He argues that luck, being born to middle or upper-middle class families, having access to the best resources as a result thereof, makes it more likely that you will reach the top sooner and stay there longer.
He supports these hypotheses through some vaguely relevant, at the same time eclectic collection of data. For example, he purports that the best hockey players in Canada are the ones born during the first few months of the year. The observation is based on the view that since they were born at that time of the year, they would be physically more developed than their counterparts born a few months later. This seems like a reasonable assumption, given the fact that adolescents have a rapid curve for physical growth through their early years. This advantage cascades through time, since they are picked over their slightly younger friends earlier, and as a result would have practiced playing the game more. At this point he makes an observation, which as it happens, is it the only thing I wholeheartedly agree with.
He says that once these kids were selected based on their date of birth, they would have practiced roughly 10,000 hours by the time they make it to the Stanley cup winning teams. Thus as a result of them being born during the latter half of the year, the other kids don't get to go to special practice sessions and thus get robbed of valuable time in the rink. This manifests in them not making the cut into either their high school teams and later any NHL team. So far so good with his thesis. The problems arise when he extends this hypothesis to explain the success of Bill Gates, and the opposing fortunes of Christopher Langan and Robert Oppenheimer, both men blessed with exceptional intelligence.
He argues that Gates made his fortune since he was born to well to do parents, because of which he had access to probably the only lab in any school in the 60's or 70's that had a computer in it, which the rich mom's of the school had purchased for their wards. That' s a short-sighted analysis, to put it mildly. How come none among his hundreds of classmates and/or schoolmates make it as big? They went to the same private school with possibly similar parentage and certainly similar opportunities.
I think the point where Gladwell's thesis unravels itself is in the fact that he concentrates on a very singular and often "pop economics" based outlook of either successful or at other times, less successful people. He glaringly, also omits a lot of examples of fortitude and hard work of people from cultures outside of his home in New York. By concentrating on such vague and often unscientific explanations for socio-economic issues that need proper redressal, he trivializes them, and sadly, diminishes the significance of disparities that still exist in societies all around the world, and certainly in his home town of New York.
This book could have been so much better if he had done some research to get real and relevant data to explain why some people succeed while others don't. Alas, it fails to do any such thing and it exacerbates me to think this book was a best seller. I just hope people who read this book, take his argument with a pinch of salt and realize that this is just the observation of a sensationalist reporter, a very good one in this case.
Good read for its simplicity, bad for the appalling lack of any science in his studies of significant socio-economic problems.
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