Is the implication that as societies scale they become unsustainable because humans, with their mimetic tendencies, copy behaviors more often of the lucky than the skillful? It doesn’t seem to be that way in practice. It seems few people copy the people who’ve had the greatest
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outcomes. And, further, while at first I agreed with the idea that as societies scale they’re greatest outcomes will be more a function of luck than skill, this also doesn’t seem to be born out in practice. Bezos, Gates, and Buffett seem more skilled than lucky.
Perhaps then the premise that variance in luck exceeds variance in skill is wrong? There’s a lot to think about here! And I’m far from having done the requisite thinking.
