[thiago_fm]

If the people who ran that study were really as smart as they pretend to be, as they are from Harvard, they would understand how even their own thoughts, the language they speak and so on, all happened because they were lucky.

Let me repeat to you, as you seem unable to read and comprehend what I have previously written, it can be reading comprehension issue, so I won't judge you negatively like Harvard, an elitist school would, here it is:

Talent is everywhere. It's abundant. There is an immense amount of hard-working people that even if they don't believe in "zero-sum", get nowhere. They still wake up every day early, work much harder than you ever will in your life, but are still in a shithole and this situation will stay as it is until they perish.

That study was done by one of the most well-known universities, full of privilege in a country that managed to have its reigns on the world for so long, an empire.

Let's think together. It would be strange if either the study or the University would conclude that people work really hard. And are as talented as the people able to attend Harvard, but because they were unlucky and that the world is unfair, they couldn't.

That would be a big counterargument to Harvard's selection process, it wouldn't feel it's a really deserving university, nor that the creator of the study is as good as he believes to be. Why would anybody want to pay for its overpriced curriculum that are literally books you could buy it at Amazon? I'm not saying it is all fake, but you can understand how much reputation is bought, not acquired.

You aren't special, nor the thought of zero-sum thinking is what creates poverty. People are drawn into those ideas, not because of stupidity, but lack of luck.

Stop pretending you have so much control of yourself and your thoughts, read more science and you'll see how all those conclusions you believe to be true are really naive.

[zozbot234]

> They still wake up every day early, work much harder than you ever will in your life, but are still in a shithole

A sad fact about the world is that one can work hard and end up accomplishing very little for their effort. "Working hard" may be a necessary condition for pulling oneself out of poverty (or very near to one, at any rate), but it's not even close to being sufficient.

[WendyTheWillow]

I would even argue that "working hard" is dying, if not already dead, as a means of escaping poverty in developed nations.

What matters substantially more is working "intelligently," which is even harder for those in poverty, given their lack of education.

[WendyTheWillow]

I grant you all of this (for argument's sake). However, none of it actually addresses the merits of the "zero-sum" claim about capitalism or the claim that economic disparity will in the future be regarded in the same way as racism.

Also maybe I'm blind, but I don't think we've interacted before.

[Shocka1]

I'm having a hard time figuring out why you are being downvoted so much when you are following the HN policy that has been around for a very long time now, providing sources, etc. As someone that works with data, I would absolutely love to get my hands on the data associated with the visitors of this site since it first started. It may or may not exist, but referral addresses, location and whatnot. Then run some modeling on it and see what kind of interesting things popped up.

I've been browsing here for a very long time. Anecdotally I've noticed a pickup in the lack of progress, or degradation in threads, especially when it comes to economic systems and the corresponding bias that comes with it. I don't necessarily agree or disagree with you, but you've followed the HN guidelines, being insulted several times along the way.

Old HN there was of course some bias and debate, but it hardly ever resolved to petty insults about reading comprehension.