Analysis: If you’re rich, you’re more lucky than smart. Math can prove it

They used an overly simplistic computer simulation and programmed it to get their assumptions back as outputs. Luck may play a large role in wealth, but this study did nothing to prove that.

This was not a particularly compelling argument. While you can become rich by random luck, most people I know that are consistently “lucky” are very good at risk management, which is a skill. It isn’t so much that they consistently make amazingly good choices but that they consistently mitigate the downside scenarios such that it allows them to make a lot of high ROI bets with limited exposure if they don’t pay off.

In this scenario, your outcome is largely determined by the number of high-risk bets you have the appetite to place over time. Most people are pretty risk averse, even if they are good at risk management.

I don't love the title. A model, whose construction and parameters do not obviously closely correspond to reality, indicates that the title is true. The answer is determined not by reality per se, but simply by how they ask the question.

This doesn't seem to take into consideration that money can buy influence, opportunities, and access. That’s not luck, that’s just money.

Time and time again, we see that the most successful or acclaimed at something are seldom the best at it. Something like buying bitcoin in 2010-2012 and simply not selling it made you the best investor of possibly all time as measured by returns.

Well, if you accept using an arbitrary model with very little basis in reality, then yes, math proves it. But if you don't accept the premises, then I don't think math has much to do with it.