So if not everyone, then at least the majority of all people worldwide who work very hard will be successful. I think reality shows this not to be true, hundreds of millions of very hard workers who even exhaust their bodies towards an early and broken death would probably disagree. You are already lucky by birth. Even apart from one's own family, we are placed into environments consisting of culture, institutions and tools developed over millennia. How much the place of one's family within one's own society plays a part depends, some countries are better at letting people from all kinds of families develop, in many others there is a large inheritance factor within families, where family income has a high correlation with one's own lifetime income.

Maybe we can think of it as everyone having a lottery ticket, but certain things can increase your odds. When it comes to startups, for example, VCs are often arguing that just being closer to them in SV can help your chances. The neighborhoods we grow up in, the schools we attend -- they all influence that "luck" number for each person!