Joe: Lewis, here’s a wild statistic for you. In professional hockey, about 40% of elite players are born in the first three months of the year. Only 10% are born in the last three. Are people born in winter just… better at hockey? Lewis: No way. That makes no sense. Is it something about the cold making them tougher? What's going on there? Joe: It's the perfect entry point into the book we're talking about today: Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy by Robert H. Frank. Frank is a long-time Cornell economist who has spent his career looking at these exact kinds of questions—the weird, irrational ways our world actually works. He even served in the Peace Corps in Nepal, which gave him a powerful, firsthand look at how much our environment shapes our destiny. Lewis: Ah, so he’s seen extreme poverty and extreme wealth. That gives him a unique lens. And that hockey statistic is a perfect example of what he’s talking about, isn't it? It’s not about talent. Joe: Exactly. It’s about the arbitrary cutoff date for youth leagues, which is usually January 1st. A kid born in January is competing against kids who are almost a full year younger. At that age, that’s a massive physical advantage. They get picked for the travel teams, they get the better coaching, they practice more, and that small, initial, random advantage snowballs. Lewis: Wow. So a simple accident of birth date creates a feedback loop that separates the "talented" from the "untalented." That's a bit unsettling. Okay, so a birthday is one thing, but how big can the role of pure chance really be in the grand scheme of things?

Joe: It can be the only thing that matters. Frank starts the book with his own story, and it's chilling. In 2007, he was playing tennis with a friend, a psychologist named Tom Gilovich. Mid-match, he felt nauseous and then just… collapsed. Lewis: Oh man. Joe: He had suffered a sudden cardiac death. His heart stopped. No pulse, not breathing. 98% of people who experience that, die. Right there. Lewis: So why didn't he? Joe: Pure, unadulterated luck, in a series of cascading events. First, his friend Tom, who had never had CPR training and had only seen it in movies, started doing chest compressions. It was just a desperate guess. Second, and this is the unbelievable part, an ambulance arrived in minutes. Why? Because it just happened to be stationed less than a mile away, responding to two separate, minor car accidents that had just occurred nearby. Lewis: That is insane. The fact that two other people had bad luck with a fender-bender is the only reason he had the good luck to survive. Joe: Precisely. The EMTs used the paddles, got his heart started, and rushed him to the hospital. He made a full recovery with no cognitive damage. The doctors told him flat out: if those car accidents hadn't happened, he would be dead. His life was saved by a completely random coincidence. Lewis: That's terrifying and completely random. It really drives home how fragile everything is. But most success stories we hear aren't that life-or-death. How does this apply in the world of business or art, where we assume skill is everything? Joe: That’s where it gets even more interesting, because the same principle applies, just in less dramatic ways. Take the Mona Lisa. Lewis: Okay, the most famous painting in the world. A masterpiece. That’s about pure artistic genius, right? Joe: You'd think so. But for centuries, it was just… another good painting by Leonardo da Vinci. It wasn't particularly famous. It was housed in the Louvre with thousands of other works. What catapulted it to global icon status? In 1911, an Italian maintenance worker named Vincenzo Peruggia hid in a closet, tucked the painting under his smock, and just walked out with it. Lewis: He stole the Mona Lisa? Just like that? Joe: Just like that. The theft became a massive international scandal. Newspapers across the globe printed photos of the painting for the first time, asking "Have you seen this woman?" For two years, it was the world's biggest art mystery. When Peruggia was finally caught trying to sell it, the painting's return was a global event. Lewis: So its fame has almost nothing to do with the brushstrokes and everything to do with a crime. It became famous for being famous. Joe: Exactly. A random event—a theft—created a feedback loop of media attention that cemented its place in culture forever. Frank argues this happens all the time in what he calls "winner-take-all markets." In these markets, being slightly better, or in this case, slightly luckier, doesn't just get you a slightly bigger reward. It gets you all the reward. Lewis: That makes me think of Hollywood. You hear stories about actors who almost got a career-making role. Joe: The book has a perfect example: Al Pacino in The Godfather. The studio executives at Paramount were desperate for a big star like Robert Redford or Warren Beatty to play Michael Corleone. They absolutely did not want this short, unknown stage actor named Al Pacino. Lewis: But the director, Francis Ford Coppola, saw something in him. Joe: He did, but he was an inexperienced director fighting the studio. They almost gave the part to James Caan instead. Coppola had to threaten to quit the entire project to get Pacino cast. It was a highly improbable victory. And that one lucky break, winning that one argument, launched Pacino into superstardom. Without that single, contentious moment, his career trajectory would have been completely different. Lewis: So the best marketing strategy is to get your product stolen, and the best career advice is to have a director willing to torpedo their own career for you. Noted. It feels like we're wired to construct these neat stories of merit after the fact, to make it all seem inevitable. We ignore the chaos. Joe: We do. And this is where it gets really tricky. Because even when we see this evidence, our brains are wired to ignore it. And that denial has a huge cost.

Lewis: What do you mean, a cost? It feels good to believe your success is earned. It's motivating. Isn't that a good thing? Joe: It can be adaptive for an individual, absolutely. Believing you're in complete control can give you the grit to push through challenges. But Frank argues it's collectively disastrous. He points to a cognitive bias called the "headwinds/tailwinds asymmetry." Lewis: Okay, what's that? Joe: It’s simple. We are acutely aware of every obstacle we've had to overcome—the headwinds pushing against us. The late nights, the rejections, the tough boss. But we are completely oblivious to the things that helped us—the tailwinds at our back. A stable home, a great public school teacher, the roads we drive on, the internet infrastructure that lets us work. We take the tailwinds for granted. Lewis: Huh. That’s so true. You never think, "Wow, I'm so grateful for that functioning sewer system today." But you definitely notice when it breaks. Joe: Exactly. And because successful people tend to only remember the headwinds, they often develop a strong belief that they did it all themselves. This leads to what Frank calls the "myth of meritocracy." And this myth makes them deeply resentful of things like taxes. Lewis: Because they feel like their hard-earned money is being taken to pay for things for other, less-deserving people. Joe: Precisely. And Frank tells this brilliant story about a lunchtime conversation he had with a colleague at Cornell. This colleague was also a successful textbook author, and he was complaining about a proposed tax increase. He said, "I just don't see how I'll be able to afford the things I want." Lewis: A classic complaint from someone who is already very well-off. Joe: Right. But Frank's response was genius. He said, "What are the things you want? A bigger house with a better view of the lake? A slip for your boat at the marina?" The colleague agreed. Frank then pointed out that these are "positional goods"—their value comes from being better than what others have, and they are in fixed supply. Lewis: There are only so many houses on the lake. Joe: Exactly. So to get one, you have to outbid other people just like you. If your taxes go up, but so do the taxes of everyone you're competing against, your relative bidding power stays exactly the same. The lake house doesn't suddenly become less attainable. Lewis: Wait, my bank account is smaller, but I'm not poorer in the way that matters for these luxury goods? My brain hurts. Joe: It's a powerful idea! Frank compares it to everyone in a stadium standing up to get a better view. Everyone exerts effort, they're all less comfortable, but nobody's view has actually improved relative to anyone else. That's what he calls a "positional arms race." We're all spending more and more just to keep up. Lewis: Ah, so it's like the insane cost of weddings today. The average cost has tripled since the 80s. Everyone spends more on the dress, the venue, the photographer, but is anyone actually having a 'better' or more meaningful wedding than they did 30 years ago? Joe: Probably not. And research shows those expensive weddings are correlated with higher divorce rates. It's pure, wasteful spending driven by a positional arms race. We do it with houses, cars, sweet sixteen parties, you name it. And that money, Frank argues, is being diverted from things that would actually make all of us better off. Lewis: Like the roads with potholes that the guy in the brand-new Lexus is driving on. Joe: That’s the perfect image. We're over-investing in private luxury and under-investing in the public goods that form the foundation of our society—the tailwinds. And we do it because we've convinced ourselves that we don't need the tailwinds, that our success is all about our own heroic effort against the headwinds.

Lewis: So if we're all stuck in these wasteful arms races because we deny the role of luck, what's the way out? It seems like a hopeless cycle. Joe: This is the most hopeful part of the book. Frank argues that recognizing this waste is a golden opportunity. He proposes a simple, elegant solution: replace our current income tax system with a steeply progressive consumption tax. Lewis: A consumption tax? So, you tax what people spend, not what they earn? Joe: Yes. And it's progressive, so the more you spend, the higher the tax rate. A family spending $50,000 a year might pay no tax on it. A family spending $5 million a year might pay a very high rate on their spending above a certain threshold. The incentive is clear: it suddenly becomes much more attractive to save and invest your money rather than spend it on a third vacation home or a million-dollar birthday party. Lewis: So it's not about punishing the rich. It's about changing the rules of the game to make those positional arms races less attractive for everyone. Joe: Exactly. It gently discourages the most wasteful forms of spending. And the revenue generated by this—which could be trillions of dollars—could be used to reinvest in the things that create opportunity for everyone. Better schools, modern infrastructure, scientific research. We could fix the potholed roads. We could fund the research that leads to the next medical breakthrough. We'd be strengthening the tailwinds for the next generation. Lewis: We'd be creating more opportunities for luck to strike, for more people. Joe: That's the beautiful irony. By acknowledging luck, we can create a society that is, in a very real sense, luckier. Frank quotes Warren Buffett, who said, "Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago." Lewis: It's a powerful reminder that none of us got here on our own. We're all benefiting from trees we didn't plant. We're standing on the shoulders of generations of public investment and, yes, good fortune. Joe: Exactly. So the question we want to leave everyone with is: what's one 'lucky break' in your life you've maybe taken for granted? A teacher who saw your potential, a chance meeting that led to a job, even just the profound luck of being born in a country with clean water and stable institutions. Think about it, and maybe share your story with us on our socials. We'd love to hear it. Lewis: It’s a good exercise in gratitude. And a reminder that we have a collective responsibility to keep planting those trees. Joe: This is Aibrary, signing off.