Warren Buffett and The Great Ovarian Lottery

Sometime back I heard Mr. Buffett speaking to a correspondent on PBS. He was explaining why he thinks that a lot depends on the time and place of a person’s birth and how opportunity plays a crucial role in life. He said to the correspondent that if he (Mr. Buffett) was born somewhere else at some other time, he might have been some animal’s lunch by this time since he cant run fast. He termed the randomized phenomenon of birth as “The Great Ovarian Lottery”. Personally, I think Mr. Buffet shows great humility in attributing his massive wealth to a few good opportunities. However, it does give us some food for thought. What if you were born Lebanon, or Iraq or North Korea or any of the few dozen eternally unstable countries. What if you were born in the slums of Bombay, or in the jungles of the Amazon or in the great deserts of Africa; that would certainly rob you of your chances to compete with the well-fed and the well-educated of the world. With 6.5 billion on the planet, the lottery doesnt have very promising odds.