Hard Work and Good Luck

[theprestige]

It seems to me that anything worth having in life can be gotten only by some combination of hard work and good luck--either your own, or somebody else's.

Corollary
There are four kinds of people in this world:

People who don't work hard, and have good luck.
People who do work hard, and have good luck.
People who do work hard, and don't have good luck.
People who don't work hard, and don't have good luck.


I'm going to assume, for the sake of argument, that the number of people in the fourth category is insignificant, and therefore the fourth category is irrelevant to this discussion.

Now, leaving luck aside for the moment, it seems to me that the harder you work, the more stuff you can have.

Work: There's all kinds of work. Manual labor. Scientific research. Academic study. Even crime, if you want it to pay, requires work.

Stuff: There's all kinds of stuff. Some people like yachts or mansions. Others like good food and fine drink. Still others like to donate great sums to charity. Conan the Barbarian famously said that the best thing in life was "to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women". Your idea of desireable stuff is probably pretty different from his.

But whatever it is you want, you'll need hard work to get it.

Good Luck
And you'll probably need at least a little good luck, as well.

Some people have a lot of good luck. Maybe they were born into a lucky time or place. Maybe they inherited lots of stuff from somebody else who did all the hard work for them. Some people even have so much good luck that they can get all the stuff they want without having to work hard at all (well, except for metaphysical stuff like enlightenment and personal fulfilment and such like that). A lot of these people work hard anyway, for whatever reason. Some of them don't.

Yes, it's true: Lots of lucky people still work hard anyway. Lots of them find that good luck alone doesn't meet all their needs, or provide all the stuff they'd like in life.

And lots of unlucky people find they have to work very hard indeed, to get even a little bit of the stuff they'd like.

The point is, the harder you work, and the better your luck, the more stuff you can have.

Example: Health Care

A very lucky person might be able to afford the best health care, without having to work very hard at all.
A hardworking, lucky person might also be able to afford the best health care--or at least good health care.
A hardworking, unlucky person, might be able to afford mediocre health care--or possibly even no health care at all if his luck is really bad.


Society As A Whole
This is true for whole societies, as well. The more hardworking citizens there are, the more stuff a society can afford. Roads. Schools. Firefighters. Research labs. Armed forces. Etc.

And of course, the more lucky citizens there are, the more stuff a society can afford. A society with a lot of luck can afford a lot of stuff, sometimes even without having to work very hard for it.

Questions

What happens when a society's luck runs out?
Are people entitled to a certain minimum amount of luck in life?
What happens when the number of hardworking people in a society decreases?
What happens when the number of lucky people in a society decreases?
Is there any way for a society to increase the average amount of luck a citizen can expect to get in life?
Is there any way for a society to maximize the benefit a citizen gets from their hard work or good luck?
Is there any way for a society to minimize those benefits?


Epilogue
I've been going over this in my head lately, on account of I'm a California resident. Lately it seems like my state and local governments have made substantial budgetary commitments based on an assumption of ongoing extreme good luck throughout the state. Now that the state's luck seems to have run out, the state can only afford a fraction of the amount of stuff it originally committed to buying.

But of course everybody seems to think that the stuff they want from the state is an entitlement that should be paid for, regardless of the amount of hard work and good luck available to buy it.

I'm having a hard time reconciling this with the obvious (to me, anyway) principle that the less hard work and good luck there is, the less stuff you can afford.

Take education, for example: It seems logical that a hardworking, but unlucky society (such as we seem to have in California right now) can't afford the same kind of education program that a hardworking, lucky society can afford. But nobody seems to want to put in the extra hard work needed to replace the good luck we've lost, and nobody seems to want to make do with less stuff.

It's a puzzle, and I wish I knew how to solve it.

[rjh01]

There is a major error in your post. You assume that luck is something out of your control. A little of it is, like who your parents are. But a lot of it is made. Like people tell me I am lucky I own a house where I do. Excuse me, I bought the house, I chose where it should be. If the house was elsewhere I would not have bought it.

Yes you can buy a lotto ticket for the first time and it wins first prize. But that is highly unlikely. Luck that is beyond your control does not run out, nor do you normally get any more than most other people.

Your society is not unlucky, it just made some bad decisions. Like assuming they will win Lotto again just because they won lotto previously.

[theprestige]

There is a major error in your post.[QUOTE]
I doubt it.

[QUOTE]You assume that luck is something out of your control.
No, I don't.

A little of it is, like who your parents are.
This is an excellent example of something that is out of your control, which I define as "luck".

But a lot of it is made.
"Made" luck isn't luck. It's the payoff that comes from hard work.

Like people tell me I am lucky I own a house where I do. Excuse me, I bought the house, I chose where it should be. If the house was elsewhere I would not have bought it.
Exactly. You worked hard to get the house you do, in the location you desired. Not luck at all. You don't confuse hard work with good luck, and neither do I.

I hope this clears up your misunderstanding. Please re-read the OP with this clarification in mind.

[I Ratant]

Good luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
One may prepare one's life to go in a particular direction, but have something "come out of the blue" to change that direction.. for good or bad.
Being adaptable to the circumstance is a positive feature.
Economics and politics depend on future fantasies, more than luck. and if things do go well, that a coincidence of preparation and opportunity going the same way.
All too often, the predictions fail to accommodate -all- the factors.

[Freethinker]

Luck doesn't exist. It's just an expression of how things work out when we have no other explanation. It's a description, not a thing.

[JFrankA]

My favorite definition of luck comes from Star Trek (the series)

Spock: "Random chance seems to have operated in our favor."

McCoy: "In plain, non-Vulcan English: 'We've been lucky'"

Spock: (pause) "I believe I've said that, Doctor."

[Professor Yaffle]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Luck-Factor-Scientific-Study-Lucky/dp/0099443244

[rjh01]

I think what you call "luck" is better called your initial starting point. With hard work they can improve or at least maintain there good starting point. A person born without any luck can still work hard and improve their position. It is very rare for a person to improve their starting position without hard work. Society only improves by the hard work of its people and the hard work of the governing people.

Your questions make no sense based on that.

[theprestige]

Okay, look. Whille everybody in this thread is flailing around trying to redefine or disprove luck, you're all missing the points:


Hard work alone doesn't get you everything you want. Some people seem to get tons of stuff without apparently working very hard at all. Other people work extremelhy hard all their lives, and still have nothing to show for it. Obviuosly there's some other factor that contributes to outcomes, besides hard work.
The amount of stuff a person (or a society) can afford is directly related to a combination of at least two factors: Hard work and good luck the mystery factor.
When the global economy collapses, even hardworking people (and societies) may suddenly discover that they can afford less stuff than previously. What should they do with all their existing commitments to stuff such as health care and education and whatnot, now that their mystery factor has changed?


Or, if you simply cannot consider the question so long as any mention of the mystery factor remains, and you cannot conceive of any formulation of the question that omits it (thus permitting you to consider it), how about this:

How should California close its budget gap?

Make everybody work harder.
Make some people work harder.
Confiscate private property.
Buy less stuff.

[balrog666]

Okay, look. Whille everybody in this thread is flailing around trying to redefine or disprove luck, you're all missing the points:


Hard work alone doesn't get you everything you want. Some people seem to get tons of stuff without apparently working very hard at all. Other people work extremelhy hard all their lives, and still have nothing to show for it. Obviuosly there's some other factor that contributes to outcomes, besides hard work.



And the obvious corollary is that NOT working hard never gets you anything.

[rjh01]

I must admit that I have simplified things here. I have ignored working smart. That means frequently altering your work practices so that you are more productive. Luck does not come into it.

[Matthew Best]

Example: Health Care

A very lucky person might be able to afford the best health care, without having to work very hard at all.
A hardworking, lucky person might also be able to afford the best health care--or at least good health care.
A hardworking, unlucky person, might be able to afford mediocre health care--or possibly even no health care at all if his luck is really bad.



As a person living in a country with a sensible health care system can get the best health care, without having to work very hard at all, I suppose he would have to consider himself lucky to live in such a country.

The corollary of this is that someone living in, say, America is, by your definition, unlucky. :jaw-dropp

[rjh01]

I share Matthew's point of view.

[The Don]

Gary Player - "The more I practice, the luckier I get"

[egslim]

Hard work alone doesn't get you everything you want. Some people seem to get tons of stuff without apparently working very hard at all. Other people work extremelhy hard all their lives, and still have nothing to show for it. Obviuosly there's some other factor that contributes to outcomes, besides hard work.
Bolding mine. Obviously, but it's a stretch to consider everything that's not due to hard work as merely 'luck'.

By that line of argument even a person's hard work itself can be considered 'luck', if he learned his work-ethic from his parents - either by following their example, or by being abhorred by it - in any case, whenever we are influence by a factor outside our control, which happens all the time.

The amount of stuff a person (or a society) can afford is directly related to a combination of at least two factors: Hard work and good luck the mystery factor.
Let's replace 'the mystery factor' by 'multiple other factors'.

When the global economy collapses, even hardworking people (and societies) may suddenly discover that they can afford less stuff than previously. What should they do with all their existing commitments to stuff such as health care and education and whatnot, now that their mystery factor has changed?
[/LIST]
Find ways to restore earnings, and/or reduce commitments.

How should California close its budget gap?

Make everybody work harder.
Make some people work harder.
Confiscate private property.
Buy less stuff.

Cutbacks on R&D, (children)healthcare, infrastructure and education are usually long-term suicides.

Outside of penal-institutions it's impossible to actually make people work harder.

You're basically stuck with both raising taxes and spending cuts where it's possible without causing more damage further down the road. In other words, fiscal pain.

[Distracted1]

The terms are too vague for me.
"Hard Work"? what exactly does that mean, and if it means what it sounds like it means- "long hours spent at a mentally and physically unpleasant task"- why is it held up as a prerequisite for success? Fruit pickers work hard, so do garbagemen and roofers, not to mention ditchdiggers , daycare workers, and dishwashers. The people who hold these positions are not held up as "successful" by society, and are not successfull by most objective standards. Would you not expect to get socked in the nose if you suggested to someone who has spent their life struggling through these professions that they never succeeded because they did'nt work hard enough? Is it not he height of oversimplification to equate simply "not being interminably lazy" with "working hard"?

And as for "Good Luck" if it exists, must there exist "bad luck" as well? It seems to me that the most common manifestation of bad luck is to be born into poverty. I am not convinced that the most successful in our society arrived there (for the most part) due to anything other than "good luck" - in as much as they were lucky enough to start out closer to the success "finish line" in the first place. So many of the ideological differences expressed in this forum come down to a difference of opinion as to the roles of these two things, it seems a better definition for both terms is in order.

[theprestige]

The terms are too vague for me.
"Hard Work"? what exactly does that mean,
It means extensive effort made to acquire the things you want in life.

and if it means what it sounds like it means- "long hours spent at a mentally and physically unpleasant task"-
Why does it sound like it means that? I don't think it means that. It's certainly not the meaning I had in mind when I used the term. A person can work just as hard at a mentally or physically pleasant task. Although, the more you want out of life, the more you're going to have to challenge your mind and body. Even though I love my job, I still find that to get what I want, I have to work hard at it.

why is it held up as a prerequisite for success?
The kind of hard work you're so tightly focused on to the exclusion of all else is not necessarily a prerequisite for success. It may, for some people, be the only kind of work available (or it may take less effort to do that kind of work than to find other kinds of work); in such cases yes, in order to get even a little bit of what they want out of life, they're going to have to work hard at such jobs.

Fruit pickers work hard, so do garbagemen and roofers, not to mention ditchdiggers , daycare workers, and dishwashers. The people who hold these positions are not held up as "successful" by society, and are not successfull by most objective standards. Would you not expect to get socked in the nose if you suggested to someone who has spent their life struggling through these professions that they never succeeded because they did'nt work hard enough? Is it not he height of oversimplification to equate simply "not being interminably lazy" with "working hard"?
I would never suggest such a thing. I don't think it's true. I admire and respect the hard work people do, to get what they want, regardless of what kind of work it is. While you look down your nose at the kind of work they do, I attribute the difference in outcomes to "numerous other factors" more or less beyond our control, which I have conveniently (or so I thought) lumped together under the heading of "luck".

Some people work hard and have a lot to show for it. Some people don't work very hard at all and have a lot to show for it. Some people work hard and have very little to show for it. Obviously there are other factors involved.

And as for "Good Luck" if it exists, must there exist "bad luck" as well? It seems to me that the most common manifestation of bad luck is to be born into poverty. I am not convinced that the most successful in our society arrived there (for the most part) due to anything other than "good luck" - in as much as they were lucky enough to start out closer to the success "finish line" in the first place.
I wholeheartedly agree, both with your conceptualization of "luck" and with your example.

So many of the ideological differences expressed in this forum come down to a difference of opinion as to the roles of these two things, it seems a better definition for both terms is in order.
Please feel free to suggest one.

[drkitten]

Yes you can buy a lotto ticket for the first time and it wins first prize. But that is highly unlikely.

... which is exactly what makes it "luck."

And, pace your other comment, it has little to do with your initial starting point (I wasn't born with a lottery ticket in my hand) and everything to do with how events happen to shape up in your favor or not.

Certainly I can get "lucky" and get everything I want without working -- or at least, a good bit of it. If I won $115 million in cash from PowerBall, I could easily put it away at 3% a year and have an income of better than a million a year for the rest of my life, which is substantially more than I could rationally expect in any other way.

This is nothing if not luck.

[Ashles]

Okay, look. Whille everybody in this thread is flailing around trying to redefine or disprove luck, you're all missing the points:


Hard work alone doesn't get you everything you want.

This makes no sense to me. Why can't hard work alone get you everything you want?

In the absence of actual bad luck, you could have a perfectly mundane career filled with hard work, no particular lucky breaks required, and achieve a good degree of success/wealth. Why does luck have to be thrown into the equation?

[maddog]

[/list]This makes no sense to me. Why can't hard work alone get you everything you want?

In the absence of actual bad luck, you could have a perfectly mundane career filled with hard work, no particular lucky breaks required, and achieve a good degree of success/wealth. Why does luck have to be thrown into the equation?

Yeah, what he said!

[maddog]

People who don't work hard, and don't have good luck.

I'm going to assume, for the sake of argument, that the number of people in the fourth category is insignificant, and therefore the fourth category is irrelevant to this discussion.


Why would you make that assumption? Why would they be irrelevant?

[drkitten]

[/LIST]
This makes no sense to me. Why can't hard work alone get you everything you want?

In the absence of actual bad luck, you could have a perfectly mundane career filled with hard work, no particular lucky breaks required, and achieve a good degree of success/wealth. Why does luck have to be thrown into the equation?

Sounds to me like you had a fair amount of good luck in being able to have a mundane career that led to wealth.

Bear in mind that the most common "career" on the planet today is "subsistence farmer." And the vast majority of those do NOT achieve success and wealth.

Why aren't you a subsistence farmer? Would that count as a lucky break?

[theprestige]

[/LIST]
This makes no sense to me. Why can't hard work alone get you everything you want?
Why can it?

No amount of hard work is going to make Stephen Hawking an astronaut. Indeed, despite his lifelong desire to travel into space, the best he's been able to manage so far has been a brief trip on the "vomit comet". And even that experience he owes in part to good luck. There are plenty of cripples in the world with similarly lofty dreams, but who lack the innate genius and fortunate combination of opportunities that have given Hawking such success in spite of his limitations.

I know people with birth defects, who are nevertheless human beings. Who like all of us want the earth, the moon, and the stars. But who, through an accident of birth, will have to work hard each and every day just to keep from accidentally soiling themselves. Any quality of life they might enjoy depends entirely on the kindness of strangers. How much of Bill Gate's wealth and luxury can they expect from the blood, sweat, and tears they have to put into every day of their life?

I know a woman who, before she was hit by a drunk driver, had a Ph.D. in theoretical mathematics. She was so brilliant, that even with her ensuing brain damage, she can still function at more or less a "normal" level. The worst part of it is, she's fully aware of all the mental accomplishments she can no longer perform. No amount of hard work on her part will restore her former abilities.

I think it's pretty obvious that there are factors beyond our control, that have a substantial impact on the results of our hard work.