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Gen X here, and I'll speak to my upbringing here and no other generation's. I was told if I worked hard, paid my dues, punched that clock, etc, etc, etc, that I would "make it." So of course I imagined that those "successful" people did exactly that. And if they could do it, anyone could do it. Just work hard, punch that clock, pay those dues, etc. So I went into the Army. I went to a rather prestigious school in fact, and that was the last time hard work paid off for me, BUT - and it's a big but - someone wealthy had to nominate me and that's a different story. Back to this one. Long story short, things happened. Bad things. Friends I'd gained along the way I lost. They died: in training accidents, in war... one just fell dead in his living room after PT from an undiagnosed heart condition. One was in the north tower on 9/11. One killed himself. I knew them all. They were just like me. They worked hard just like me. We all had to meet the same standards, and those standards were narrow enough to put us in our own tiny little Bell Curve within the general population Bell Curve. That made us practically identical in talent, ambition, creativity, sheer cussedness; what ever you wanted to measure us by. Yet they are dead and I still live. Why? Yes, there's a little survivors guilt in that (though I mostly just miss my friends with whom I shared so much,) but I did find an answer. It's the same one you gave here. It was pure, stupid, random (bad) luck. And yes, it works the other way. Some of my classmates are now billionaires from pure, stupid, random (good) luck. They were no more capable as those we lost. They just had the better luck. That's why I don't idolize them, but it took a few losses to get there. Thanks for doing such a cogent job of explaining this, and for reading this mini blog. You are a genuinely good human being.
Its the agency fallacy. Humans in general have a *very* hard time wrapping their minds around the fact that things happen in the world outside of human intervention.
Yet another video of Trace reflecting my exact perspective of things. I've said for many years that wealth was mostly luck. The wealthiest people aren't always the hardest workers, aren't always the smartest, weren't all raised from a high-wealth family, didn't all have the best education. I never understood why people fawn over celebrities, to the point of practically spying on them (or indirectly paying paparazzi via a magazine or website). Seems like most people don't really bother to stop and think about why they "care", or if they should. Often, I find it a sign of vanity or greed, especially if nearly half the population thinks they can be rich.
This video is, honestly, possibly very important for everyone living in todays day and age... It's a realisation some of us make by themselfs, but hearing someone else say it, someone from the place that suffers the most from the dilusion, really shifts my prespective.
people _really_ don't grasp how large a billion is - we think billionaires are, at best, only removed from us by a few degrees. they are not. I've always loved the example of what a million seconds (11 days) versus what a billion seconds (31 years) is - it's so far from our intuitions that the first time anyone hears that fact they get shocked. Another thing that I'm surprised that you didn't dig in deeper is how shocking it is that the distribution of wealth is based on a pareto curve, as if 20% of people own 80% of wealth is a natural fact of life, instead of a travesty that doesn't belong in modern society. And, unlike the simulation example, wealth is generational - so the distribution of wealth isn't random at all after several generations. Like, in the end... billionaires are billionaires because they're allowed to entrench their wealth while you fight for scraps. I assure you, if you have a parasocial relationship with someone, you'll still like them if they're worth tens of millions, rather than billions. And if they insist on keeping all that wealth because they “deserve” it, ask yourself if they're worth your fealty and admiration, because they're talking about you as well.
Recently subscribed to your channel, I like the way you think and speak. I take issue with ONE thing in this video: the "distribution curve" for wealth as it's been drawn, makes it look like 5% of the people have NO money, and 95% have the rest----and NONE have stratospheric amounts of wealth. This is what the curve looks like if climbs quickly from the beginning and then flattens out. If the "curve" crawled along the bottom for 98% of the graph, and then climbed steeply upward for the last 2%, it would represent both the scarcity and luck of wealth a lot better.
Although I trust in the science behind all this, personally I don’t think I’m susceptible to this mechanism at all. Maybe because I’m not American? I know this might come across as arrogant, but I’m baffled to learn so many people are thinking this way about the rich. Please comment if you’re in the same boat.
Most of his content is pretty well balanced, but in this one he focuses pretty heavily on the traits of a specific subset of people and applies those characteristics to a much broader group of people.
@@TraceDominguez I now realise this is actually an important part of your video, it’s even in the title 🤦🏻♂️ Thanks for the video by the way! So well made and a very unique and interesting subject. 💜
Thanks, Trace, we can all use this reminder. Even if I thought I know how this works, and sobered up with embarrassment when Elon dropped his pants, I STILL did the mistake today of defending a public person by reflex, instead of listening properly to my family member.
I feel like the United States are probably the only country in the world where most people living in it like billionaires. That's definitely not the case in Brazil, and I'm curious about other countries.
It is part of the American Mythos that hard work will take you where you want to go. So thinking billionaires must have worked hard to get what they have is a natural extension of that myth.
I can't think of a way anyone could ever objectively decide who does or does not "deserve" something. I think we'd get along better if we threw the whole concept out.
ok so I see you making great points, but Beyonce and I really are BFFs. We haven't hung out in a while because she's busy making albums and going on tour, but when she's got a free weekend she's definitely coming over for tea.
There are two types of billionaire wealth: A) Random. Seriously, random. Like, TOTALLY random B) They were the offspring of some slaver/nazi/war criminal
Just a few things, that i want to add. 1st, sometimes people think that someone lets say musk as a example, that them being in such "high" position, it automatically makes them good at everything and as if they are genius in some way. Nobody can be good at everything, will you be average in a lot of things? Yes, but you will never be great at a lot of things. People specialize. Also to add to that, yes you can understand a lot of things, but even in history for example, you simply cant learn everything. 2nd, people who are really rich, they very rarely started from nothing, just like musk who did not come from poverty. You need money to make money, thus its easier to become more rich by having wealth to back you up. 3rd is survivor bias, you only usually get only people who were succesful to tell their story. What about those thousands, who never got lucky or didnt get to that position? Take example of war, you have bunch of soldiers doing suicidal and high risk charge towards enemy line, most of them will die. 1 person survives and is there to tell "well i did heroic charge and survived" -> listeners then think "well ill do it too, doing heroic charge like that is good idea", dead arent there to tell that its bad idea and pure chance/luck, not much about "skill". I know someone will point out that airplane story from WW2, about researchers looking for spots where planes got shot, which is often told when discussing survivor bias.
now this title makes way more sense and you are totally correct, billions of dollars is unimaginable much money, no single human ever deserves to "own" it for themselves, it's ok to invest that much money for humanity, heck, I would love to be the first world-president in 30 years, I am sure I will carry this trash monkey world a lot, but this doesn't mean I owe the world, no, my job as a billionaire would be to improve humanity of course, I am a millionaire now but still live in a 1 room appartment, and wont move out until I finally found my wife, which sadly isn't easy because there are not enough educated and or hard working women out here looking for a serious relationship
@@TraceDominguez true, people are always slower than I expect. Internet and english help to globalize this world, but there might not even be a president, maybe advanced AI or a group of people or no leader at all. I think the best things billionaires should invest in are artificial wombs slower aging, and gene-editing. It will help us to make happy motivated geniuses, also if we stop aging we don't have to invest as many resources in educating new humans, new humans (kids) are annoying and it was and still is effort to educate myself, if I die my education will be eaten by worms which sucks. gene-edited humans can be made to have no laziness (laziness = energy-saving mechanic from evolution which is dumb to have nowadays, I have it too haha), I see a beautiful and happy future for consciousness tbh
False, Eric yuan created zoom in 2013 and the company went public on April 2019(before the pandemic ) with the IPO on nasdaq, the IPO raised $350 million dollars and valued Zoom at billions of dollars, this was before the pandemic , Zion was already successful before the pandemic , the pandemic increased the usage because people at the time couldn’t make use of physical offices but the pandemic was never the reason zoom was successful
That's already factored in. Even in the simulation, 'Sims had random events that could increase and decrease their wealth.' Most people don't have wealth, this simulation was dependent on inheritance already being a thing, and still came back with the same conclusion.
They nailed it above. This is a great Q! I do mention it at the end of the video. If randomness is a factor for YOU than it was for your parents and theirs and your children and theirs. 👍
Most of these people I could not care less about. I like Elon, not because he is rich but because he strives after something bigger than himself. Also I like Trace. I don't know if he is rich or poor. But he has said a really good amount of things and helped me to think for like one or two decades. Thinking is more valuable to me than cottonpaper... Or poymers.. If you think about it, it is uneccisary. Just have a spreadsheet for God's sake! 🤔
I do love your presentation style! There is a lot of context you are missing here in this one though: A - Most people have nuanced opinions on Billionaires rather than the black & white manner you present them as having. Some people are ride or die for sure & they will be the most visible in any conversation, but Billionaires don't stay in power because they are popular. They stay in power because the exert financial (existential) pressure on the people who form up the structures of our society. (Lobbying) B - Luck can be very much gamed by researching & A/B testing what works & what doesn't work to be valuable to those who have money to offer you. Wealth accumulation can also be systematized. This is actually the foundational reason that there is wealth inequality in the first place. People with wealth can game the system against those who don't. Luck generally exists at the cross section between time, numbers of tries at success, how valuable you make yourself to the people who can make you wealthy. This also means there are ways to weight the systems in your favor even if you don't come from wealth. Stuff like dont have kids early on in life, focus your career on low supply high demand skillsets, design your business around value offerings rather than trading time for set amounts of cash. Luck is VERY much gamable. The reason why this is detrimental to the non-wealthy is because money and connections buy you opportunities as well. Sonif you start with money, you are in a much better position than those who don't start with money. You also benefit from education that trains you to seek opportunity rather than to seek a job. You also benefit from not having to worry about existential stuff like rent, food, and healthcare. It's fundamental social infrastructure as guided by people with wealth in the first place. All that to say it's only half right that luck is what makes you wealth and that is precisely why I advocate for systems like Universal Basic Income, Universal Health Care, free college education, and decommoditization of housing. Effectively the more we begin to remove the existential hurdles for people to be able to take risks, the more "lucky" everyone will become. Ironically that includes people at the top because they will benefit from the technological, health centric, and even artistic advancements that come from a society where the truly skilled are given a platform to try new things.
A - I agree most people have more nuanced opinions about, well, everything. But presenting nuanced opinions doesn’t make for a very interesting video, book, essay, or any bit of media. B- Luck is another way to say “probability.” Probability isn’t affected by A/B testing or researching. Luck doesn’t care about your life choices. Luck is just … luck. Imagine a pure system (which doesn’t really exist). Flipping the perfect coin that is exactly and perfectly flipped and balanced every time. That would be ungameable. The idea of luck that you’re looking at is based on the reality we live in, and being able to game the system we exist in - not the probability, but the system itself. Think finding a coin that was made in a slightly different process that favors one side and then using only that coin. Or learning to flip it in such a way that helps you predict the result. Neither of those are based in luck. I really appreciate the context and discussion!! :D
@@TraceDominguez A - You're right that it's more interesting as content, just less accurate as to what reality is and how people are. I also maintain unfair biases in some areas of life as well. We all do. Just worth pointing out since it kind of perpetuates a strawman argument to an extent. B - Completely disagree with you here. Probability is 100% influenced by A/B testing because the results then inform your actions and your actions determine whether you find success or not. This is literally what the scientific process is all about. You start from a baseline assumption and the more you observe/hypothesize/experiment to filter out what's most likely true from what is not; the more fine tuned your experiments & hypothesis becomes. Example. When I started skateboarding it took me 2 and 1/2 years to heelflip, but once I understood how to heelflip, kickflips came shortly thereafter. The lessons learned from heelflips informed me a little bit about how all the rest of skate tricks worked. When I started watching pro videos, I would observe their stance, their foot positioning, the board movements; trying to understand the fundamentals rather than just trying to learn the individual tricks. I was overweight, didn't have easy access to skateparks, and was generally much less coordinated than most people. It took me longer to learn, but the more time that I spent learning not just the motion of doing tricks but also the fundamentals of how those tricks worked; the better I got at using my time effectively by using my strengths to my advantage. I learned that even though I don't have a lot of great balance (partially due to body type & genetics) I did have fast/precise foot movements. So leaned heavily into freestyle skateboarding (flatground specifically) and eventually got good enough to compete on a similar level as professional freestyle skaters. My point is, with every new detail that I learned about myself and about how skateboarding works, I made myself a little bit more likely to attain that "luck" of being able to accomplish a skate trick. If I had started with a good body, access to skateparks, and was surrounded by professional skaters I would obviously have been better in the long run; but to say that I wasn't able to create more opportunities for myself to land tricks and that I was just more lucky than other skaters because I ended io eventually being the top 1% of skilled flatground skaters out there would effectively ignore that I spent a huge amount of time figuring what does or doesn't work and applying those knowledge filters to each new skate session. I made new opportunities for myself to be lucky through time, effort, and the scientific process. What I'm saying is that the same principle is at work in economics. Most people who find success are either given the fundamentals of how money works from the get go along with money to practice (generational wealth) or are willing/able to try and fail until they learn these fundamentals and something succeeds. Once their first venture succeeds the likelihood of the next venture getting "lucky" and succeeding on an even higher level increases exponentially. The reason this is important is because if we just assign all of people's success to to "luck" and don't instead get specific about the system's & knowledge that made them "lucky" in the first place; then our actions will not be as likely lead us to success either. We also won't design systems that allow for more equitable opportunities for the average person as effectively. There are roughly 22 million millionaires in the usa. Of those roughly 700k (a little over 3% of the millionaires) received more than $1m in inheritance. Instead their "luck" came in the form of education & opportunity. Most of the time that means stuff like having a fall back place to live if all things fell through. It meant that their parents more than likely gave them good lessons about money. It probably meant that they weren't worried about existential stuff and were able to focus on ventures that were more risky. All of these things are affected by systems & educational resources that favor one group over another. This is the principle behind systematic racism as well. Certain people are not given the same starting line as others, which is where I think your luck based mentality has some accuracy. I think there is a nuanced middle ground to be found here. Sorry if that's a bit long, but I it's important that we talk about these matters with these components in mind if we want to bring about a positive effect for change. Hope that makes sense. Again, love your videos and presentation style. Glad I subscribed and I look forward to what else you produce. Much love! :)
Redistribute the luck, I say! Very good points here! As you bring up, I think a lot of the points tend to get lost in the noise of us trying to project “goodness” or “badness” onto any “group” of people we make up in our minds. It’s _so_ hard to get out of this habit! 😂
French here, i really don't like them. I secretly see myself beheading one with my good old trusty guillotine someday, not becoming one so... Well, i guess i'm a pure product of where i was born. Anywho, i should go back to watch the video. Only 20s in and i fell compeled to comment (youtubers should all stop with the "leave a comment for the algorithm, i'd probably would have not posted that silly thing if you all didn't conditioned me like that !)
It's to be expected that the majority of people living in a hyper-individualistic neoliberal democracy would basically worship wealth and wealthy people. It's disturbing to me personally.
Is promiscuous lifestyle normal,Or is that genetics?Then why there r not sexu ally not satisfied?what is the scientific reason behind it. Pls, make video
Great stuff, Trace! Been following since your DNews days and would love to see you cover marketing studies. I.e., so many companies continue to spend millions on marketing every year, but why? What are they learning that we aren't? If they're willing to spend so much on it, there must be something to it, right?
rich people in average are more pretty and beautiful because they can spend more money in their beauty and be more healthy. They can have chefs, personal trainers, physiotherapists, nutritionists, better products for her face, better food with more protein that give them more height when they are young, better doctors and they also can do any surgery that they want to improve her looks. Its playing in easy mode of a game but in real life
Great video Trace. I agree with the lucky part but what I would add is that in many cases working hard and becoming more skilled puts you in a position to be lucky. The Zoom founder and random guy sitting on the couch didn't have equal chances of becoming a billionaire during the pandemic. Also, in that study you mentioned around 1:50, I wonder if the researchers took into account the many psychological effects that factor into high concentrations is wealth. Some include the halo effect (mentioned in the video), social proof (whoever can show the most evidence of past gets a disproportionate amount of people to buy into them - examples are Amazon reviews or what restaurant has the longest lines), past success making someone more confident to take greater actions and risks and vice-versa (hierometer theory), etc. You also have situations where initial success puts you in a position to connect with people and things that can lead to even more success. These effects create a compounding effect. I guess these can technically be included in the luck category 🤷♂️
I think it takes a certain amount of luck to even be in the position to found a company like that. But you're right: if you do absolutely nothing you're a lot less likely to become rich than someone who has at least done something. However, some people are literally born rich, so it's not impossible And all your other points, also great. And you're right, whether it's luck is kinda debatable
Hay Trace. A long time ago, it was shown that it's not random. It was simple, and compelling. What they did is select a human attribute. It almost doesn't matter which one. height, eye color, IQ, etc etc. Then divided the population into More then Millionaire or Less then Millionaire (sure you would use a bigger number these days). Then looks at the proportions in each of the populations. If it was random the distributions should be relatively the same. But they are not. So not random. Now if you look at how the two groups think there are vast differences. Most people think you can save your way to being a millionaire. Hence all the silly memes about "if we could only get the billionaires to spend there money everyone would have more money". However, No billionaire thinks you can get there by saving money. Or, A lot of people think that millionaires got there by taking advantage of others. Yet in reality, doing so is a better predictor of the person being poor. For obvious reasons.
In the video I basically say all of that, except the researchers say the opposite. It’s not random selection, but there are random events that accounted for the gain/loss of wealth
Man parasocial relationships are really really weird. Thanks for explaining to me that I hate you Trace!.. For being an ultra-successful youtube man pulling in billions 😡😡😡. But for real, I'm sure my brain is interrupting some sort of parasocial relationship here, even so Thanks!
Except the rich do owe people. They should be giving away most of their money. People are dying not having resources that could've saved them. These rich people have so much money they don't need that could've been used to save many.
I don't think and have never thought that anyone deserves exorbitant wealth beyond a little bit more than what's required to care for oneself. Even half-millionaire is excessive money. If you pay all your bills and still have a large sum of money leftover, it's not that you are doing something right, I'd argue that you're doing something wrong - knowing that there are poor people who've done nothing to cause their own poverty and are victims of circumstance, lack of opportunities, etc, while you stash away excessive money into a bank account despite that all your bills are paid and you're comfortable, that's not a good thing, that's just immoral. I have always hated the rich and always will. Rich people perfectly personify the Western Excess mentality, which has always been the source of so many countless crimes against humanity and nature throughout history. Humans are mostly evil, but humans with money are absolutely diabolical.
There are people who are exceptionally mathematically smart, I don't think thats true. But there are a lot of idiots who become rich and a lot of very smart people who don't. also some mathi-geniuses are real weak in the social department 😬
@@georgplaz everyone tends to excell in something but at the same time everyone is susceptible to human error. Think of the doctors who decided that 'retard' is a perfectly reasonable diagnosis without further thought. We as a collective have the potential to do great things, but left to an individual 'genius' will fall flat.
@@georgplaz another thought that I have is that a lot of 'geniuses' are entirely products of their environment, rather than an innate geniusness that is sorta implied with the usage of the common definition of genius
This is why these societal systems we've created need to be redesigned to distribute that wealth more evenly. Then we can stop hating so much on those that didn't earn it through skill (and to be honest, don't need the amount they currently have) and, in turn, take better care of those that never really had the chance to live comfortably from the beginning. Creating systems that reduce inequality should be a top intrest to all humans; on the global order of creating systems that reduce and eliminate the need to distribute greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.
@@TraceDominguez Mainly through collective action, in my opinion, and discussing problems with others either in one-on-one situations or to an audience. Also, I think learning more about alternative systems (socialism, for me personally) & other ideas that align more with egalitarian outcomes can be eye-opening because the systems we live with are man-made (they aren't laws of nature) so they can possibly be changed for the better... which gives me hope and motivation.
Yeah I love billionaires when they're me or Chuck Feeny: In February 2011, Feeney became a signatory to The Giving Pledge. In his letter to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the founders of The Giving Pledge, Feeney writes, "I cannot think of a more personally rewarding and appropriate use of wealth than to give while one is living-to personally devote oneself to meaningful efforts to improve the human condition. More importantly, today's needs are so great and varied that intelligent philanthropic support and positive interventions can have greater value and impact today than if they are delayed when the needs are greater." He gave away his last $7 million in late 2016, to the same recipient of his first charitable donations: Cornell. Over the course of his life, he has given away more than $8 billion. At its height, Atlantic had over 300 employees and 10 offices across the globe.
Becoming a billionaire is hard work and risking taking meeting opportunity(random chance), If a billion people spend all their waking hours watching TH-cam videos one of them isn't going to become a billionaire by random chance. Or your an heiress or lottery winner.
“Being a billionaire is hard work” is true (on some level). It takes talent and skill. But GETTING to be a billionaire is still has that randomness factor
Yea, I totally disagree with this video. I think you are hyper focusing on celebrities and rare cases. Every medium-sized town in this country is full of multi millionaires who are "rich" by the average persons standard. We live in an open book test, the answered to become a millionaire is right there for anyone to copy, all u need to do is stick to the plan and not wait till your 40 to figure it out
Dude. I have to completely disagree with this. I am a millionaire, barely... i agree that there is a luck component, you see that with people who are worth 1 million vs 10 million. But mostly, successful people can lose it all and then get it all back if they dont give up. We live in a open book test, the answers to making money and getting rich are right here on TH-cam. Just cheat on your homework and follow in the tracts of what someone else already did.
I appreciate the sentiment and congrats on the finances? 1 million seconds is 12 days 1 billion seconds is 31.7 years Billionaires are not millionaires. Billionaires are not going to “lose it all and get it all back.”
I always heard people talking about how the wealthy work hard to get there and always think there are people working harder to barely put food on the table because they were born poor
You've certainly put in the hard work in this video to manipulate your audience of resentful losers for your personal gain. Perhaps hard work and being a sociopath are the keys to success more than luck. I've got high hopes for you buddy!
Sociopaths have extreme antisocial attitudes and behaviors and typically lack a conscience. I definitely have guilt when I do thing. I still haven’t gotten over making a friend feel bad bc I said the wrong thing at a brunch in 2003. 🥲
Jeezus, I wish there was a way to get more people to see this. Aside from the randomness of external factors that brings most great wealth to the neuvo rich, there is the randomness of being born to wealthy parents that brings great wealth to the rest of the rich.
⚠ AUDIO NOTE: This video has been dubbed using an artificial voice. You can change the audio track language in the Settings menu. Learn more: aloud.area120.google.com
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it will be nice if you do Arabic dub ✨🎶
@@chocolategirl5725 if I can make that work I will
Gen X here, and I'll speak to my upbringing here and no other generation's. I was told if I worked hard, paid my dues, punched that clock, etc, etc, etc, that I would "make it." So of course I imagined that those "successful" people did exactly that. And if they could do it, anyone could do it. Just work hard, punch that clock, pay those dues, etc. So I went into the Army. I went to a rather prestigious school in fact, and that was the last time hard work paid off for me, BUT - and it's a big but - someone wealthy had to nominate me and that's a different story. Back to this one. Long story short, things happened. Bad things. Friends I'd gained along the way I lost. They died: in training accidents, in war... one just fell dead in his living room after PT from an undiagnosed heart condition. One was in the north tower on 9/11. One killed himself. I knew them all. They were just like me. They worked hard just like me. We all had to meet the same standards, and those standards were narrow enough to put us in our own tiny little Bell Curve within the general population Bell Curve. That made us practically identical in talent, ambition, creativity, sheer cussedness; what ever you wanted to measure us by. Yet they are dead and I still live. Why? Yes, there's a little survivors guilt in that (though I mostly just miss my friends with whom I shared so much,) but I did find an answer. It's the same one you gave here. It was pure, stupid, random (bad) luck. And yes, it works the other way. Some of my classmates are now billionaires from pure, stupid, random (good) luck. They were no more capable as those we lost. They just had the better luck. That's why I don't idolize them, but it took a few losses to get there. Thanks for doing such a cogent job of explaining this, and for reading this mini blog. You are a genuinely good human being.
Thank you for sharing. 💙
Obrigado pela partilha.
Its the agency fallacy. Humans in general have a *very* hard time wrapping their minds around the fact that things happen in the world outside of human intervention.
Yet another video of Trace reflecting my exact perspective of things.
I've said for many years that wealth was mostly luck. The wealthiest people aren't always the hardest workers, aren't always the smartest, weren't all raised from a high-wealth family, didn't all have the best education. I never understood why people fawn over celebrities, to the point of practically spying on them (or indirectly paying paparazzi via a magazine or website). Seems like most people don't really bother to stop and think about why they "care", or if they should. Often, I find it a sign of vanity or greed, especially if nearly half the population thinks they can be rich.
They’re our little primate leaders and we want to be them. (Some of us!)
This video is, honestly, possibly very important for everyone living in todays day and age... It's a realisation some of us make by themselfs, but hearing someone else say it, someone from the place that suffers the most from the dilusion, really shifts my prespective.
people _really_ don't grasp how large a billion is - we think billionaires are, at best, only removed from us by a few degrees. they are not. I've always loved the example of what a million seconds (11 days) versus what a billion seconds (31 years) is - it's so far from our intuitions that the first time anyone hears that fact they get shocked.
Another thing that I'm surprised that you didn't dig in deeper is how shocking it is that the distribution of wealth is based on a pareto curve, as if 20% of people own 80% of wealth is a natural fact of life, instead of a travesty that doesn't belong in modern society. And, unlike the simulation example, wealth is generational - so the distribution of wealth isn't random at all after several generations.
Like, in the end... billionaires are billionaires because they're allowed to entrench their wealth while you fight for scraps. I assure you, if you have a parasocial relationship with someone, you'll still like them if they're worth tens of millions, rather than billions. And if they insist on keeping all that wealth because they “deserve” it, ask yourself if they're worth your fealty and admiration, because they're talking about you as well.
Yoooo nailed it with that billions vs millions
Recently subscribed to your channel, I like the way you think and speak. I take issue with ONE thing in this video: the "distribution curve" for wealth as it's been drawn, makes it look like 5% of the people have NO money, and 95% have the rest----and NONE have stratospheric amounts of wealth. This is what the curve looks like if climbs quickly from the beginning and then flattens out.
If the "curve" crawled along the bottom for 98% of the graph, and then climbed steeply upward for the last 2%, it would represent both the scarcity and luck of wealth a lot better.
Thanks!
Thanks!
Thank you Edward!!!
Although I trust in the science behind all this, personally I don’t think I’m susceptible to this mechanism at all. Maybe because I’m not American? I know this might come across as arrogant, but I’m baffled to learn so many people are thinking this way about the rich.
Please comment if you’re in the same boat.
Maybe! It is a pretty American thing to think wealth is something worth fawning over
Most of his content is pretty well balanced, but in this one he focuses pretty heavily on the traits of a specific subset of people and applies those characteristics to a much broader group of people.
@@TraceDominguez I now realise this is actually an important part of your video, it’s even in the title 🤦🏻♂️
Thanks for the video by the way! So well made and a very unique and interesting subject. 💜
Thanks, Trace, we can all use this reminder. Even if I thought I know how this works, and sobered up with embarrassment when Elon dropped his pants, I STILL did the mistake today of defending a public person by reflex, instead of listening properly to my family member.
Listening is a tough skill!
I feel like the United States are probably the only country in the world where most people living in it like billionaires. That's definitely not the case in Brazil, and I'm curious about other countries.
Maybe people will weigh in! Obrigado for watching!
It is part of the American Mythos that hard work will take you where you want to go. So thinking billionaires must have worked hard to get what they have is a natural extension of that myth.
Yuuuuup
I can't think of a way anyone could ever objectively decide who does or does not "deserve" something. I think we'd get along better if we threw the whole concept out.
No argument from me and buddy
ok so I see you making great points, but Beyonce and I really are BFFs. We haven't hung out in a while because she's busy making albums and going on tour, but when she's got a free weekend she's definitely coming over for tea.
I like tea, and we’re friends…
@@TraceDominguez I have peach ginger tea waiting!
bayonce forced you to say that, don't lie
There are two types of billionaire wealth:
A) Random. Seriously, random. Like, TOTALLY random
B) They were the offspring of some slaver/nazi/war criminal
And their parents/grandparents/greats were random too, but that random benefit can be passed on
So how do you randomly become a billionaire working 9-5 again?
Luck 🥸
Buy a lottery ticket
Engagement for the engagement god! Watched this on Nebula!
Thank you in TWO ways!!
So if I get this right, those 44% of people believing they have the tools to get rich are correct, if its just random chance anyway
I hadn’t thought of it this way… huh! Cool!!!
More work mean more chace
Just a few things, that i want to add. 1st, sometimes people think that someone lets say musk as a example, that them being in such "high" position, it automatically makes them good at everything and as if they are genius in some way. Nobody can be good at everything, will you be average in a lot of things? Yes, but you will never be great at a lot of things. People specialize. Also to add to that, yes you can understand a lot of things, but even in history for example, you simply cant learn everything.
2nd, people who are really rich, they very rarely started from nothing, just like musk who did not come from poverty. You need money to make money, thus its easier to become more rich by having wealth to back you up.
3rd is survivor bias, you only usually get only people who were succesful to tell their story. What about those thousands, who never got lucky or didnt get to that position? Take example of war, you have bunch of soldiers doing suicidal and high risk charge towards enemy line, most of them will die. 1 person survives and is there to tell "well i did heroic charge and survived" -> listeners then think "well ill do it too, doing heroic charge like that is good idea", dead arent there to tell that its bad idea and pure chance/luck, not much about "skill". I know someone will point out that airplane story from WW2, about researchers looking for spots where planes got shot, which is often told when discussing survivor bias.
No argument from me! This is great
great job cool vid 👍
THANKS!
now this title makes way more sense and you are totally correct, billions of dollars is unimaginable much money, no single human ever deserves to "own" it for themselves, it's ok to invest that much money for humanity, heck, I would love to be the first world-president in 30 years, I am sure I will carry this trash monkey world a lot, but this doesn't mean I owe the world, no, my job as a billionaire would be to improve humanity of course, I am a millionaire now but still live in a 1 room appartment, and wont move out until I finally found my wife, which sadly isn't easy because there are not enough educated and or hard working women out here looking for a serious relationship
I think it’ll be 30 years before we see a lot of self-driving cars. Maybe 300 before we get a world president. Just my opinion :)
@@TraceDominguez true, people are always slower than I expect. Internet and english help to globalize this world, but there might not even be a president, maybe advanced AI or a group of people or no leader at all.
I think the best things billionaires should invest in are artificial wombs slower aging, and gene-editing. It will help us to make happy motivated geniuses, also if we stop aging we don't have to invest as many resources in educating new humans, new humans (kids) are annoying and it was and still is effort to educate myself, if I die my education will be eaten by worms which sucks. gene-edited humans can be made to have no laziness (laziness = energy-saving mechanic from evolution which is dumb to have nowadays, I have it too haha), I see a beautiful and happy future for consciousness tbh
False, Eric yuan created zoom in 2013 and the company went public on April 2019(before the pandemic ) with the IPO on nasdaq, the IPO raised $350 million dollars and valued Zoom at billions of dollars, this was before the pandemic , Zion was already successful before the pandemic , the pandemic increased the usage because people at the time couldn’t make use of physical offices but the pandemic was never the reason zoom was successful
Great. We need to discuss economics too, not just physics..
Please make a video about how banks create new money, and FED as a creature from Jekyll Island & more videos about economics.
Are you including those who have wealth by inheritance though? I feel like they would throw the bell curve way off.
That's already factored in. Even in the simulation, 'Sims had random events that could increase and decrease their wealth.' Most people don't have wealth, this simulation was dependent on inheritance already being a thing, and still came back with the same conclusion.
They nailed it above. This is a great Q! I do mention it at the end of the video. If randomness is a factor for YOU than it was for your parents and theirs and your children and theirs. 👍
Thank you for bringing up the actual research behind this phenomenon. I love your videos❤
You are so welcome❤️
Most of these people I could not care less about. I like Elon, not because he is rich but because he strives after something bigger than himself. Also I like Trace. I don't know if he is rich or poor. But he has said a really good amount of things and helped me to think for like one or two decades. Thinking is more valuable to me than cottonpaper... Or poymers.. If you think about it, it is uneccisary. Just have a spreadsheet for God's sake! 🤔
I do love your presentation style! There is a lot of context you are missing here in this one though:
A - Most people have nuanced opinions on Billionaires rather than the black & white manner you present them as having. Some people are ride or die for sure & they will be the most visible in any conversation, but Billionaires don't stay in power because they are popular. They stay in power because the exert financial (existential) pressure on the people who form up the structures of our society. (Lobbying)
B - Luck can be very much gamed by researching & A/B testing what works & what doesn't work to be valuable to those who have money to offer you. Wealth accumulation can also be systematized. This is actually the foundational reason that there is wealth inequality in the first place. People with wealth can game the system against those who don't. Luck generally exists at the cross section between time, numbers of tries at success, how valuable you make yourself to the people who can make you wealthy.
This also means there are ways to weight the systems in your favor even if you don't come from wealth. Stuff like dont have kids early on in life, focus your career on low supply high demand skillsets, design your business around value offerings rather than trading time for set amounts of cash. Luck is VERY much gamable.
The reason why this is detrimental to the non-wealthy is because money and connections buy you opportunities as well. Sonif you start with money, you are in a much better position than those who don't start with money. You also benefit from education that trains you to seek opportunity rather than to seek a job. You also benefit from not having to worry about existential stuff like rent, food, and healthcare. It's fundamental social infrastructure as guided by people with wealth in the first place.
All that to say it's only half right that luck is what makes you wealth and that is precisely why I advocate for systems like Universal Basic Income, Universal Health Care, free college education, and decommoditization of housing. Effectively the more we begin to remove the existential hurdles for people to be able to take risks, the more "lucky" everyone will become. Ironically that includes people at the top because they will benefit from the technological, health centric, and even artistic advancements that come from a society where the truly skilled are given a platform to try new things.
A - I agree most people have more nuanced opinions about, well, everything. But presenting nuanced opinions doesn’t make for a very interesting video, book, essay, or any bit of media.
B- Luck is another way to say “probability.” Probability isn’t affected by A/B testing or researching. Luck doesn’t care about your life choices. Luck is just … luck. Imagine a pure system (which doesn’t really exist). Flipping the perfect coin that is exactly and perfectly flipped and balanced every time. That would be ungameable. The idea of luck that you’re looking at is based on the reality we live in, and being able to game the system we exist in - not the probability, but the system itself. Think finding a coin that was made in a slightly different process that favors one side and then using only that coin. Or learning to flip it in such a way that helps you predict the result. Neither of those are based in luck.
I really appreciate the context and discussion!! :D
@@TraceDominguez
A - You're right that it's more interesting as content, just less accurate as to what reality is and how people are. I also maintain unfair biases in some areas of life as well. We all do. Just worth pointing out since it kind of perpetuates a strawman argument to an extent.
B - Completely disagree with you here. Probability is 100% influenced by A/B testing because the results then inform your actions and your actions determine whether you find success or not. This is literally what the scientific process is all about. You start from a baseline assumption and the more you observe/hypothesize/experiment to filter out what's most likely true from what is not; the more fine tuned your experiments & hypothesis becomes.
Example. When I started skateboarding it took me 2 and 1/2 years to heelflip, but once I understood how to heelflip, kickflips came shortly thereafter. The lessons learned from heelflips informed me a little bit about how all the rest of skate tricks worked. When I started watching pro videos, I would observe their stance, their foot positioning, the board movements; trying to understand the fundamentals rather than just trying to learn the individual tricks. I was overweight, didn't have easy access to skateparks, and was generally much less coordinated than most people. It took me longer to learn, but the more time that I spent learning not just the motion of doing tricks but also the fundamentals of how those tricks worked; the better I got at using my time effectively by using my strengths to my advantage. I learned that even though I don't have a lot of great balance (partially due to body type & genetics) I did have fast/precise foot movements. So leaned heavily into freestyle skateboarding (flatground specifically) and eventually got good enough to compete on a similar level as professional freestyle skaters.
My point is, with every new detail that I learned about myself and about how skateboarding works, I made myself a little bit more likely to attain that "luck" of being able to accomplish a skate trick. If I had started with a good body, access to skateparks, and was surrounded by professional skaters I would obviously have been better in the long run; but to say that I wasn't able to create more opportunities for myself to land tricks and that I was just more lucky than other skaters because I ended io eventually being the top 1% of skilled flatground skaters out there would effectively ignore that I spent a huge amount of time figuring what does or doesn't work and applying those knowledge filters to each new skate session. I made new opportunities for myself to be lucky through time, effort, and the scientific process.
What I'm saying is that the same principle is at work in economics. Most people who find success are either given the fundamentals of how money works from the get go along with money to practice (generational wealth) or are willing/able to try and fail until they learn these fundamentals and something succeeds. Once their first venture succeeds the likelihood of the next venture getting "lucky" and succeeding on an even higher level increases exponentially.
The reason this is important is because if we just assign all of people's success to to "luck" and don't instead get specific about the system's & knowledge that made them "lucky" in the first place; then our actions will not be as likely lead us to success either. We also won't design systems that allow for more equitable opportunities for the average person as effectively.
There are roughly 22 million millionaires in the usa. Of those roughly 700k (a little over 3% of the millionaires) received more than $1m in inheritance. Instead their "luck" came in the form of education & opportunity. Most of the time that means stuff like having a fall back place to live if all things fell through. It meant that their parents more than likely gave them good lessons about money. It probably meant that they weren't worried about existential stuff and were able to focus on ventures that were more risky. All of these things are affected by systems & educational resources that favor one group over another. This is the principle behind systematic racism as well. Certain people are not given the same starting line as others, which is where I think your luck based mentality has some accuracy. I think there is a nuanced middle ground to be found here.
Sorry if that's a bit long, but I it's important that we talk about these matters with these components in mind if we want to bring about a positive effect for change. Hope that makes sense.
Again, love your videos and presentation style. Glad I subscribed and I look forward to what else you produce. Much love! :)
Redistribute the luck, I say! Very good points here! As you bring up, I think a lot of the points tend to get lost in the noise of us trying to project “goodness” or “badness” onto any “group” of people we make up in our minds. It’s _so_ hard to get out of this habit! 😂
IT’S SO HARD
French here, i really don't like them.
I secretly see myself beheading one with my good old trusty guillotine someday, not becoming one so... Well, i guess i'm a pure product of where i was born.
Anywho, i should go back to watch the video. Only 20s in and i fell compeled to comment (youtubers should all stop with the "leave a comment for the algorithm, i'd probably would have not posted that silly thing if you all didn't conditioned me like that !)
Dutch guy here, I’m with you. Maybe this is a typical American thing?
It's to be expected that the majority of people living in a hyper-individualistic neoliberal democracy would basically worship wealth and wealthy people. It's disturbing to me personally.
That’s a lot of big words
@@TraceDominguez eh it's only like 4 big words lol But they're necessary
Your starting intro animation is so good, i want to make something like that too!
THANKS it was made by my friend
Is promiscuous lifestyle normal,Or is that genetics?Then why there r not sexu ally not satisfied?what is the scientific reason behind it. Pls, make video
Interesting questions!
You are the possessor of that nice lamp in the background, therefore you are good. What lamp is it?
Excellent video by the way :)
The one on the right? It’s from IKEA 💛
I used to view Elon as the real-life Tony Stark. I was foolish.
Welcome to the other side, friend
I never truely loved him, but I did think much more positive about him before he showed his ugliest face 😬
Same, how times have changed.
Why?
Great stuff, Trace! Been following since your DNews days and would love to see you cover marketing studies. I.e., so many companies continue to spend millions on marketing every year, but why? What are they learning that we aren't? If they're willing to spend so much on it, there must be something to it, right?
Great Q!! I’ll add it to my list
rich people in average are more pretty and beautiful because they can spend more money in their beauty and be more healthy. They can have chefs, personal trainers, physiotherapists, nutritionists, better products for her face, better food with more protein that give them more height when they are young, better doctors and they also can do any surgery that they want to improve her looks. Its playing in easy mode of a game but in real life
A video many need to watch, to demystify these lucky mythical beings
The mythology is pretty huge
Trace, with everything that has happened over the years with the green brothers and my identity/privacy, why not report it? I need the evidence.
There you are
Hi!
Super interesting
Great video Trace. I agree with the lucky part but what I would add is that in many cases working hard and becoming more skilled puts you in a position to be lucky. The Zoom founder and random guy sitting on the couch didn't have equal chances of becoming a billionaire during the pandemic.
Also, in that study you mentioned around 1:50, I wonder if the researchers took into account the many psychological effects that factor into high concentrations is wealth. Some include the halo effect (mentioned in the video), social proof (whoever can show the most evidence of past gets a disproportionate amount of people to buy into them - examples are Amazon reviews or what restaurant has the longest lines), past success making someone more confident to take greater actions and risks and vice-versa (hierometer theory), etc. You also have situations where initial success puts you in a position to connect with people and things that can lead to even more success. These effects create a compounding effect. I guess these can technically be included in the luck category 🤷♂️
These are all amazing points!!
I think it takes a certain amount of luck to even be in the position to found a company like that.
But you're right: if you do absolutely nothing you're a lot less likely to become rich than someone who has at least done something. However, some people are literally born rich, so it's not impossible
And all your other points, also great. And you're right, whether it's luck is kinda debatable
Hay Trace. A long time ago, it was shown that it's not random. It was simple, and compelling. What they did is select a human attribute. It almost doesn't matter which one. height, eye color, IQ, etc etc. Then divided the population into More then Millionaire or Less then Millionaire (sure you would use a bigger number these days). Then looks at the proportions in each of the populations. If it was random the distributions should be relatively the same. But they are not. So not random.
Now if you look at how the two groups think there are vast differences.
Most people think you can save your way to being a millionaire. Hence all the silly memes about "if we could only get the billionaires to spend there money everyone would have more money". However, No billionaire thinks you can get there by saving money.
Or, A lot of people think that millionaires got there by taking advantage of others. Yet in reality, doing so is a better predictor of the person being poor. For obvious reasons.
In the video I basically say all of that, except the researchers say the opposite. It’s not random selection, but there are random events that accounted for the gain/loss of wealth
This video is being suppressed by the algorithm
Downloaded so showing support for lack of watchtime
Man parasocial relationships are really really weird.
Thanks for explaining to me that I hate you Trace!.. For being an ultra-successful youtube man pulling in billions 😡😡😡. But for real, I'm sure my brain is interrupting some sort of parasocial relationship here, even so Thanks!
Haha it definitely applies to me and any creator with any level of audience, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you!
Except the rich do owe people. They should be giving away most of their money. People are dying not having resources that could've saved them. These rich people have so much money they don't need that could've been used to save many.
hey man than you for this video.Can you do a video on hypergamy.
I don't think and have never thought that anyone deserves exorbitant wealth beyond a little bit more than what's required to care for oneself. Even half-millionaire is excessive money. If you pay all your bills and still have a large sum of money leftover, it's not that you are doing something right, I'd argue that you're doing something wrong - knowing that there are poor people who've done nothing to cause their own poverty and are victims of circumstance, lack of opportunities, etc, while you stash away excessive money into a bank account despite that all your bills are paid and you're comfortable, that's not a good thing, that's just immoral.
I have always hated the rich and always will. Rich people perfectly personify the Western Excess mentality, which has always been the source of so many countless crimes against humanity and nature throughout history. Humans are mostly evil, but humans with money are absolutely diabolical.
Geniuses are a falsehood. Sorry to break it to you.
Are they? They have them at the Apple Store
@@TraceDominguez :/
There are people who are exceptionally mathematically smart, I don't think thats true. But there are a lot of idiots who become rich and a lot of very smart people who don't.
also some mathi-geniuses are real weak in the social department 😬
@@georgplaz everyone tends to excell in something but at the same time everyone is susceptible to human error. Think of the doctors who decided that 'retard' is a perfectly reasonable diagnosis without further thought. We as a collective have the potential to do great things, but left to an individual 'genius' will fall flat.
@@georgplaz another thought that I have is that a lot of 'geniuses' are entirely products of their environment, rather than an innate geniusness that is sorta implied with the usage of the common definition of genius
This is why these societal systems we've created need to be redesigned to distribute that wealth more evenly. Then we can stop hating so much on those that didn't earn it through skill (and to be honest, don't need the amount they currently have) and, in turn, take better care of those that never really had the chance to live comfortably from the beginning. Creating systems that reduce inequality should be a top intrest to all humans; on the global order of creating systems that reduce and eliminate the need to distribute greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.
The question I have is: how does this happen?
@@TraceDominguez Mainly through collective action, in my opinion, and discussing problems with others either in one-on-one situations or to an audience. Also, I think learning more about alternative systems (socialism, for me personally) & other ideas that align more with egalitarian outcomes can be eye-opening because the systems we live with are man-made (they aren't laws of nature) so they can possibly be changed for the better... which gives me hope and motivation.
Pure envy.
Yeah I love billionaires when they're me or Chuck Feeny:
In February 2011, Feeney became a signatory to The Giving Pledge. In his letter to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the founders of The Giving Pledge, Feeney writes, "I cannot think of a more personally rewarding and appropriate use of wealth than to give while one is living-to personally devote oneself to meaningful efforts to improve the human condition. More importantly, today's needs are so great and varied that intelligent philanthropic support and positive interventions can have greater value and impact today than if they are delayed when the needs are greater." He gave away his last $7 million in late 2016, to the same recipient of his first charitable donations: Cornell. Over the course of his life, he has given away more than $8 billion. At its height, Atlantic had over 300 employees and 10 offices across the globe.
We love them … as individuals
I don't.
Mmmhmmm
Health > Wealth
Friends > The Bends
Becoming a billionaire is hard work and risking taking meeting opportunity(random chance),
If a billion people spend all their waking hours watching TH-cam videos one of them isn't going to become a billionaire by random chance.
Or your an heiress or lottery winner.
“Being a billionaire is hard work” is true (on some level). It takes talent and skill. But GETTING to be a billionaire is still has that randomness factor
Yea, I totally disagree with this video. I think you are hyper focusing on celebrities and rare cases. Every medium-sized town in this country is full of multi millionaires who are "rich" by the average persons standard.
We live in an open book test, the answered to become a millionaire is right there for anyone to copy, all u need to do is stick to the plan and not wait till your 40 to figure it out
Does L
🔆
Dude. I have to completely disagree with this. I am a millionaire, barely... i agree that there is a luck component, you see that with people who are worth 1 million vs 10 million.
But mostly, successful people can lose it all and then get it all back if they dont give up.
We live in a open book test, the answers to making money and getting rich are right here on TH-cam. Just cheat on your homework and follow in the tracts of what someone else already did.
I appreciate the sentiment and congrats on the finances?
1 million seconds is 12 days
1 billion seconds is 31.7 years
Billionaires are not millionaires. Billionaires are not going to “lose it all and get it all back.”
This video needs more clicks.
Agree!
Its false
wow I must be different. because everything your saying is the polar opposite of what I think.
Love them? I hardly know them!?
Bill them? I hardly ionaire them!
I always heard people talking about how the wealthy work hard to get there and always think there are people working harder to barely put food on the table because they were born poor
Yuuuppppp
You've certainly put in the hard work in this video to manipulate your audience of resentful losers for your personal gain. Perhaps hard work and being a sociopath are the keys to success more than luck. I've got high hopes for you buddy!
Sociopaths have extreme antisocial attitudes and behaviors and typically lack a conscience. I definitely have guilt when I do thing. I still haven’t gotten over making a friend feel bad bc I said the wrong thing at a brunch in 2003. 🥲
This might just be the worst video I’ve ever seen
I don’t like billionaires
I like them as individuals but as a group I'm skeptical that they need to exist.
@@TraceDominguez Thank you for entertaining my vague statement!
Jeezus, I wish there was a way to get more people to see this. Aside from the randomness of external factors that brings most great wealth to the neuvo rich, there is the randomness of being born to wealthy parents that brings great wealth to the rest of the rich.
He is very wrong about this
FACTS
Love you Trace but this is a bad and lazy take.
Tell me more
as a european I can confirm that US people do idolize their rich unusually much
In my experience, there is no such thing as luck.
I don’t hate billionaires, you communists mad cuz you think elons money belongs in ur pockets
Did I say that?
Shut up rich person
Im a new subscriber❤