You don’t have to be a bleeding-heart liberal to agree that that some proportion of one’s destiny in life is dictated by factors utterly beyond the control of the individual. In fact, my experience has been that despite some arguments to the contrary, conservatives and libertarians are just as willing as liberals to accept such a proposition. The difference, I think, is that conservatives and libertarians are at peace with the consequences, whereas many liberals have a general uneasiness with the idea that individual achievement is ultimately constrained, regardless of effort, by an unequal starting point.

But that’s a different topic.

The question here is simple: if you accept that there are three basic lotteries in life — a genetic one for the innate talents and capacities you possess, a geographic one for the society you happen to be born into, and a financial one for the resources you and your family control at your birth — how would you rank the relative importance of each, and what would you consider as you create your ranking?

More on this later this week.