"I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I'd been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless...but I was lucky enough to be born in a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the financial system to let me do what I love doing - and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that."
-Warren Buffett
When I was younger, I think I way over-estimated the correlation between abilities and outcomes. There really is a lot of randomness in the world, and this randomness holds some (perhaps considerable) sway over individual outcomes. How does one deal with the possibility that your lot in life may depend on a certain degree of randomness and not necessarily on one's individual talent? Is it the case that despite the influence of randomness in our lives, that the optimal behaviour is still to behave as if everything was completely deterministic and within our control? Does working harder minimize the impact of randomness in some sense? Or does working harder simply provide us with the illusion of control over our lot in life? Somehow I think that society in general benefits from having citizens who genuinely believe that they are the master of their fate...even if this isn't completely true. The incentives are better...
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