This always disturbs me that only a handful people make it big such as Shoemaker while the rest of the population sample barely make ends meet.

I don't know if this has anything to do with some obscure physical law like these phenomenons that best described by a normal/Gaussian distribution or just explained by the probability theory (read: sheer luck) and the success ratio of this magnitude in these "games" or life in general is very slim and thus people should not get that excited to imitate them or feel down and dejected if they don't.

Certainly, wealth and power distribution on Earth is one of these life mysteries that kept and will keep puzzling humans for a long time to come.