Success and Luck

Do you really deserve your success—or could luck have had more to do with it than you think? In Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy, economist Robert H. Frank challenges the comforting idea that success results purely from talent and hard work. He argues that while those qualities matter deeply, the decisive ingredient behind great achievements—and great fortunes—is often random chance.

Frank’s core claim is both simple and radical: our world is far more meritocratic than ever, yet we stubbornly maintain false beliefs about how merit alone determines outcomes. He contends that luck systematically shapes every level of success—from being born in rich countries and healthy families, to meeting the right mentor or getting the perfect break. And because many successful people don’t recognize that luck’s invisible hand aided them, they become less inclined to support the collective investments that made their success possible.

In exploring this idea, Frank weaves together economics, psychology, sociology, and personal experience. He starts from harrowing stories—such as surviving sudden cardiac death thanks to an ambulance’s quick arrival—to highlight how luck decides literal survival. He then expands to societal luck: the historical and infrastructure advantages of developed nations, the educational and familial circumstances that shape ambitions, and the economic systems—“winner-take-all markets”—that amplify tiny differences in ability and luck into enormous disparities of wealth.

The Myth of Complete Control

At the heart of the book lies a tension between two narratives. One, favored by many conservatives and self-made millionaires, insists that success is self-created through discipline and risk. The other, more nuanced, recognizes that success depends jointly on ability and opportunity. Frank illustrates this conflict through his televised debate with commentator Stuart Varney, who rejected any suggestion that luck contributed to his own success as an immigrant broadcaster. But as Frank patiently explains, even taking risks implies that outcomes are uncertain—meaning Varney was by definition lucky to have succeeded instead of failed.

This individual defensiveness about luck fuels a broader cultural problem. When people attribute success solely to their virtues, they feel entitled to keep all their rewards. They forget the social systems—roads, education, security, and innovation ecosystems—that enable prosperity. This blindness has political consequences: declining taxes on the wealthy and decaying public investment. Frank thus contends that recognizing luck’s role isn’t merely about humility; it’s a prerequisite for sustaining the environments that make success possible for anyone.

Why Luck Matters More Than We Think

Through vivid examples, Frank distinguishes between personal luck (accidents and coincidences) and systemic luck (being born into the right society or time). A brilliant Bhutanese cook he once employed, Birkhaman Rai, possessed remarkable ingenuity and practical intelligence—but because he lived in rural Nepal without education or opportunity, he probably earned less than $1,500 per year. Had he been born in America, Frank observes, he would likely have been wealthy. Rai’s story reveals how birthplace and environment—luck none of us choose—can outweigh talent.

Frank deepens the argument by invoking psychology’s availability heuristic: we remember our hard work vividly but forget the structural advantages and good breaks we’ve enjoyed. This bias leads us to believe our triumphs were inevitable. Yet as his simulations of competitive markets show, even when luck accounts for only 2% of total performance, the winners of large contests are almost always the luckiest members of the talented pool. The larger and more competitive a field becomes, the more luck determines who gets the top prize.

Why Recognizing Luck Changes Everything

If luck shapes our outcomes, gratitude should shape our attitudes. Frank connects realizing one’s luck to generosity and civic responsibility. Studies by psychologist David DeSteno show that gratitude increases cooperation and altruism, suggesting that acknowledging fortune’s role might make societies more compassionate and sustainable. Frank’s own experiments found that people who reflect on external causes of their good fortune donate 25% more to charity than those who attribute success to personal effort alone.

Therefore, the point isn’t to diminish achievement—it’s to place it in context. Appreciating luck fosters humility, gratitude, and willingness to strengthen institutions so future generations can enjoy similar luck. That acknowledgment not only benefits society; it even helps the successful themselves. By funding better infrastructure, education, and health systems, they ensure environments that multiply opportunities for everyone—including their own descendants.

The Broader Promise

Ultimately, Frank’s argument culminates in a hopeful call: societies can translate acknowledgment of luck into policy change. His proposed progressive consumption tax would redirect wasteful luxury spending into productive public investment, raising living standards without sacrificing happiness. By accepting that luck helped us succeed, he says, we can repay that debt forward—funding the luck of future generations.

“We could make the educational investments that help foster success, tackle our infrastructure maintenance backlog, expand health care coverage, and reduce poverty—all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone.”

Frank’s message resonates beyond economics. It’s a moral philosophy disguised as empirical analysis: fortune obligates gratitude, and gratitude demands generosity. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, policymaker, or dreamer chasing success, he challenges you to remember the invisible networks of support—and luck—that made your path possible. Recognizing them is not weakness. It’s wisdom.

Frank invites you to reconsider moments that seemed insignificant at the time but shaped your entire life. He calls this the power of trivial randomness—the small, accidental events that cascade into enormous consequences. Through examples from art, film, and personal history, he shows how unpredictable coincidences often decide success stories we later rationalize as inevitable.

The Hidden Role of Chance

Psychologists like Paul Lazarsfeld first demonstrated hindsight bias—our tendency to believe events were predictable after they happened. Frank expands that idea with sociologist Duncan Watts’s observation that narratives of success often obscure the randomness behind them. Watts compared the Mona Lisa’s fame to other Leonardo da Vinci paintings: its global celebrity began with its theft in 1911, a sensational event that turned an average artwork into an icon. In retrospect, we say it was “destined” for fame, forgetting it was luck and timing that made it so.

Careers Built on Lucky Breaks

Frank’s examples of actors underscore this theme. Al Pacino became legendary only because director Francis Ford Coppola defied studio pressure to hire a familiar star for The Godfather. Similarly, Bryan Cranston became an icon in Breaking Bad only after John Cusack and Matthew Broderick turned down the role. These seemingly random casting choices changed careers and cultural history. Frank likens this to his own experience: a sequence of improbable events—from a flu during job interviews to a last-minute paper submission—brought him tenure at Cornell. Each step depended not on superior merit but on fortuitous timing.

Positive Feedback and the Matthew Effect

Small advantages snowball through positive feedback loops, a phenomenon sociologist Robert Merton called the “Matthew Effect”: those who have success attract more success. In economics and culture, early exposure or praise amplifies luck’s impact. The Music Lab experiments by Watts demonstrated that unknown songs became wildly popular simply because a few early listeners liked them, not because they were better. This ripple effect mirrors market dynamics everywhere—from bestselling books to viral technologies—where initial random preference solidifies into mass consensus.

Luck in Birth and Family

Frank incorporates Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers to show that life outcomes hinge on early random advantages such as birth month or family wealth. Bill Gates’s teenage access to a rare computer terminal at his private school positioned him decades ahead in programming experience. A child’s birth order or even surname initial can influence leadership roles or promotions later, demonstrating how social systems magnify accidental differences.

The Broader Implication

For you, Frank’s lesson is profound: stop assuming life’s paths are meritocratic trajectories. Instead, recognize that countless uncontrollable factors—timing, place, opportunities—shape outcomes. By acknowledging randomness, you develop humility and contextual awareness. You can better empathize with those less fortunate and become more willing to support systems that buffer luck’s inequalities. Success is not proof of destiny; it’s evidence of probability.

Frank explains how modern markets, powered by technology and globalization, have transformed economic competition into high-stakes tournaments where tiny differences translate into massive pay gaps. In these winner-take-all markets, luck becomes decisive because even marginal advantages are exponentially rewarded.

From Local to Global Competition

Before modern connectivity, markets were local: the best accountant in town served local clients, and thousands of pianomakers thrived regionally. But as shipping, communication, and automation expanded, the best producer anywhere could serve everyone. The most talented performer captured nearly all rewards while near-equals were left behind. This shift, first described by Alfred Marshall and later by Frank and Philip Cook in The Winner-Take-All Society, means that winning increasingly depends on minute differences—and therefore, on luck.

Network Effects and Positive Feedback

Frank uses technology examples like Microsoft Windows and VHS to illustrate how small initial preferences snowball into dominance through network effects. Once one platform gains users, developers flock to it, further increasing its appeal. Better offerings can fail simply because a competitor’s head start made it the default. When success feeds itself—via recognition, access, or popularity—chance becomes critical. This same dynamic applies to music, publishing, and digital media, where earlier exposure or timing—not superior quality—often determines fame.

CEO Pay and Market Leverage

Frank’s analysis of executive compensation reveals how scale magnifies luck. When a CEO’s decisions affect billion-dollar firms, even a 1% performance difference can be worth hundreds of millions annually. Hiring committees try to identify the “best” candidate, but since talent differences are microscopic and outcomes unpredictable, the winner’s rewards are often just the product of chance. The opening of a global labor market—much like free agency in sports—compounds these disparities.

The Human Cost of Hypercompetition

In these systems, inequality skyrockets even among equally skilled individuals. The less fortunate may work just as hard as winners but never reach visibility. This pattern reflects Darwin’s principle of relative success: species—and people—compete not for absolute fitness but for position. In economic terms, the rise of a few “superstars” limits space for others, making luck’s influence pervasive.

By recognizing these market mechanics, you can see why humility and policy reforms are essential. Rewarding only outcomes, not structure, turns lotteries into hierarchies. Acknowledging luck here isn’t fatalism—it’s realism.

In intensely competitive arenas—from sports to finance to entertainment—the more contestants there are, the higher the role of luck. Frank’s simulations and personal stories reveal that even when effort and talent dominate outcomes, luck ultimately decides the winner at the top.

Tiny Odds, Huge Payoffs

Using thought experiments and computer models, Frank shows that in a contest with 100,000 participants where luck influences only 2% of total performance, most winners are not the most skilled. Because many contestants cluster near the top of ability, even minor strokes of good fortune—being at the right place, facing favorable conditions—swing results. This explains why star athletes, CEOs, and artists are both extraordinarily gifted and extraordinarily lucky.

He compares luck’s impact to tailwinds in sprinting: nearly all world records are set with slight favorable winds. Similarly, every winning performance requires everything to go right. Luck doesn’t replace merit; it completes it.

Personal and Cultural Illustrations

Frank’s search for his birth mother provides a touching case study: a series of improbable coincidences led him to living across the street from someone who knew her daughter. The odds of that occurrence were astronomical, yet such events are inevitable among billions of interactions over time. Likewise, his near-death experience on a tennis court—a surviving ambulance nearby purely by chance—reinforces that life itself is an outcome lottery.

The Emotional Meaning

Recognition of luck needn’t diminish achievement. Instead, it humanizes success. When actor Bryan Cranston reflected on his breakthrough role, he openly credited luck, saying talent and perseverance are essential—but “without luck, you will not have a successful career.” This humility, Frank suggests, is not self-deprecation but wisdom born of awareness.

For you, the takeaway is profound: realizing how much luck contributes doesn’t make effort futile—it makes gratitude realistic. It helps you treat others’ struggles with empathy and see success as a shared privilege rather than a solitary triumph.

Why do societies neglect public investment even when everyone benefits from it? Frank argues the answer lies in false beliefs about luck and merit. When the wealthy believe they succeeded entirely through personal merit, they feel entitled to keep all their earnings and resist taxation—forgetting that their “good environment” was built by previous generations’ collective efforts.

Ignoring Luck Undermines Prosperity

Frank points out that being born in a developed country is the ultimate stroke of luck. You inherit infrastructure, education, and stability that multiply opportunity. Yet those inherited advantages require ongoing maintenance. As public investment shrinks—crumbling roads, rising tuition, failing schools—future generations’ luck deteriorates. He connects this erosion directly to declining tax rates on top incomes since mid‑century, which starved governments of revenue even as prosperity grew unevenly.

Cognitive Errors and Tax Resistance

Two biases drive wealthy tax opposition. First, people conflate their personal loss of income with collective declines, assuming higher taxes reduce purchasing power. But if everyone’s disposable income falls equally, relative status—the real determinant of satisfaction—stays the same. Second, they underestimate luck’s role, strengthening moral entitlement to keep earnings. Frank’s anecdotes—including a colleague worried about Obama’s tax increases—illustrate how these misconceptions persist even among academics.

Gratitude and Generosity

Frank’s experiments with his assistant Yuezhou Huo show how acknowledging luck transforms behavior. Participants asked to recall external causes of a positive event donated 25% more to charity than those referencing personal traits. Psychologists like David DeSteno corroborate this with evidence that gratitude promotes cooperation and altruism. People primed to feel grateful give more, help longer, and act kindly even toward strangers.

Why It Matters

Frank’s conclusion is clear: failure to appreciate luck not only breeds moral distortion—it undermines the very systems that generate opportunity. Taxes aren’t theft, he reminds us; they are the price of civilization. Recognizing luck’s importance makes paying them feel not punitive but reciprocal—a way of investing in our collective fortune. When gratitude replaces entitlement, societies prosper together.

Frank’s most daring proposal is economic and political: a progressive consumption tax to curb wasteful status‑driven spending and channel wealth into shared prosperity. He calls it a “golden opportunity” because it lets societies improve without painful sacrifice—by converting private waste into public benefit.

The Problem of Relative Consumption

Through the analogy of cars and roads, Frank shows how people overspend privately while underinvesting publicly. Americans drive luxury cars on potholed roads—proof of distorted priorities. Our drive to keep up socially leads to “expenditure cascades,” where the spending of the wealthy raises standards for everyone below. Median homes grow bigger even as wages stagnate, forcing the middle class into debt.

The Role of Frames and Positional Arms Races

Borrowing Darwin’s insights, Frank explains that humans compete for relative position like bull elk with oversized antlers—beneficial individually, destructive collectively. We waste trillions upgrading lifestyles beyond what makes us happy. If all scaled back simultaneously, satisfaction would remain unchanged but resources would be freed.

A Practical Solution

Under Frank’s proposed system, taxation would target consumption rather than income. People would report earnings and savings; what remains (income minus savings) is their taxable spending. Rates would rise with expenditure level. The rich could still enjoy luxury but would be incentivized to save and invest, aiding economic growth. The result: less wasteful competition and more funds for public goods—schools, infrastructure, clean energy.

Bridging Morality and Self‑Interest

Frank builds an ethical case alongside an economic one. Curbing waste isn’t envy-driven; it’s rational stewardship. He shows bipartisan support—from Milton Friedman to Senators Domenici and Nunn—for such reforms. Wealthy citizens benefit too: better roads and educated workforces enhance their quality of life. Ultimately, he reframes taxation not as punishment but as collective insurance—the mechanism that maintains the luck we inherited.

Heeding the Call

Frank ends with optimism: with millions of baby boomers retiring and infrastructure crumbling, fiscal reform is inevitable. We can seize it intentionally rather than reactively. By acting with gratitude instead of entitlement, societies can harness the luck of wastefulness itself—using what we once squandered to build shared abundance. “It’s a golden opportunity that’s ours for the taking.”

Frank closes his book on a deeply human note: gratitude is the emotion that connects luck, success, and generosity. It’s not just moral—but materially advantageous. People who acknowledge luck are perceived as kinder, more trustworthy, and more collaborative, traits essential for thriving in modern team-based economies.

Character as Economic Capital

In experiments Frank conducted, participants who believed others would act honestly were often right—humans can intuit integrity. He urges professionals to cultivate genuine trustworthiness, not strategic self-interest. Even the most rational “economic man” benefits from moral reputation; being someone who others trust with $10,000 in lost cash is an economic asset.

Humility and the Power of Acknowledging Luck

Through a fictional experiment with entrepreneur Harold Johnson, Frank demonstrates that people prefer leaders who credit luck for their success. Those who do are judged kinder and more likable. He connects this insight to real figures like Ben Bernanke, whose modest leadership style and generosity of credit helped him guide the Federal Reserve through crisis. Such humility builds cooperation, proving gratitude’s tangible social and material benefits.

A Personal Reflection on Luck

Frank concludes by revisiting his own life—a near-fatal medical episode, failed baseball dreams, and serendipitous career path—to reveal how gratitude reshapes perspective. He insists that recognizing luck transforms envy into compassion and success into shared responsibility. By supporting policies like the progressive consumption tax, grateful citizens ensure others can enjoy the same fortunate circumstances they inherited.

“Be encouraged that public opinion can shift with surprising speed once good arguments begin to find their footing.”

To you, Frank’s final message is a moral compass: success that forgets gratitude corrodes society; success that remembers luck renews it. In the end, gratitude is both the engine of cooperation and the key to enduring prosperity.