Is "success" luck or pluck? Volokh considers Gladwell's book.
Luck or pluck? Well, we all know that we make our own luck...but bad luck is never our fault. I think it's one of those black-and-white pseudo questions, like Nature vs. Nurture. Life is more complicated than that, and everybody has his own definition of success in a free country. And everybody fails, to some degree, in meeting his life goals whatever they may be.
(My life goals happen to be to have a relationship with God, to be honest and honest with myself, to be close with my family and to give them a hand when needed, to read lots of books, to pay my hefty bills, to have some pals I can count on, to have a pleasant and civilized environment to live in, to make some efforts for the things I care about, and to have some good recreation - which includes guns, horses, golf, Scotch whiskey, ceegars, and posting on Maggie's - among other things. That's about it. I am a happy and frequently unhappy product of my culture. Saving the world is above my pay grade narcissism quotient.)
Some people equate being rich (defined how? Some would term me prosperous, and some not) as success. I do not. Anyway, Wilkinson also takes a look at Gladwell and income inequality. One quote:
If you understand that prices convey information about supply and demand, and that a wage is a price, then you understand that differences in wages for different kinds of labor convey information about the supply of different kinds of labor relative to demand. Wage inequalities are how people can know what’s a “high-value profession” and what isn’t. It guides our choices about the kinds of skills to seek. We need that guidance because effort isn’t enough. You can work as hard as you like in a low-wage job, and you’ll still be in a low-wage job.
