Topic: What to do about people who believe that stealing is ok - page 4. (Read 1105 times)

Oh, ok.  I think I understand your views.  

You think the current system is unfair to non-capitalists.  "It creates inequalities as people with the means of production control how much workers make.  When workers and owners do not make the same, owners steal from workers.  The owners steal the fruits of worker's labor.
You think capital is the source of all evil as it facilitates this theft."

Did I get it right?

Let me just say you have a very narrow, somewhat tunneled vision on the issue.  When you have a good idea for a product, you go out and raise capital, organize the business, hire skilled people to achieve your vision, you are taking huge risks that the whole venture might fail, many times you work for months 24/7 to get your business off the ground before any workers show up at your shop.  Workers you hire demand certain salary and you seek workers to maximize return on your capital, i.e. the best skills for the least money. At no point, you steal their salary or their opportunities.  They are at all times in full control of their careers.  Well, maybe 2-4 weeks notice, as stipulated by the employment contract, that is about it.

You think that workers hired by a well-running business deserve the share of the business profits.  On what grounds?  That would be the real theft.  If I have a software company and I am doing 10M revenue and 1M profit and I need to expand and I hire 10 new developers (10x100K) to implement the new version of my product, and I am successful and the revenues go to 200M and 20M profit, I need to share the 20M with my 10 new developers? On what grounds?  They were nowhere my business when I was working on it in my basement, eating noodles for 5 years.  How in the world would this be fair?  What about if instead of 20M profit, I incur 5M losses, would the 10 new developers share the losses with me?

Do I agree that the system seems unfair on the surface?  Of course.  You see some people flushing their wealth while others starve or go homeless.  You have to ask yourself the why question?  Not jump to the conclusion that the system is automatically fundamentally wrong.

Is it wrong for some people?  Of course.  People who just want the 9-5 job, with a steady paycheck, no need to worry about job security or business stability.  People without any skills or desires to own the "means of production", people who do not want to own real property, people who do not want to run any sort of business, or assume any risk in life in general.  To those people, it is definitely the wrong system.  They will suffer financially under it.  They will be scraping by their whole lives and die with mortgages on their homes.

When I first came to North America, I worked in aluminum extruder factories, farms, bakeries and the people I met made me think.  I knew right then I do not want to work for 3 years to be able to afford to buy a used car.  I remember one toothless guy, he was maybe 30 years old, we were eating our miserable sandwiches, he finished his, took his cigarettes and proudly announced that if I work for 3 years in this factory I might be able to buy a used Buick to drive to work.  He worked there for 5 years, still was riding the bus. I looked at him with great sadness because I felt sorry for him.  I knew he will die in that factory and never be able to buy that car.  The same year I enrolled in the community college.

The same thing happened when I first started working after I graduated from university.  I was hired as a "full-time" employee, I quickly realized that what they were paying me would not get me anywhere.  I needed more.  I befriended some contractors who enlightened me on the benefits of contracting.  

I switched within months to triple my "salary".  This was still not enough to feel secure.  I watched how other contractors had supply contracts to provide contractors and get $10-20/hr for every hour of work.  I needed that, and that is what I did for a while.

I never stole any money from anyone.  People willingly hired me, I willingly paid people who I hired in return.

You think people who do dangerous jobs are taking all the risks.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  

You fail to understand what risk is.   You only think of the risk of personal injury but forgetting all the business risks, legal liabilities, insurance costs.  Who do you think is bearing those risks and costs?

I worked with many brilliant developers who told me they just want a full-time job, I tried to help them to show them the way to a brighter future, they did not feel comfortable taking all the risks.  So they are still working in their 50s and 60s.  They are the same as the toothless guy I met at the aluminum extruder factory, 30 years ago.  Same mentality, same result.

If you have a worker's mentality, you will be a worker all your life, with terrible results.  You will die poor.  That is just the way it is.

You need to hustle a bit, no matter the system you live under.

The risk is always positively correlated to the reward. At least it should be under the efficient, free-market model.

The higher the risk you take the higher the potential reward.  When workers are taking no risk by doing their 9-5 job, they deserve the minimum wage, i.e. little reward.

The trick is to find yourself in a situation where you control the risk.  Read all books by Robert Kiyosaki
https://www.amazon.com/Robert-T-Kiyosaki/e/B001H6GV90?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1570552754&sr=8-1

PS. I feel I need to write a book for people like you to re-educate them on capitalism.  There seem to be a large, growing dissatisfaction with the capitalist system and I feel that if people are not educated on how to effectively function in it, we'll have a bloody "occupy and kill movement".  The last one was just a prelude, I am afraid.  I think the education system in North America is failing students at that task.

What a bunch of nonsense. I read the first sentence and it already made me cringe.
Who is to decide what is work and what is not? What amount of time do I have to spend on a task for it to no longer be theft? You maybe?

I'm curious, what according to you is this "actual work"? Do I have to produce a physical object, like a brick, or maybe sweat all day in a labor camp? Those were the days of real men doing real work, right?

Same thing as the last guy pretty much.  You assume that just because I reject capitalism, that I adopt some other form of theft.  Its a complete strawman.  Feeling guilty about a life of luxury based on stolen wealth is not "ungrateful".  Its called humility.

Not only do people like me exist, but in my community, we leftists vastly outnumber capitalists.  I've spent the last 10 years living in neighborhoods where nearly everyone is successful by the capitalist definition(these are highly sought after neighborhoods), rejects capitalism, and believes in pacifism.  The faculty at the colleges and high schools I've worked at have also fallen into this group.  My echo chamber reality got so bad that in 2015, I thought it was just how the entire country had morphed.   I'm actually quite often finding myself to the right of my peers.  The other day, I was even scolded by guests I invited over because they found whole foods bags in my kitchen. How could I be so selfish to shop anywhere other than the local food coop?

Its only when I go home, or on the internet that I am exposed to people who are both educated and still believe in capitalism.  Finding that balance is part of why I'm here.

Its telling how quickly such a discussion turns into ad hominem attacks.  Anyone who holds a different world view must be uneducated, ignorant, unsuccessful, or all of the above. Well these type of attacks are actually a concession that you have no ability to refute my points with reasonable argument.  
Yeah making money off of money instead of actual work is usually theft.  Of course risk exists.  Usually the people with the most risk make the least money.  There are dozens of workers dangling high above ground risking their lives to complete construction on an tower and all the investors are risking is the potential of maybe having to go back to doing actual work to earn a living.  

If you were interested in a real discussion, you'd ask about my life instead of making assumptions but then it wouldn't be as easy to create strawman arguments.
 I've been privileged enough to never have to work a miserable job but I realize most people aren't afforded such a luxury.  People working these types of jobs you assume I'm in are usually supporters of capitalism as they don't have time to think about philosophy of life, what could be, and reflect on the characteristics of economic systems.  They don't have that freedom because they have to live in reality and focus on day to day survival.   If the people you describe me as were anticapitalist, the system wouldn't survive very long. The current state of affairs relies on the people you have described having faith in the doctrine that if they keep working hard in their retail job, they too will one day be rich.

Its also a non argument to assume I don't understand the system or participate in it just because I think its evil.    It would be more reasonable to call me a hypocrite.  I grew up in capitalism and its all I've lived under.  I've benefited from it.  I've accumulated more wealth than most humans will ever see simply because I was born into a good situation.  I know how easy passive income is and that helps me categorize it as theft.  I worked in mortgage to pay my way through undergrad.  I've inherited rental property and mined cryptocurrency.  Of course I know what passive income is and understand how capital works.  Thats all a huge part of why I'm so against it.  Most of my jobs have paid me more than what others make for the same work simply because of where my degree came from which all goes back the private school education I was born into.  I'll never forget how much work it took to spend 30 minutes at a closing signing a dozen papers for a rental property that gives me the right to half of someone's paycheck every month just because of this imaginary ownership.  

 I grew up and was fine with the system until I traveled outside of my bubble and realized life wasn't so easy for everyone else and that all of this came at the expense of others.  Most capitalists are completely separated from the people they affect so they don't understand the relationship between profit, labor, and capital. As a teacher who has spent time in poor schools, I'm able to see the world from just about every perspective.  

The funny thing about your post is even if the ad hominem attacks you made up were true, they would still be terrible points.  Theres even an accurate saying on the right that academia is full of leftists and here you are assuming that a someone is uneducated because they believe profit is theft.   Its one thing to disagree and think someone is wrong but to say the other side is stupid just because you are afraid of their ideas is not even an argument at all.

Lastly, this "capitalism vs soviet union/north korea" point is a false dichotomy.  Totalitarianism is not the opposite of capitalism.  I don't want a utopia either.  I just want an end to obvious theft and inequality.  BTW, the rich in North Korea still live pretty well. 

These types of people are just noisemakers.  They will never be successful in any system, capitalist (because they do not understand what to do with the little capital they have and they do not understand what inherent risks are) or communist (because they will object to taking bribes or advancing through the communist ranks by killing or imprisoning their fellow comrades).

I did not know these communist lunatics exist outside of former communist countries, but this guy proved me wrong.  It is insane what this guy is saying: profit is theft.  What is next: "war is peace", "poor is rich" and vice versa. 

They live in Western capitalist societies and complain about the privileges they have been born with.   What a bunch of ungrateful losers!!!
FBI should keep tabs on these people, IMHO.  They are radicals, ready to go off on any new "occupy movement" and such.

Give them guns and they will go door to door and rob people who have more than they have.  No moral compass whatsoever.

Unfortunately he claims to be some sort of professional educator. He doesn't have any business training dogs let alone humans. The idea that he is in a position to educate (indoctrinate) anyone is a terrifying concept. These types of people serve only one purpose, to spread Marxism like a virus. After all, if your values are wrong and warped and you are unwilling to accept that, the only option is to normalize it by warping as many others as possible much like a drug addict enables other drug addicts in order to feel more normal and ignore their destructive behavior. Marxism is just collectivized mental illness.

So making a huge profit on your invested capital is theft?  How about a 10% or %20 profit?  Is it still theft?  You determine what is theft and what is not?  So trading securities/currencies/commodities and making a profit is also theft?  How about capital gains?  Theft?  Passive income?  Theft?  How do you propose we should treat losses?  'Untheft'?  It seems like you need a completely new vocabulary to describe your system.  Does risk exist in your utopian world?

You are very, and I stress, very uneducated.  You think you understand the system, but you really don't.  I am really surprised you even function in the capitalist system.  Let me guess, you managed to have some shitty job, answering emails and having useless meetings, or worse, you work in retail.

Your objections to the current system are based on wishful thinking and are going against our human nature.  That is why the communist-inspired social structures never worked.  You are talking about utopia.

Let me guess, you were born after 1984, and as you were growing up your parents kept telling you that you can be whoever you want to be, that you are very smart, and that you are special, the sky is the limit, that you will be able to make a 'difference', that you can change the world and find your purpose in it; you received participation medals for the last place in any competition you have ever participated in.  Then you entered the workforce and your bosses told you that you are not that special, they offered you a mediocre salary with no room for advancement, and now you are very disappointed.  

I wish the Soviet Union was still around so that you can immigrate and experience a society where most of the productive capital belonged to the 'people'.

Like I said before, you have no idea what communism is.  Go visit North Korea.

The capitalist system is less evil than the communist system.  Ask any person who lived under both systems.  Don't be ignorant.

Maybe we can consider every side of the story but there must be no person can be above the law. Whatever the reason if someone breaks the law, they must be jailed. Probably, stealing was a crime in every country so it should be address based on the countrie's constitution.
In some countries this crime was common but in every country this kind of behaviour do exist. I believe that the best choice is for them to be jailed if they commit such crime.

This is funny because my country is technically in the "west" (south of USA), and yet its just like what you describe for "others". And the funny thing is, i traveled once to the east, the far east, and the description fits perfectly what you said about "the west". No bars? No guard checking your bags at the door of the shop? you can actually grab the things yourself? Yup.

My country used to be "nice", so its not like the concept was unknown to me. But in the last two decades or so, it has degraded so much its now the other, more dangerous and miserable type. Yes i remember those nice days, but the young people here never lived those.

What to do with thieves? Well the good old book says... bring the hand guillotine?

In my country theft most almost always involves firearms, because a thief without one has a very high chance of being killed on the spot (or left disabled for the rest of his life). And in many attempts, the victims die. Either because of resisting, or the thieve going nervous, or the police coming and shooting (here the heroic Hollywood cop does not exist, here is "shoot first, ask later" (infamous words or a former President of this very nation). And wait until you learn about the prisons, you don't want to learn about the prisons, trust me. "University of crime" they are infamously named, for the ones that survive it...

Investing in the smart kid's education is not theft, its the profit you make off of it that is the theft.  You said you would expect a percentage of that kids lifetime earnings.  That could end up being a loan with 10,000% interest or more.  Of course it would be theft.  The opportunity cost is that you could have used your money to steal someone else's labor.  Of course I know that and in a world with so many deprived, there will always be someone to steal from.  This is why a capitalist system requires poverty in order to get rich.  If everyone had education, this student loan business would fail.  This provides incentive for people like you to make sure adequate access to education is never a reality. 

You keep misinterpreting my ethical disagreement with the system on moral grounds as a lack of understanding the system.  I'm against the system BECAUSE i understand it. 

Why is it that poor people buying drugs is so bad but rich people buying drugs is "capital finding its way into the hands of people who appreciate it" .   You continue to show a double standard
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/16/middle-class-consume-more-drugs-and-alcohol-than-poorer-people

Money is literally just a right to the time and resources of other people.  By saying billionaires should exist, you are declaring that they have a right to unlimited time and resources of the poor.  Money is always being printed and spent.  Its really just a matter of what we should spend it on and who that should benefit.

Ok, I think you are wandering all over the place with your 'demands'.  

First, understand one thing: capital is not infinite.  If you start printing money you are diluting the value (ability to produce work) of all other capital in existence.  If you needed a capital of 500K USD (in 1980s dollars) to start a large chicken farm 40 years ago, today you might need the same capital, except it will be expressed in USD as 5 million.  The capital required to start the chicken farm is the same.

I don't get it how you can see me investing in some smart kid's education as theft.  I just don't get it how you can be so ignorant of the value of capital. You know what the opportunity cost is, don't you?

I think you are fuzzy on basic economics concepts.  Your entitlement demands are unrealistic.

We live in the real world.  There are wars, corrupt politicians, lack of education, lack of resources, exponential population growth, pollution, etc.,

You think you can solve all that by dropping buckets of USD on poor people and all will be holy again?  Think again.  Most of it will be blown on crack or hashish.

You are very naive.  Before you start changing the world by robbing the rich, start at home, increase your capital, teach your children to be good global citizens, teach them foreign languages, math, science, send them to good schools, etc.  Before you know it, they will be rich and hopefully become better versions of the 'degenerate' rich you so much despise.

If money is infinite, why won't they let me print any of it? Of course, I could start my own ICO, right?

Money is potentialy infinite. Resources are not infinite. There is no way to just print more resources no matter how much money you hand out. Education is not a right. No one has aright to the time and resources of another required for education. That is called theft and or slavery. Additionally not every poor person is poor because a rich person made them poor. That is insane Marxist victim-hood rhetoric.

Money doesn't grow on trees.  You don't need trees or growth to create money.  Money grows on computer screens out of key strokes.  The central bank literally creates money out of nothing.  Money isn't finite because its not a tangible resource.  Its an arbitrary thing we've created to get people to do stuff.  Just like points in a game, or merit on a messageboard, a money system can be tweaked or reassigned like an airdrop or fork to meet current needs.  Just like laws do not always correspond to what is right or wrong, money does not always correspond to what has value.  

Your willingness to take a skilled person's capital in return for allowing them education (which should be a right the brightest of the bright in the first place) is more evidence that you subscribe to stealing and that capital gravitates to those who have the most capital and skills together.   Skills without capital are even more useless than capital without skills.  How much skill does it really take to bet on a person with a perfect SAT score?

All of the research shows that poor kids are at an extreme disadvantage; even in the US.  
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5460626/
By the age of 4, poor kids already have decreased executive functioning ability.  This means they are not as able to get the same out of an equal education going forward even if they weren't already going to receive an inferior education.  This is permanent damage and we can point out clear mechanisms linking back to family income.  

I know exactly how fortunate most kids in the USA are.  That is the crux of the issue.  Being born in the US is not a skill.  Being born in any rich nation is not a skill but at the same time is usually an automatic ticket to limitless opportunity.  This excess of opportunity exists largely because it was stolen from the global south.  Living in a country that had its schools bombed and future damaged so that we could buy more stuff we don't need has only fed this perspective.

There is no doubt that the US is the best country to be rich in.  No argument there.  In no other country is it so legal for the rich to systematically steal from the rest of the world.  All we had to do was simply be born and our ticket to an easy life was already punched.  A lot of us had it so good that we could party and play for most of our lives, make terrible, irresponsible mistakes, squander more money than most people will ever see, and STILL come out in the top 1 percent without ever having to sweat.  

All of this on the backs of the global poor.

Wow! Space is big!?! I never knew that...thanks for the insight (is it big enough to dispose of nuclear waste after we have used the nuclear energy to power cities for decades?).



Great for NASA. We also got Tang out of it. Now it's time for the big boys to actually do something with it.

I believe completely in incrementalism so I, of course, understand that we are not building space colonies tomorrow. I do believe we will be building ocean colonies tomorrow (starting next week actually). From ocean colonies we can build a launch loop to start sending infrastructure into space. From there we can start colonizing our solar system. From there we can build technology to move further and further. When we go further and further we will be able to send humans all over the galaxy where there are also resources like there are on Earth. We may run into the problem of not having enough humans to live both on Earth and those that want to be transported to other worlds but hopefully the population grows at a faster rate.

Human ingenuity and progress in that whole thing depends wholly on the government getting out of our way. My dealings with the Thai government demonstrate this very thing. They tried to interfere with that roadmap to space colonization before it could even have more than one house floating in the water. Not through NASA nor any public resources. Just private individuals trying to bring progress to the world.

But do not worry. Where one government failed, others see opportunity and have expressed the desire to stay out of the way as they see the benefits of being the world's space port.

But back to the OP. You are certainly one of those that we need to protect ourselves from. I am ok with your ideology existing as long as I can protect myself and my belongings from people like you. For every thief coming in the night to steal our belongings we can use technology to stop them. For every Navy that comes to take away our property, there are technological advances that can be developed to thwart them. It will just be a technological race and the "public" will be funding your side of the battle until they grow weary of working most of their lives just to fund theft.

Give them money from where?  Who is going to pay for it?  You seem to think that money grows on trees. How do you know the poor kids deserve the money?  If they score perfectly on the SAT, I say they deserve it.  I would personally invest in their education for a cut of their future earnings.

BTW, capital gravitates to those who have most skills.  That is a fact.

Also, saying that the poor do not have the same opportunities is a cop-out.  You are painting all the poor with the same brush.
In America, all kids can prepare for and write SAT exams.

Family issues are affecting both poor and rich so please don't bring it up as a reason poor kids perform poorly; it is a non sequitur.
Do you think rich kids don't have problems?  They have problems, just different ones.

You have no idea how fortunate kids in North America are.  I cannot listen to your excuses.

Go live in Vietnam, Cambodia, Central Africa or the Middle East.  You live in your "American social injustice" bubble.

No wonder the rest of the world thinks Americans are morons.  The US is the land of opportunity, every hard-working immigrant will tell you that.  It is the best country in the world to study, work, start a business, become rich, etc.  No matter the race, religion or ethnic background.

Sour grapes with the rich is not an argument. 

I don't think you understand how big the universe is and how far we are from being able to access and live off of resources beyond earth.  The universe is not "full" because that fails to imply the vast amounts of empty space between matter.  Empty space that we cannot develop the technology to fully overcome because it is outside the boundaries of the laws of physics.  You don't seem to appreciate the difference between space travel and space colonization.   Its like being able to swim in the ocean for a few minutes vs being able to travel across the ocean.  It would take tens of thousands of years just to reach the nearest star if we left today. Even as a meteorologist and space enthusiast, I'm more interested in what we will do on Earth in the near term.  You can't simply respond to immediate problems with "well who cares because in hundreds of thousands of years we will probably solve this problem".  Its really just a fancy way of ignoring problems.

Also, you have it completely backwards.  Human ingenuity and progress like space travel was only tapped into by the Soviet union and NASA which required national pooling of public resources.  Private firms today are still piggy backing off of technology that first was developed by these governments in the 50s.

We aren't talking about the wisdom of breaking the law.  We are talking about if the law determines what is ethical or unethical and the wisdom of the law being the entirety of your moral compass.  You seem to think it is ok to do anything that the law permits you to do.  I find that problematic because there is an overlap between theft and legality.  You yourself has said that government-forced redistribution is theft so surely you can comprehend this notion.

No on has ever asked for equality of outcome so why would you make such a statement if you are not attempting a strawman?

First of all, these countries represent a very small percentage of the most privileged people on Earth so the notion that the richest people have equality of outcome amongst themselves, even if true, would be evidence of a global failure.  There should not be a border around opportunity.

Also, your statement may be generally true in these countries, but poor children in the west still do not have the same opportunity to score well on the SAT.  Children who are not properly nourished, deal with childhood trauma, and do not get proper sleep in early years of cognitive development do not develop the same abilities as those who have grown up with basic needs met.  This is not equality of opportunity.  SAT scores can be strongly predicted by things like zip code and parent education.  These are things no one has the opportunity to choose.  

You are talking about some of the most privileged people in the world.  Most people do not even have the opportunity to go to college and waste time or rack up 200k in debt. These are people who had maximum opportunity, did not make the most of it, and will still come out with a better life than 85% of the world despite making all of the wrong choices.  You are making my point.

Also, every economic system is forced capital redistribution and they all have consequences.  Choose a system is just a matter of choosing which consequences you prefer.  
Knowing how the capitalist system works and agreeing with it on an ethical basis are two different things.  You seem to have conflated the two.  I know exactly how the capitalist system works and think it is completely unethical but still participate in it because it is the reality of the world I live in.  I teach my children ethics and economics and let them decide if they want to abandon ethics for economics , abandon economics for ethics, or want to push for a world that abandons capitalism for ethical economics.  Most of the young generation prefer the latter and are ready to fight for it.  

You cannot continue to push the false dichotomy of capitalism or "communist" systems of the past.  There are countless other ways a society can function if you open your mind, think outside of the box and use some imagination or creativity.


Do you see the double standard in your post?  Why can't we treat the poor like the lazy child of .a billionaire and give them money.  That way, everyone will have the same opportunity to "return" the capital or put it into good use.  According to your same logic, the people with the most skills would end up with the capital anyway.  

And that is why you adhere to a flawed system. You have no confidence in human ingenuity and progress.

Stop worrying about doling out a Model T to every citizen and start allowing progress to happen unequally.

The universe is full of resources, space travel is imminent. All the sooner if people like you get out of the way.

But such technological advances cannot happen without greed, and allowing people to keep the fruits of their labor and shoot for a better life than everyone else. That is the breeding ground for progress and will take us beyond the stars.

There are many laws that I disagree with, but I would not dare to break them just because I don't like them.  
You don't need to break laws to be successful or get ahead in life.

All I said is that equality of outcome is wrong to those who can and will do better than those who don't.
You don't believe me that the US, any other Western, or Eastern European country does not have equality of opportunity?
Score perfect on SAT and you'll see how many doors will open for you.  Who is stopping you?
When I see Americans or Canadians waste their time at the university on partying and "college life", I see a lot of resources wasted, but
I know that most of these people will not succeed in life, will end up with $200K+ student debt, will continue churning their parent's inheritances if any, and will begin to complain about the capitalist system.  Eventually will radicalize themselves and become "communists".  They are (like you btw) smart enough to know what they want, however they fail to understand the consequences of forced capital redistribution.

Remember one thing, capital stays in the pockets of people who care about it, and flees the pockets of people who do not understand what the capital is for.  This is probably the most important thing that you should get from our exchanges, follow this rule, teach it to your children.  Take care of your capital, put it into good use.  Don't waste it.  It is a very valuable resource.  And forget the wrongs of the past.  Live for the future.  Do not seek some social revenge.

Do I think the capitalist system is fair?  Not really, it favors the rich because money greases the wheels of success.  However, there are many legal opportunities for ambitious, eager, smart and POOR people.  More than in any communist system ever created. Under the communist system the smart and ambitious are either killed first or become the oligarchs/politburo of the system (aka mafia bosses).  

As for the taxation system favoring the rich, well, you should be thankful that this is the case so that the capital keeps working in your country.  Without capital, the economy would collapse.  The more profit capitalists make the more money is put into good use, even if it is a fraction of their profits, still, it is better than the saving all the poor people can put to good use.  Most poor people do not have a clue what to do with their money, other than to spend it.


Maybe for some people, but not all. Luck plays a role, but it is your brains and guts that determine your destiny.  You determine it.
I know it is a hard road from being penniless to retiring early as a multi-millionaire.  But it can be done.

The harder and smarter you work the luckier you get.

BTW, that lazy child of a billionaire is going to "return" the capital to people who know what to do with it sooner rather than later.

Why do you think the majority of lottery winners go broke?