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
-
I need to think about this more but here’s an interesting thought experiment: You win the lottery in the year 2000 and get 100 million after tax (roughly equivalent to winning a $400 million pretax lottery today). You then put 100% of the winnings into Apple stock, then $1/share
20 years later, with apple at $300 a share, you’re still 80% poorer than Bezos. It’s wild. To me, it’s an interesting open question as to how much survivorship bias is in his success. Like, who is a lucky billionaire? An unlucky one (perhaps Mickey Arison ans Tilman Ferttita).
