Congratulations, you’ve made it. All of your hard work has paid off and you now have enough money to fund your wildest dreams. You really did work for where you are, and all the glory and notoriety absolutely belong to you. Seriously, from the bottom of my heart I mean it.

I’m a survivor of the American dream too. I’m not exactly rich, atleast not like yourself, but I do have more than the average person. I’ve worked hard for where I am, and I am well known in certain circles. My craft is well honed and I have sacrificed a lot to get to where I am. And I absolutely deserve what I have.

… But, you know what. I didn’t work nearly as hard as a lot of people around me who failed. I’m not as smart as them, as funny, talented or hell even useful to the world. And neither are either of you.

Success is a lot of luck of the draw than we like to admit. And survivorship bias is an absolute bitch. We all have the capability of looking at our luck in ways that we perceive as somehow making better decisions than others, working harder, working smarter. But it’s not.

Jeff Bezos is lucky, Elon is lucky, I am lucky, you both are incredibly lucky. There was no magic tricks behind the door, no special cheat code hidden in a business book.

Most successful entrepreneurs second business fails almost as often as the average business.

Anyhow, the point I want to get at is this. The way you two spoke on the podcast is completely devoid of what you used to represent, and seem to understand. It seems like you’ve lost touch, and somewhere along the way you’ve lost your understanding of the true struggle in this world, opportunity.

Billionaires shouldn’t exist because of where that money should be instead. Because when you have money, you can make even more by influencing policy. Billionaires usually ride off the back of governmental monopoly, abusing their workers with poor working conditions, outsourcing their jobs to slave labor. And worst of all, they see themselves as the hero, like they were just the product of making a lot of good decisions. But really they might be smart, but they… were lucky.

Just like you.