Apology to politicians

I made a mistake in my previous post, about politicians having 'nothing but ambition.' Ambition is indeed a major requirement for politics, but a politician is actually a specialization of a salesman! Sales in itself is a formidable skill and forms the core of capitalism, and selling your image is the key to success in a democracy. Democracy and capitalism have an interesting relationship, don't you agree?

Now, back to washing the dishes...

Disclaimer: I have no formal training in economics, business and political theory. Please post a comment if you would like to correct me!

Why do some people make more money than others?

I tried coming up with an answer to this using two orthogonal traits: talent and ambition. Note that in this article, I mean 'talent' to be 'effective talent', hence a talented but lazy person is classified as having effectively 'no talent'.

So here is the trait-scenario table I came up with to analyze various types of people:

Traits		Possible outcome
No talent, No ambition		Bum
Talent, No ambition		Overworked, underpaid
Talent, Ambition		Executive, Top specialist, Rock star
No talent, Ambition		Politician

Trait-Scenario Table No. 1: Talent and Ambition

Well, no offense to politicians, but most political systems require no other criterion for office, except ambition. Also, the table entries are in a 'P implies Q' relationship: it doesn't necessarily mean that politicians have nothing except ambition, but one can be a politician armed only with ambition and nothing else.

And bums do have tough luck. Because my notion of talent means 'effective talent', people who have have potential but have been unable to develop it are also inadvertently classified as having 'no talent'.

Furthermore, there are a lot of people with neither talent nor ambition who are well off; the above table does little to explain the world's distribution of wealth. So I decided to factor in the luck column for a somewhat better picture:

Traits	Tough luck		Lucky!
No talent, No ambition	Bum		ala Paris Hilton
Talent, No ambition	Overworked, underpaid		Paid enough, content
Talent, Ambition	'Almost' executive, 'almost' rock star, but never there		Executive, Top specialist, Rock star
No talent, Ambition	ala Al Gore		ala Bush

Trait-Scenario table No. 2: Talent, Ambition and Luck

Conventional wisdom would state that talent that fulfills our needs is rewarded. However, after looking at my trait-scenario tables, I have come under the impression that:

Talent is what the world needs, but luck and ambition are what the world rewards.

So sad.
Maybe I should come up with a less depressing model.
Or find happier thoughts about the current model.

Shinobazu Pond

Here's a video from Ueno. I took it some time ago, but I just thought of posting it now :) I know nothing about taking videos, so please pardon the jitters.