[hari_seldon_]

Not from the article, but this makes me think of something that we learned back in my college probability course: "wealth gravitates towards the wealthy." Even in fair games and situations, it is much harder to come out ahead when you start out behind. Think of how the house always wins in Vegas, or how a random walk can experience heavy drift.

[guiscreenshots]

The house always wins because all of the games have a negative expected value, not because the house starts out with more money than you.

[cbanek]

But the house needs enough money to keep playing to even out the random fluctuations over time to make it to that expected value.

For example, a craps table has a negative expected value for the players, and positive expected value for the house. But on a winning streak (these streaks are fairly common, just like losing streaks) the table might lose money if you look at the period of a few hours.

[basementcat]

That is why casinos have insurance policies. Sometimes they do not accept bets beyond a certain size.

https://www.distinguished.com/Site/programs/hospitality-and-...

[blackflame7000]

Pot-Size limits don't impact hot or cold streaks.

[hindsightRegret]

True, but it does impact how probabilistically unlikely the hot streak needs to be to default the house.

[slededit]

They can ask you to leave at any time.

[hari_seldon_]

That's a fair point for some games, but even in games where the gambler has a positive expected value would have him/her go bust eventually when playing against someone with much, much more wealth (ignoring the fact that you can walk away):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_ruin

[Zanni]

This actually should not happen if you adjust your bet size to match your bankroll (with the caveat that your bankroll is sufficiently large to be unaffected by the minimum bet). The article you link to actually suggests that, in the first bullet point, though it's expressed in the negative.

[milesvp]

For those interested, look up The Kelly Criterion.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion

This is why poker players who are good enough to play at a certain table level can't maintain it if their bankroll falls too low. At each stakes level the game not only gets harder, but the minimum bet can eat up your bankroll if you get large string of unplayable hands (let alone bad beats or bad plays). What ends up happening a lot is that players will win a significant amount of money at say the $5 table, then try to play the $10 table, and lose enough money they find themselves back at the $5 table. The really unlucky ones may end up back at the $2 table because they may not have moved back to $5 early enough to be able to bankroll that level properly.

I find the economics of poker to be completely fascinating, and when I found out about kelly betting from a HFT friend if mine, it really changed how I looked at the topic.

[downer56]

The house uses its wealth to construct an environment that only houses games with negative expected values.

[laughingman2]

There is this interesting paper that evaluates role of luck and talent in outcome.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07068

" The largely dominant meritocratic paradigm of highly competitive Western cultures is rooted on the belief that success is due mainly, if not exclusively, to personal qualities such as talent, intelligence, skills, efforts or risk taking. Sometimes, we are willing to admit that a certain degree of luck could also play a role in achieving significant material success. But, as a matter of fact, it is rather common to underestimate the importance of external forces in individual successful stories. It is very well known that intelligence or talent exhibit a Gaussian distribution among the population, whereas the distribution of wealth - considered a proxy of success - follows typically a power law (Pareto law). Such a discrepancy between a Normal distribution of inputs, with a typical scale, and the scale invariant distribution of outputs, suggests that some hidden ingredient is at work behind the scenes. In this paper, with the help of a very simple agent-based model, we suggest that such an ingredient is just randomness. In particular, we show that, if it is true that some degree of talent is necessary to be successful in life, almost never the most talented people reach the highest peaks of success, being overtaken by mediocre but sensibly luckier individuals. As to our knowledge, this counterintuitive result - although implicitly suggested between the lines in a vast literature - is quantified here for the first time. It sheds new light on the effectiveness of assessing merit on the basis of the reached level of success and underlines the risks of distributing excessive honors or resources to people who, at the end of the day, could have been simply luckier than others. With the help of this model, several policy hypotheses are also addressed and compared to show the most efficient strategies for public funding of research in order to improve meritocracy, diversity and innovation."

[AdamM12]

Does one player actually need to get ahead of the other? Couldn't a "win" be that the player that started behind improved their position over time. Feels like it oversimplifies life as a zero sum game.

[83457]

Well inflation

[basementcat]

I would argue that wealth gravitates toward those who are better at accumulating wealth (Warren Buffet, George Soros, Peter Lynch). There may be a correlation between those who are good at accumulating wealth and those who have accumulated a large amount of wealth.

[sidlls]

That's a bit tautological. Also, what do you mean by "good"?

Also many things cost less for wealthy people. They literally spend less as a fraction of their wealth than anyone else for credit, for example. Wealth will naturally gravitate towards them even if they do nothing more than act like anyone else because of that kind of thing.

[darkerside]

People who are good at making money make more money. Yes, it's tautological, which doesn't make it untrue. People who are good at scoring the basketball get a lot of points. People who are good at cooking make delicious food. I think you're questioning whether someone can really be good at "making money", and the answer is yes. Money follows rules and laws that appear random to those who are not skilled. Just like some people might not understand the laws of electricity, making electricians seem like wizards. That doesn't mean the laws don't exist. And those who understand the forces behind money are able to take advantage of them, like a surfer uses the force of a wave to propel himself. Effortless. The wealth just seems to find you.

Your second point is accurate, but not really a rebuttal.

[TheOtherHobbes]

You miss the point. It’s vastly easier to be successful at making money if you start with a lot of it, and vastly harder if you start with nothing.

A few very unusual people in each generation start with nothing and become billionaires, but for most of the population a running start will get them much further towards a comfortable life than almost any combination of luck and talent.

This is a problem, because many of our social myths suggests that the most reliable and predictable way to become richer is through hard work - and therefore rich people are more socially valuable than the poor, who stay poor because of laziness.

Both of those beliefs are absolutely untrue.

[darkerside]

When you say that I miss the point, that usually means the true disagreement is over what we're talking about. Like I said, you're talking about the power of compound interest, economies of scale that encourage pooled investing, and other systemic effects. And you're not wrong.

What the OP was pointing out was that, there are people who understand money and people who don't, and that plays just as big a role as having wealth (see lottery ticket example cited in sister comment). I think I've demonstrated I understand your point; do you think you really understand that one?

Also, > the most reliable and predictable way to become richer is through hard work

Do you know a more reliable and predictable way to become richer? It may not be fast and it may not be fair, but in a capitalist society, I believe it to be true.

[bigleagueposter]

Doesn't mean the rules of making money don't cause it to drift to those who already have a shitton of it.

[basementcat]

I meant that in the same way as there is likely a correlation between people who are good at math and people with advanced degrees in engineering, math, science and finance.

[hari_seldon_]

When talking about wealth in our society (especially when it is tied up in real estate and other non-cash assets), things get a lot more complicated, especially when wealth can help move markets and set policy. I was purely talking from the perspective of thinking about games and probability.

[jere]

I suppose lottery winners are good at accumulating wealth too.

[phyller]

You actually strengthen basementcat's point. There have been many stories about how lottery winners often end up worse off than they were before. Handing someone 100 million dollars won't keep them rich if they are bad at handling money. Apparently this is proven by research of lottery winners: https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/REST_a_0011... and https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016/01/12/odds-are-15-...

[ItsMe000001]

That does not strengthen that point, quite the opposite, one might argue:

People who were never exposed to having money to begin with don't know what to do with it. Having money from the start (rich parents) gives you a head start.

[the_cat_kittles]

what is your argument? you just made a claim without evidence- would be more compelling with some. i think there is a lot of data to suggest the opposite.

[basementcat]

I claim that those who are better at managing their money (spend wisely, save more, invest wisely) tend to accumulate wealth more quickly than those who don't.

For example, I have several colleagues who started their careers around the same time as me. Some are much wealthier than me partly because they spent considerable time and effort accumulating real estate portfolios (among other investments). Others have accumulated less wealth than me because they spent much of their incomes on ephemeral pleasures.

[the_cat_kittles]

thats just completely tautological. id argue that little upward mobility, and racial inequality in lifetime earnings suggest that being having money makes it easier to make more. also because it is my lived experience as someone who is rich.

[AnimalMuppet]

> i think there is a lot of data to suggest the opposite.

You also just made a claim without evidence. It would be more compelling with some.