Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy
Written by Robert H. Frank
Narrated by Robert H. Frank
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
How important is luck in economic success? No question more reliably divides conservatives from liberals. As conservatives correctly observe, people who amass great fortunes are almost always talented and hardworking. But liberals are also correct to note that countless others have those same qualities yet never earn much. In recent years, social scientists have discovered that chance plays a much larger role in important life outcomes than most people imagine. In Success and Luck, bestselling author and New York Times economics columnist Robert Frank explores the surprising implications of those findings to show why the rich underestimate the importance of luck in success—and why that hurts everyone, even the wealthy.
Frank describes how, in a world increasingly dominated by winner-take-all markets, chance opportunities and trivial initial advantages often translate into much larger ones—and enormous income differences—over time; how false beliefs about luck persist, despite compelling evidence against them; and how myths about personal success and luck shape individual and political choices in harmful ways.
But, Frank argues, we could decrease the inequality driven by sheer luck by adopting simple, unintrusive policies that would free up trillions of dollars each year—more than enough to fix our crumbling infrastructure, expand healthcare coverage, fight global warming, and reduce poverty, all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. If this sounds implausible, you'll be surprised to discover that the solution requires only a few, uncontroversial steps.
Compellingly readable, Success and Luck shows how a more accurate understanding of the role of chance in life could lead to better, richer, and fairer economies and societies.
Robert H. Frank
ROBERT H. FRANK is the H. J. Louis Professor of Management and Professor of Economics at Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management. He has been an Economic View columnist for the New York Times for more than a decade and his books include The Winner-Take-All Society (with Philip J. Cook), The Economic Naturalist, The Darwin Economy (Princeton), and Principles of Economics (with Ben S. Bernanke). He lives in Ithaca, New York.
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Reviews for Success and Luck
34 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ending should have been published in an academic paper with the rest of the authors work. Shifting from luck (unprobable) to taxation (highly probable) seems out of context. The rest of the book mixes personal experiences with global events., and ties them to concept of luck. Book is short but somehow there are redundant topics reintroduced. Overall good book.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Odd book, by a noted economics professor. Easy to read, and short, but kind of wanders around. A lot about how important luck is to our lives (an interest of mine) but also a lot about how tax policy could be made more progressive (I’m sympathetic but not terrifically intrigued with reading about it). Illustrated by lots of personal anecdotes that were well done but maybe they should’ve been trimmed a bit. Would enjoy chatting with the guy at a party, not so sure I’d read another of his books.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5practice “Antãology”.Followers of Antãology believe luck determines most of our lives.If we fast forward 13.8 billion years simple probability gets us to this point. Since the universe is everything, it's every possibility and that it includes the possibility of me being right here, right now, posting this very comment.But certainly there's a bit of luck involved that I and the other 7B on the planet happen to exist right now, in this place. Now jumping forward, when, where and to whom we're born is entirely out of our hands. Plus we should try and avoid disabilities, mental illnesses, terminal illnesses, being killed in a car accident or any of the other variables that determine how difficult life can be if we even get a life.At some point we get a say in things. We take what we're given and we have to make the most of it. It's hard to say how much is down to us and how much is down to luck. If we just take our lifetimes, my current thinking it's about 90 percent luck and 10 percent on us. That's not a defeatist attitude or relying on faith. If it is only 10 percent then we've got to make that 10 percent count. This allows us to focus on the things we control and things we don't control. We need to focus on the stuff we control and not worry about the stuff we don't.I think it's really important that people appreciate the role luck plays in life. People who have it, don't appreciate it. People who don't, blame themselves. If you appreciate luck then you appreciate life. If you consider how monumentally fortunate you are to live in a country without war and famine then you will appreciate it more. You will be less angry and bitter, more understanding of people in the world who didn't get your luck and generally just a nicer person to be around (and less prone to being manipulated).Equally when things are monumentally shit in your life, don't be afraid to put it down to luck. It doesn't make it less shit but at least you won't blame yourself for being hit by lightening that time you decided to play golf in a storm (ok if wasn't entirely down to bad luck).
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This was two totally separate books barely hinged together. Part of it is: luck plays a very important role in success. The other part is: what we really need is a progressive consumption tax, to rein in wasteful spending that people only engage in because everyone else is doing it. I finished it, including the appendix that answers FAQ on the progressive consumption tax, and suddenly remembered, "Wait, the title of this is SUCCESS AND LUCK, what happened to that topic again?" The loose hinge is that when people realize and acknowledge how big a role luck has played in their success, they become more generous and willing to accept more public spending... hence, we can push the progressive consumption tax, which we need for these other reasons. Get it? It's loose. I didn't learn much from the success & luck part - I've already read Malcolm Gladwell. One takeaway is how depressing and non-motivating it is to acknowledge the role of luck; so from a mood perspective, we're best adopting the following attitude: all my PAST success was due to luck, but all my FUTURE success will be due to effort. I do want to note that the guy has got a wonderful skill at spinning his own attitude, based on this personal information he shared: he was an adoptee, and discovered in adulthood that the family that relinquished him was quite well-to-do, coming from old money. And he is THANKFUL, because if he'd grown up with a trust fund, he wouldn't have made the effort to achieve any of the things that he ended up doing. That's really something, being so grateful to have been given up for adoption into more needy circumstances than you would have otherwise. Whatever, if it works for you, great!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I would have given this book a "4" except for the turn it took about three quarters of the way through the book. It begins with a discussion of the elements of success and luck, and the author successfully argues that in any case where there are many competitors, and particularly in "winner take all" scenarios (economically speaking), it's inevitable that the differences between "the best of the best" will be miniscule, and the reason one competitor prevails is most likely to be that chance event that gives him orher the advantage. The author then tries to apply this to the national scene, arguing that the way to make society fairer and even out the chance fortune of luck is to institute a consumption tax. The link, apparently, is the argument that since so few of us can gain by luck, it would be better to restructure our tax policy in a way that would "raise all boats."The problem is the reader expects to be reading about behavioral economics, not tax policy. (A change in subtitle might have helped this.) The abrupt shift from one to the other is difficult to make, and leaves the reader struggling to catch up. If you're interested in an exploration of why people end up on top read the first portion of this book, stop when you get to the tax policy discussion, and add in Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else by Geoff Colvin and David Drummond.