[Samseau]

(02-10-2015 05:43 PM)iknowexactly Wrote:  

(01-18-2015 08:21 AM)AngloHispanic Wrote:  

Power can be accumulated, and it can be dissipated, sometimes through sheer luck, more often through deliberate effort or carelessness. There is nothing to indicate that it consistently and always happens independently of a person's will.

You're right that of course there are disruptions, for example, the ascendence of Apple over IBM, forty years ago Apple was considered a company of kooks relative to IBM, now they dwarf IBM.

But there are two aspects to these types of large changes that are important:

1) They require a disruptive event ( genius of Jobs and Woz) which by definition is an anomaly. You hear about them a lot because they are unusual in history. For instance, over the same time period Johnson and Johnson, 3M , Colgate-Palmolive have NOT been superseded in their power by upstart companies as Apple as upstaged IBM. But you don't hear a lot about that.

2) These things usually take enough time that they are irrelevant to the life spans of a particular individual. For instance, the children of Jeb Bush, totally privileged, connected, and wealthy, will almost certainly have far more power than any of my own children, even out to the next 2-3 generations.

UNLESS one of my children is a one in a billion character like Bill Clinton.

One in a billion events are too rare to plan for with any clear methodology.

To summarize in pragmatic terms, "The first million is the hardest." After that, you just keep buying more apartment buildings and raising the rent.

That is the normal course of things.

You forgot about war. Which consistently happen every century and turn rich men into beggars and vice versa. Never rule out chance.