Are you ready to be outraged or maybe alarmed?
Then let me tell you about the research of one Alessandro Pluchino. He’s a mathematician at the University of Catania.
Pluchino’s research was just reported in MIT Technology Review. The article is titled, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”
It turns out it’s all about luck. Rich people aren’t any more talented or hard-working.
We know this because Pluchino created a computer simulation. His simulation recreated the real-world distribution of wealth. And within this simulation, it’s chance that makes people rich.
Little-known fact:
I spent a good number of years in academe. One reason I left was I didn’t like the taste of cooked science like the above.
The recipe is simple.
Start with a culturally and politically attractive premise. For example, “wealth is undeserved.” And then find a technical argument to back that premise up.
And then a bit later, say in 2022, send out your sack-carrying bureaucrats to people’s doors to confiscate any extra grain or crypto profits that accumulated over the past 12 months.
If anybody even thinks to complain, have your bureaucrats pull out the science paper and start waving it around.
Make people feel guilty, small-minded, and ignorant for not doing what the state asks. After all, nobody really deserved that surplus in the first place — the science tells us so.
I’d like to give you another explanation of why you’re not rich, even if you’re so smart.
It’s based on uncooked science. It has nothing to do with luck. And it’s more empowering than Pluchino’s conclusion above.
Here’s the upshot:
You’re not rich because you’re not focused on money.
Maybe you’re focused on building up your skills or services, and waiting to become so good they can’t ignore you.
Maybe you’re focused on doing what you’re told — the next diploma, the next promotion, the next opportune moment.
Or maybe you’re focused on entirely other things — like playing badminton or reading books about religion.
Whatever the case, you’re not rich because your focus wanders elsewhere. Bring your focus to money, and watch it start to multiply.
How do we know this?
Like I said, science. Specifically, a crossover study of one. One person’s controlled scientific experiment of many years of not focusing on money… and not making much of it, except from occasional windfalls…
Followed by a few months of focusing on money and… well, I’ll tell you more in the coming weeks and months how that’s been working out for me.
Meanwhile, if you want to get rich — not today, not tomorrow, but maybe some time soon — then start focusing. And start keeping an eye out for those sack-carrying bureaucrats.