They call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it "
-George Carlin
Success is really all luck. Everything is just luck. Or your lack of luck. That luck swims in your gene pool. The luck that governs the time and place of your birth. The luck of picking the right parents. The fact that you're reading this means you have a certain degree of luck. You have access to information, maybe a computer on the Internet, you have your eyesight, you have the ability to read. Your already luckier than most people who've lived.
Your intelligence, your mental and physical health, your predilection towards addictions, depression or creativity, your attractiveness, your height, your dexterity, your hand-eye/hand-ear coordination, your innate abilities, skills and talents, all genetic luck. Or lack of luck. Do you still have to take lessons and practice to play the piano well? Sure. But depending on whether you were born a tone deaf klutz or with great dexterity and perfect pitch makes piano lessons either a joy or a humiliating waste of time and money.
How well your parents raised you, their capacity to love you, their patience, how much time they spent with you, what kind of education they gave you, their legacies at ivy league schools, how many political and business connections they have, how many favors they are owed by other powerful people, how much seed money they gave you to float your first, second, third attempts at starting your own corporations or to invest. That's your good luck. Or were your parents violent, impoverished, sick, or incarcerated. Did you have to drop out of high school to support them? Did they die when you were a child? Bad luck baby. You didn't earn or deserve your heritage either.
You don't have to have every single one of these things going for you, but you better have some of them, or a few of them in spades. Enough to make up for what you lack. Some people have none of them. Really bad luck.
But what about hard work? Elbow grease? The prized "American work ethic"? It can matter, if you're lucky enough. It sure doesn't pay off equally or fairly. Maybe some people really are lazy. But maybe they've just given up. Maybe they weren't lucky enough to be born with an indomitable spirit. Maybe they weren't lucky enough to see any evidence that hard work can matter. Because the hardest working people I see are also the poorest. They work outdoors in rotten weather for someone else's business, off the books, no benefits, no healthcare. If they get hurt, they're shit out of luck. Only because they weren't fortunate enough to be born into better circumstances. It's just my luck I was born in America in 1955, it wasn't a smart business move on my part.
Some people start out in life clinging to the side of a cliff and the only way to move forward is to climb straight up. Many, most fall. Luckier people are born on a bicycle gliding downhill. If they "work hard" pedaling or not, it barely makes a difference. They are coasting through life at a good clip no matter what they do. Their way has been cleared and the world is tilted in their favor. They are already on their way to Harvard at birth, because their dad donated the new library wing: They can't fail, even when they deserve to. Hard work isn't so hard for them.
How well hard work pays off, if it pays off at all, really just depends on your luck. Some people's luck is so very, very rotten hard work won't even keep them alive. Look around the world. It's hard work just staying alive in poverty, in starvation, in a drought, after a natural disaster, in poor health, in clinical depression. Nobody caused or deserved a tsunami. Certainly hundreds of thousands of people, little babies, in one area of the planet didn't do anything to earn a hurricane. It's just bad luck they got hit. Bad luck that baby was born in a part of the world with terrible weather. Bad luck orphans. Bad luck is everywhere and anyone's good luck can change to bad in an instant. Some people may have lost faith that hard work matters, and they may be right. It doesn't help lots of people. Any society where crime or panhandling pays off better than minimum wage is not providing the right incentives. Laziness always pays off right now.
Now, what I'm calling luck others might call destiny, circumstances, the grace of God's blessing, his curse, or one's "lot in life", but my whole point here is you weren't born deserving it, good or bad. Good luck is nothing to be proud of, bad luck is nothing to be ashamed of. Really lucky people should feel very grateful, not very prideful. They shouldn't be calling the unlucky lazy. But they have to. They need to. They want to believe it's all under our control so they can take great pride in their great luck. So naturally the unlucky should feel ashamed of themselves for their bad luck. False pride, false shame. They go hand in hand.
Should a democratic society "...by the people, for the people and of the people".... ALL of the people, be rigged in a way that continues to favor the luckiest among us? A society that gives them the biggest tax breaks, gives them corporate welfare? Golden parachutes? Assures their kids the best educations? The best healthcare? The healthiest diets? Shouldn't a society seek to create fairness? Be designed to even out some of the effects of good and bad luck? The randomness of chance? Bring order from chaos? "All men are created equal" and all that. A society that provides a college loan to a poor kid because he's not lucky enough to be able to borrow the money from his parents. The difference between us all is only luck.
What we've seen over the last 30 years is a gradual return to times when nothing but birth luck matters. Pre-democracy values. Medieval values. Where there are fewer and fewer opportunities to rise above the caste system you were born into, or drop out of the upper class, the luckier class, no matter how often or how badly one screws up. A society that enforces rather than equalizes luck. Those born lucky want to pass their great luck on to their kids. A true Democracy should get in the way of inherited luck. Or at least provide the means for your genetic luck to make up for your lack of inherited luck. Isn't that what the American Dream really means?