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Success and Luck
- Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy
- Narrated by: Robert H. Frank
- Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
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Success and Luck
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Summary
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 listenable, 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.
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What listeners say about Success and Luck
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- PMB
- 06-07-24
Very anecdotal rather than theoretical
Quite an easy listen. I wasn’t quite sure how the ideas progressed and so it felt rather repetitive . Although the author does briefly consider the idea that the poor deserve to be poor which is the corollary of the rich deserving to be rich, I don’t think he develops that fully. I suspect that the idea of the “deserving poor” lies behind some of the hostility to taxation from those who see themselves as the deserving rich.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Eliezer
- 12-08-16
very eye opening to life and success
it was good to learn but I don't see luck the same way. I see luck to be, the ability to able to the luck in front of you.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Midnight Chance
- 24-01-17
An academic look at Luck and Success in Life
I enjoyed listening to this book. I have always been interested in exploring the occurrence of Luck in my life so I enjoy books about Luck. This is a more academic angle on the subject than I had expected but I still found it interesting. I also enjoyed that it was written in a level of language that I had no trouble understanding. A lot of the conclusions were things I would readily agree with. I enjoyed the anecdotes of coincidences and Luck in the author's life and it was interesting to learn about the Progressive Consumption Tax.
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