I had read about War­ren Buffett’s “Ovar­ian Lot­tery” before, but a reminder always helps.

Here’s the meat of it, for those of you who don’t want to click on the link -

It’s 24 hours before your birth, and a genie appears to you. He tells you that you can set the rules for the world you’re about to enter — eco­nomic, social, polit­i­cal — the whole enchi­lada. Sounds great, right? What’s the catch?

Before you enter the world, you will pick one ball from a bar­rel of 6.8 bil­lion (the num­ber of peo­ple on the planet). That ball will deter­mine your gen­der, race, nation­al­ity, nat­ural abil­i­ties, and health — whether you are born rich or poor, sick or able-​bodied, bril­liant or below aver­age, Amer­i­can or Zimbabwean.

This is what Buf­fett calls the ovar­ian lot­tery. As he explained to a group of Uni­ver­sity of Florida stu­dents, “You’re going to get one ball out of there, and that is the most impor­tant thing that’s ever going to hap­pen to you in your life.”

Accord­ing to the world’s third-​richest man, that’s a good per­spec­tive to have when set­ting the rules for our world. We should be design­ing a soci­ety that, as Buf­fett says, “doesn’t leave behind some­one who acci­den­tally got the wrong ball and is not well-​wired for this par­tic­u­lar sys­tem.” He points out that he is designed for the Amer­i­can sys­tem — and he was lucky to be born into it. He can allo­cate cap­i­tal, and he lives in a place and at a time when those skills are well rewarded. (His pal Bill Gates is quick to point out that if Buf­fett had been born in an ear­lier time, he’d be some animal’s lunch because the Ora­cle of Omaha can’t run fast or climb trees.)

When Buf­fett talks about this lot­tery, he often con­cludes by asking:

If you could put your ball back, and they took out, at ran­dom, a hun­dred other balls, and you had to pick one of those, would you put your ball back in? Now, of those hun­dred balls … roughly five of them will be Amer­i­can. … Half of them are going to be below-​average intel­li­gence, half will be above. Do you want to put your ball back? Most of you, I think, will not. … What you’re say­ing is, “I’m in the luck­i­est 1% of the world right now.”

Everything’s about per­spec­tive. When­ever I think I have it rough, I think about if I would trade it for one of those hun­dred other balls, and things don’t look so bad. Espe­cially today, Black April. It’s the anniver­sary of the Fall of Saigon, when Amer­ica pulled out of the Viet­nam War, a defin­ing moment for three gen­er­a­tions of my fam­ily. I think of all that my par­ents and grand­par­ents did to give me a bet­ter pick in the lot­tery than what they had drawn, and I won­der if I’ll be able to do the same for the next generation.