Why Malcom Gladwell's new book, Outliers, gets under people's skin:It turns out that luck, not pluck, explains success. This thesis mirrors the old battle over criminal responsibility between conservatives who blame criminals and liberals who blame society.
“We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that 13-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur,” he writes at the end. “But that’s the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one 13-year-old unlimited access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?”
Social engineering ought to eliminate crime and turn all of us into Bill Gates-—a Lake Woebegone-ish notion that in all markets, everyone should be a monopolist.
2 comments:
Does Armen Alchian get a big chunk of the index?
I think the key is that both factors...individual initiative as well as circumstances and environment...make for success.
In the Gates example, he was indeed fortunate to have access to a computer so young, esp in that era. But he also took advantage of that, when some kids would have just found computing to be boring, and opted for other diversions. I don't think Gladwell disagrees.
But what Gladwell points out, which is so true, is that the lesson to learn is that society needs to try to deliberately create the environments that maximize the opportunities for success...such as better educational opportunities, exposure to different cultures, etc.
I see our new President-elect, Barack Obama, as a similar outlier...his unique background, his exposure to all types of people and cultures and backgrounds, having to wrestle with being a minority in our culture, his multiracial background...all helped to make him such a special figure. If you read about his background, you'll understand why he is so effective at bringing people together, so effective at gathering a diversity of opinions, so effective at understanding other people's perspectives, and so even-tempered a personality.
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