Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of MeritocracySuccess and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy by Robert H. Frank

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The thesis of the book is that luck is more important to being successful than most people (especially successful ones!) think. Frank points out that more and more industries are now closer to "winner take all" than in the past - for example, if you want to see the "best" opera company in the world (pretend for a minute there is such a thing) you can watch them on your computer, where in the past you were stuck with your local opera company. Which means if the "best" opera company is significantly better than the second best one it can be much more successful than in the past. And this sort of effect also drives income inequality.

But in a winner take all world, it takes skill and luck to be the absolute best at something because you're competing with so many people. Even if success is 98% skill and 2% luck, the most successful person will have to be somewhat lucky. (as well as very skilled)

This book is a bit of a hodgepodge but still relatively interesting.

Odds and ends:
- Unfortunately, recognizing that luck matters tends to make people work less hard, which will almost certainly make them less successful. So, maybe don't read this book? 🙂 But if you acknowledge luck's effect on you, others find you more appealing, so it's got that going for it!
- Frank writes that a lot of consumption is relative to other people, and that leads us spend more money on things just to "keep up with the Joneses". That phrase actually trivializes it a bit because it also applies to things like buying a house in a good neighborhood so your kids can go to the good schools.
- Frank's idea to fix a lot of this is to change from an income tax to a consumption tax, which would hopefully discourage spending and break the cycle. It would also raise a lot of money to spend on infrastructure and stuff that really does help everyone. (his example is would you rather have a $300,000 car and drive it on a road with potholes, or have a $150,000 car and drive it on a nice smooth road?) It's an interesting idea, and he wants to make the tax progressive somehow, but I'm not sure it would really have the effects he desires.

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