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Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

That's basically the wonder of capitalism. An accelerated form of Darwinism. People try random things, until someone tries the right thing at the right time, and it succeeds and takes over. That person is then labelled a genius, everyone think he knows what will happen next, he thinks of himself as a genius, and he will give his opinion on everything, until someone else hits another sweet spot and takes over...

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I 100% Agree!

But, I also want to add that I believe you can start a very profitable business with careful planning that relies less on luck and more on your hard work!

In my opinion people behind high-profit-margin startups that were bootstrapped with no venture capital and were profitable from day 1 are the real business "geniuses".

Example: my good friends at basecamp.com

Edit: I like to add why I think Basecamp is a good example... first of all they are not my actual friends, I just like their take on how to do business.

In case you don't know one of the co-founders (David Heinemeier Hansson) is the creator of Rails. They are all about creating a profitable long-lasting business from start and I very much admire that.

Also Fogcreek and to an extent Atlassian.

I actually like reading about companies that set out to solve a genuine business need, make some money and treat staff well.

It's not as 'sexy' as billion dollar valuations for "Uber for Cats" though.

I actually think it's a lot "sexier."

If only people could realize the insane role (good/bad) luck plays in life. I believe it is often a difference between American and European culture: the former very strongly promotes individual responsibility, so when you succeed it's all to your merits, and when you fail you can only blame yourself.

Yes, but I think there's also something to be said for learning to swim in life's ocean of ups and downs, making the most of your situation. For me, a successful person is someone that knows how to swim, not someone that caught a once-in-a-lifetime tidal wave. Usually it isn't very glamorous, but it's what I personally aspire to.

Quite true, and it's also important to make the most of your breaks when you get some, or roll with the punches when you need to. So there definitely are skills to gain and efforts to make. You got to play the cards you are dealt, and you can play them well or not, but at the end of the day, on a short timespan as human life, the dominant factor remains luck, by far.

The key for me was to change my personal definition of success from winning the lottery to simply doing things well on a consistent basis.

> not someone that caught a once-in-a-lifetime tidal wave.

Those often celebrated in the media as whiz kids or geniuses often do just that.

In addition, even if you are a "legitimate" business/founder, there is still a massive amount of luck, way beyond your control. Imagine for example if Elon Musk had founded X.com slightly later that he did - probably wouldn't have the funds or track record to do Tesla and SpaceX due to the lack of exit opportunities with PayPal. Or if Paul Graham had founded ViaWeb slightly later, perhaps no YC.

At the very least I think Musk would have been a good engineer, and PG would be inspiring young people to try.

Most likely, and I think both would've been successful regardless. But their success and impact would've likely been greatly diminished if they were not in the right place and right time before the dotcom bubble popped.

Taleb nails this in The Black Swan. He describes how capitalism is NOT meritocratic, it's more like it encourages people to blow huge sums on improbable ideas and, occasionally, they work.

By Taleb you surely mean von Mises, by von Mises you surely mean Schumpeter, by Schumpeter you surely mean Karl Marx.

The speculative nature of capital has always been a core theme in economics. Yes, including "freshwater", "neoclassical" or "orthodox" economics.

You put into exact words what I always had in my head but hadn't articulated. So very true about all products and companies around us.

Just remember that Darwinism is a morally neutral process: evolution only cares about the survival of the entities in question. Likewise, capitalism thrives when businesses thrive; everything else is just a means to an end.

Not saying it's bad... just neutral. And it may have very good consequences for society as a whole. The only danger is believing the process is "good" in of itself.

Capitalism isn't morally neutral because it concerns collectives of moral agents (companies), their goals and the goals of their customers and those they interact with.

Evolution operates on genes, an amoral physical process.

Capitalism is the operation of people, a morally-laden process.

The only thing evolution and markets have in common is that the terms 'selection process' and 'organism' apply to both. And even then, they mean different things. Don't take the analogy too seriously.

Right, they are very different things. GP's point about morality stands, though: it's orthogonal to both markets and evolution.

Capitalism, darwinism, stratification (in geology), etc. are probably special cases of a more general "selection + fixation" process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Darwinism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_and_Repetition

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1780937997?keywords=intensi...

Another excellent book on this topic that echo's your viewpoint in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers.

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