[fredley]

You can't frame things like this without talking about misfortune in the same terms. Lots of things can happen that are 'unluckly', but are vastly skewed to certain demographics. Being unlucky like:

* Receiving little or no schooling

* Having to labour as a child

* Being abused

* Having your primary carers be addicts of some kind

* Growing up in a relatively poor/deprived

* ...

Really this list is endless, and other than blind luck (a lotto win, something that can really elevate you out of this situation, as well as having the sense to use the opportunity correctly), no amount of 'hustle' is really going to get you out of this situation.

The kind of attitude in parent's comment is prevalent amongst people who have grown up in relatively rich, successful environments, and see vastly more lucky people than unlucky people (when in reality there are orders of magnitude more unlucky people than lucky).

[mvaliente2001]

That reminds me a short fictional story by Jorge Luis Borges (if you excuse the quasi non-sequitur): The Lottery in Babylon. It describes how the lottery became so popular in Babylon that they began not just to play for money, but all kind of prizes, and then not only prizes but punishments. Finally, they decided that people didn't even need to buy a ticket. Everybody was implicitly part of the game, where good or bad things could be made to happen to you just by random chance... At the end of the day, The Lottery in Babylon became indistinguishable from normal life.