[danielf]

It seems pretty obvious to me that doing well is mostly a combination of luck and hard work. For starters, we are all lucky to be born in the west, rather than Sub-Saharan Africa. Some of us are born with the brains that allow us to get a good education. Others aren't. Some of us have parents that value a good education and promote doing well at school. Others don't. Then again, you can have all the luck in the world and sit on your backside all day. That's unlikely to get you very far.