I always knew it at the gut level, and in a debate I could give very good reasons for thinking so, but there was no way I could prove it comprehensively. And anyway people don’t listen to reasons. They believe whatever they want to. But seems like someone was working on it! So here is proof, if ever it was needed, that the belief that success is largely because of merit is mostly based on, well, nothing.

If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Turns out it’s just chance.

The most successful people are not the most talented, just the luckiest, a new computer model of wealth creation confirms. Taking that into account can maximize return on many kinds of investment.

The distribution of wealth follows a well-known pattern sometimes called an 80:20 rule: 80 percent of the wealth is owned by 20 percent of the people. Indeed, a report last year concluded that just eight men had a total wealth equivalent to that of the world’s poorest 3.8 billion people.

This seems to occur in all societies at all scales. It is a well-studied pattern called a power law that crops up in a wide range of social phenomena. But the distribution of wealth is among the most controversial because of the issues it raises about fairness and merit. Why should so few people have so much wealth? (More here)