Random Chance or Predestination

[nigel99 471]

Why is it that some people either have continuous bad luck/accidents and the like and others lead a charmed life?

I’m not talking about being born with a disability or winning the lottery, but rather a life long bias in a certain direction.

Within my direct family it spans from living in a UK council house and lots of shitty things for that person, through to being worth over a billion dollars (and Joe before you hit me up for dz.com I’m closer to the council estate than the private jet).

Take Elon Musk as a prime example. He’s not that clever, in fact he’s socially awkward and not all that bright. Yet he has gone from relatively little to being one of the richest and most influential people on earth. Trump is the same.

I can see how Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs ‘won the lottery’ and were bright and in the right place at the right time. 

It’s surprising how often in my life I’ve taken a course of action that has then become invaluable in unforeseen ways years down the line. 

At the other end of the scale there are people who appear to have drawn the short straw and no matter how much they try life just beats them down.

Of course life choices influence us. To quote the bible ‘you reap what you sow’. 

I don’t believe in predestination and that your life path is essentially laid out for you. On the other hand it feels like there is more to life than random chance. Maybe I’m falling foul of the gamblers fallacy.

This shower thought is brought to you from sleep deprived musings on the meaning of life…

[winsor 236]

5 hours ago, nigel99 said:

Why is it that some people either have continuous bad luck/accidents and the like and others lead a charmed life?

I’m not talking about being born with a disability or winning the lottery, but rather a life long bias in a certain direction.

Within my direct family it spans from living in a UK council house and lots of shitty things for that person, through to being worth over a billion dollars (and Joe before you hit me up for dz.com I’m closer to the council estate than the private jet).

Take Elon Musk as a prime example. He’s not that clever, in fact he’s socially awkward and not all that bright. Yet he has gone from relatively little to being one of the richest and most influential people on earth. Trump is the same.

I can see how Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs ‘won the lottery’ and were bright and in the right place at the right time. 

It’s surprising how often in my life I’ve taken a course of action that has then become invaluable in unforeseen ways years down the line. 

At the other end of the scale there are people who appear to have drawn the short straw and no matter how much they try life just beats them down.

Of course life choices influence us. To quote the bible ‘you reap what you sow’. 

I don’t believe in predestination and that your life path is essentially laid out for you. On the other hand it feels like there is more to life than random chance. Maybe I’m falling foul of the gamblers fallacy.

This shower thought is brought to you from sleep deprived musings on the meaning of life…

Hanging out drinking beer with an old friend (haven't touched the stuff for almost four decades, so it was a while ago), he said "Winsor, you'll never be rich, you don't care about money."

I responded that I had nothing against money and that I was by no means a Socialist.  He agreed, but said that if I couldn't spend it I had no use for it.

Though I've done better than average, I really don't care about the particulars beyond being comfortable and having options, so he was right.

Another friend of mine, who was very wealthy, expressed envy at my lifestyle, since he was focused on being wealthy and I flew wherever I pleased and generally gallivanted around the globe.  He said he intended to retire early and make up for lost time, spending time with his kids instead of working continuously.

A couple of weeks after he pulled the plug at the age of 42 he returned from buying a ranch in Costa Rica and a condo in St John - cash, of course - and pulled a muscle in the gym.  18 hours later he was dead from necrotizing fasciitis.

He now has wealthy kids who would give it all up to have their father back.

Having lived most of my life around people with Money, I have a pretty good idea of how to amass Serious Wealth.  I also realize that I just don't care that much.  While it's generally better to be a Have than a Have Not, I'm basically a Boy Scout and prefer to be comfortable with integrity than a seriously wealthy scumbag.

If I had to, say, have the "ethics" of Trump to have his assets, my response is to keep your goddamned money.

If I came across an opportunity to be fabulously rich, I'd go for it (Dave Barry said someone in Nigeria sent him $42,000,000 in 54 boxes via UPS), but I've yet to buy a lottery ticket.

Beyond wanting my family to thrive, whether I'm  rich or broke when I die is pretty much academic.

 

[SkyDekker 1,465]

2 hours ago, winsor said:

Beyond wanting my family to thrive, whether I'm  rich or broke when I die is pretty much academic.

Het laatste hemd heeft geen zakken of uw laatste jas heeft geen zakken.

Dutch sayings that sum up that attitude. They basically state there is no pocket in your last shirt, or your last coat or jacket. Meaning you can't take it with you anyways.

Turns out maybe we do have something in common....

[billvon 2,990]

9 hours ago, nigel99 said:

Take Elon Musk as a prime example. He’s not that clever, in fact he’s socially awkward and not all that bright. Yet he has gone from relatively little to being one of the richest and most influential people on earth. Trump is the same.

It doesn't take a whole lot of brains to make money if you have money to start with.

Trump got $413 million from his father.  If we assume he got most of that in 1982 (around the time he started taking big loans from his father) and simply invested in stocks that perform like the DJIA, he would now have $6.6 billion.  His net worth is around $5 billion, so he hasn't even performed as well as a passive investor would have.  Even with all the crime.

I've been a little bit more active in investing, and I have the advantage that I have some insight into which technology stocks will do well.  If I had started with Trump's money I would now have $17 billion from investment income.

Musk has an even better sense of technology than I do, and he did start two companies that made him $100 million - specifically Zip2 and Paypal.  From that point the skill that made him most of his money was his investment sense, and he invested in companies like Tesla that have done very, very well.  His background (his family was very wealthy) and willingness to break the law (he worked illegally in the US to start his first company) were two prime factors in his success.

That initial boost is what most people who find themselves poor lack.  Once you get to about $400K in today's dollars, through inheritance, savings or stock earnings, you are pretty much guaranteed success as long as you don't do anything stupid.  Educated people can do that fairly quickly; without education it's nearly impossible.

Of course, a large subset of people both have nothing to start with AND make it a habit of doing stupid things (drugs, crime etc.)

[SethInMI 174]

9 hours ago, nigel99 said:

...something about predestination...

I grew up in a Calvinist church, so predestination was def a thing.  It's funny when you are inside a group and hear arguments for something they sound reasonable, but then you get older, take step away, and realize they don't make sense.

I remember reading an article in the church monthly magazine, where a letter writer asked basically "why do bad things happen to good people?" her friend's child died and she couldn't understand why that would be god's will.

The magazine's resident theologian replied that in his view, god had two wills a specific will, which was for good things to happen to good people (as one would expect from a good god). And a more general will, the kind of will that 'held up the universe" like if god took away his general will everything would fall apart or self-destruct or something. That will was pre-destining everything, both good and bad.

Well at the time I thought, ok, but later I thought, what a bunch of bullshit.

I would say, yes, you are falling into a gamblers fallacy of sorts, if one is a believer in random chance some people will be very unlucky in their lives, and others will be lucky, and the rest of us will have some distribution of luck and unluck.

 

[kallend 2,026]

42 minutes ago, billvon said:

It doesn't take a whole lot of brains to make money if you have money to start with.

Trump got $413 million from his father. 

Hey, at least Fred Trump made his money the old fashioned way, by profiteering at taxpayer expense and violating the civil rights of minorities.

Unlike the Kennedy fortune, made by bootlegging, or the Bush fortune made by trading with the Nazis and funding Hitler's war machine.