results just because they were unlucky (remember, despite being beloved of the Internet nowadays, Nikola Tesla died penniless and alone).

[true_religion]

You have to both be prepared to take advantage of a lucky opportunity and be ready to work hard to maximize it. Doing neither means failure.

[graedus]

> we could end up with a terrible society where the rich feel they have no responsibility to help the less fortunate (by e.g. providing universal healthcare), because they must simply have been lazy

I completely agree with you, but it's curious that you frame this as a hypothetical outcome. At least in the US, this idea has been deeply ingrained in broad swaths of the population for decades - and not just among the rich.