[quote=AN][quote=davelj]One wistfully wonders where Mark Zuckerberg and most of the other internet billionaires would be if the government – and our tax dollars – hadn’t developed the internet…][/quote]
They’ll probably be right about where they are. These are truly brilliant guys and if there’s no internet, they’ll just invent something else. After all, Bill Gates got his Billions from Windows, not MSN/Bing.[/quote]
I disagree completely. (And Nassim Taleb is with me here, for what it’s worth.) What I see is a thin layer of very smart, hard working folks – none not particularly different from the others. The only real difference between them is “luck” and the degree of said luck. For example, take the top 25% of the graduating class of Wharton, Harvard Business School, or Pick a Class (the name and major is not important). All of these folks are very smart, motivated and hard working… the dramatic difference in outcomes is largely the result of luck. Some went into the right field, others didn’t; some met the right people, others didn’t, etc. But the great disparity in outcomes between them is not something inherent or the result of “harder work” or “more intelligence,” it’s … luck (or as Taleb would put it, “randomness”).
Even the “winners” will attest to this – they all have stories of many folks who were smarter and harder working then themselves who didn’t end up in the same place.
