I mean hard work has never made anyone wealthy, it usually makes someone else wealthy. What makes you wealthy is being good at negotiation and intepersonal skills, family connections, and luck. And, of course, a touch or genius—there’s a reason that some of the wealthiest people in tech are also sometimes the most brilliant. Somebody who figures out and properly leverages a labor saving technique, even if it seems obvious afterwards, will become wealthy in most circumstances; someone who had their finger on the pulse of a market, whether it is art, fashion, or the S&P 500, can become wealthy by making the right investments and sales. But hard work? Nobody ever became wealthy by working in a coal mine 12 hours a day, nobody ever became wealthy spending hours and hours meticulously and painstakingly setting up a script that could’ve been prompted out in under 5 minutes. Wealth is something that always involves a level of risk and chance, that’s why sports betting is so enticing, because it operates on the same principles as the rest of the market, even though, clearly, like in a casino, the house always gets its cut. But there are many people who live comfortably just playing poker 3 to 4 times a week, and their wealth is no accident.
I disagree. What a high level professional gambler is doing is hard work.
Hard work doesn't make you rich, but it's part of the things that you need to prosper. I'm no inspirational poster child, but hard work, building a network, doing good things for people were all essential to my long term success. I didn't have the benefit of familial connections, but that helps too. There's a saying that you make your own luck, which is true... if you're not on the field, you can't get lucky.
People making a living playing poker is fine, but it's just like being a working musician, an investor or an athlete. I had a friend who made a living on horse better. You've developed a set of skills and have a usually limited window to cash in on them. The 95% of people gambling aren't attracted to the game of skill, and flop around with the 101 things to do in a gambling establishment that aren't poker.
I agree that hard work is often a pre-requisite for being successful, but it is not key to being successful by any means. Like I wouldn't agree with your definition because most people wouldn't claim that, say, getting into bitcoin early and then working like 10 hours a week max trading and setting up mining rigs is "hard work," even if it made some people extremely wealthy, just because they got on the trend early.
That’s fair, you make a good point.
I guess people win the lottery too. Life is complex, there’s no one answer. And tbh, if I reflect on my own life, my comp is much higher than it has ever been, my peeps are very happy, and I’m not grinding by any means.
People who win the lottery often can't turn that money into a reliable investment vehicle. Like, if I won the lottery, I would probably become a VC or start building GPU farms. But that would probably still take a lot of work; I'm just saying some people have found a way to maintain wealth long term without doing a considerable amount of work.
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