Thing is that there are plenty who also work their asses off and don't end up anywhere in life.  They got dealt a series of bad breaks, and guessed wrong in light of incomplete information.  The deciding factor for them going on to be hugely successful (rich or famous) was a series of breaks that they had nothing to do with.   And then, one asks where did the person get the make up to actually work their asses off?  Where in their make up did this come from?  Exactly how much did they bring into themselves, or the environment?

And Michael Jordan as a basketball executive has hardly been a success.  The NBA team he owns now is hardly a success.  They stand a good chance of not even making the playoffs.  Factor in also things like the NBA lottery which can make or break a club to.  Then teams will gamble on high risk, high reward players.  And a number of top players, even top 50 all time, didn't even win a championship.  You get a series of bad breaks, you don't win.  It happens.  Also, Michael Jordan as a baseball player also didn't work out.  Anyone think Michael Jordan as a baseball player didn't work out because he didn't try hard enough, or wasn't motivated enough?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)

Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.

While there are lots of factors outside of a person's control which will help/hinder their chances of success, the most important factor is the effort they put into it.

Essentially, being the most naturally talented basketball player or software developer is meaningless unless you put the time in to develop your skill to achieve your potential; and anyone who puts that kind of effort into developing their natural talents will also end up achieving significant success.

Or to put it another way ...

When I was in high-school one of my classmates played football with me. Even though he wasn't in (particularly) good shape and he smoked he had the ability to run 40 meters in under 4 seconds. His natural athleticism actually attracted the attention of several scouts from large US colleges which is unheard of in Canada. This all resulted in him being offered a couple of scholarships and all he had to do was write the SATs and graduate at the end of the year. While it is difficult to understand the logic behind it, he skipped several classes a day from the time the football season ended in grade 12 and eventually was expelled from school; and never graduated.

All the natural talent in the world doesn't matter if you screw up your opportunities; and (realistically) far more people screw up the opportunities they had then failed after putting in the effort needed to achieve their potential.

what makes you think you have any knowledge of my finances?

Warren Buffett, his dealing is either absurdly lucky or he is actually properly a financial genius.

You are just defining luck in such a way that your point is a tautology.

If things such as athletic ability are given to us by luck of genetics., then so are things such as intelligence, emotional aptitude, charisma and common sense. That way, if someone succeeds in creating an invention due to their intelligence, convincing someone to give them the start up capital using their charisma and then successfully monetising the invention using his common sense and emotional aptitude, then by your definition he has succeeded 100% by luck. This of course leads to the conclusion that all success is due to luck.

Skill and Luck are both required.

Yes luck is a factor considering for every person that succeeds their are10-100.000 that fails...also plenty of the rich are lucky the rest of the population is rather dumb/stupid..

How many do not wake up on a monday complaining about another boring work week while doing nothing about it...

Mostly luck?  No.  Though luck is needed.

I suggest reading

Basically the formula is "talent, 10,000 hours of work a little luck to allow you to work for about 10,000 hours on something An idea that's... well  good."

As for people like Michael Jordan.  There were MANY more people with better genes then Michael Jordan.  There are TONS of atheletic freaks who can't make it to the pros.

Michael Jordan became the "Greatest of all Time" because Michael Jordan is an anti-social dick who feels the need to destroy everybody at everything.

If he loses a game of Stratego to his kid he's pissed off for weeks playing Stratego.

When he loses at poker, he forces his friends to keep playing with him until he wins.  Michael Jordan is not... lucky.

Just look at his Hall of Fame speech, where he seemed offended that he was inducted more then anything because he believes he still could kick everyones ass.  Rich or not, I kinda pity him.

Lots of atheletes are like that, super competeitive combined with a complete loss of childhood... and if your in the NFL shortening of your life by 10 years.

Most proffesional atheletes I do not envy.

I would say the number and type of social connections is probably around the most significant factor in most forms of monetary success more so than having significantly more talent than average.

The lottery actually demonstrates how luck has little to do with long term stable wealth being that most lottery winners (70%) declare bankruptcy within a few years of winning the lottery. At the same time, most professional athletes (60% to 80%) also go broke after they retire. The reason for this is that most people have poor spending habits and poor investing knowledge and they soon lose the money they earned/won.