One of the biggest flaws in this universe is that fortune and misfortune are cumulative. There are steps to success and visa versus. Say you are born to fortune, go to the right school, mix with the right people, it all adds up. Chris Dixon writes about getting a job in venture capital – “VCs I know only recruit from Wharton, Harvard, Stanford.” So there is a pyramid that you climb step by step and missteps are fatal. For sure there are aberrations. The exceptions are few but people like to yap about them. People endlessly repeat stories about a person who came from nowhere, this gives them hope. People also love to talk about someone who had it all and lost it all, this give them pleasure. Even the statistical anomaly of success is mostly removed during the economic collapse, it remains just the exceptions to the rule and the rules still rule.
- Further Reading:
- Monkey, Businessman, Rabbi, Whore, Priest and the Caravaggio Fortune
- The Fortune and Misfortune comes in Batches
- Respectfull Mistakes
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This is essentially the thesis of the recent bestselling book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm is in business of popularizing ideas developed by other people. I am thinking and reacting to my own inner fountain of ideas, granted influenced by others as well.