I don’t think this matches how anyone uses the term. Privilege gives you, among other things, a sense that if the police stop you, they’ll probably let you go pretty easily; a sense that you won’t get followed through the store by a racist manager who thinks you’re going to steal something; the security that as you walk down the street hand-in-hand with your sweetie, it’s unlikely anyone’s going to shout bigoted bullshit at you; the ability to attend school without needing to work a full-time job simultaneously. There’s a lot that comes with privilege.
Even if it were true - if all privilege was that some people got $100,000 on birth and others didn’t - that would be a huge advantage. A privileged person under that scheme can magnify their hard work with that money; they can work hard at a more prestigious school; they can easily increase their range in terms of potential work locations; they can more easily and more effectively deal with many health issues that might occur; they can afford to take some time out from work if necessary to study more or move to a better place to work; they can afford a better lawyer if they get into legal trouble; they have a safety net if, one day, everything goes wrong.
Also;
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Hard work likewise guarantees nothing, but also includes advantages not available to the privileged, like knowledge, training and social fitness.
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Those things are all available to the privileged, or, at least, privilege itself is not a reason to be without them. I think what you mean is more that privilege* itself* doesn’t impart those things, but I’m not sure that’s accurate, either.
We may assume from your post concluded with this statement, that paranoia is not one of them. :rolleyes:
Knowledge, trained skills and sociability are learned behaviors, so not based on privilege, whatsoever.
Sociability can be a learned behaviour, but there’s no particular need for it to be. And privilege does impart knowledge and trained skills, even if it’s just, as in my $100,000 dollar example, where to get the money from and how much expensive things cost. I could even just pay someone to tell me those things; I don’t think I’d call that hard work. For me, anyway. 
What?
But not everyone has the privilege of learning them, especially when young. And the advantages of those learned behaviors compound mightily, if you have them early.
“Behind every great fortune, there is a great crime” - Balzac
Or at the very least, IMO, some great injustice, in the cosmic sense of the word. This guy with that idea met the right people, at the right time, with the right human rapport. The others didn’t. This guy’s PR campaign worked, that guy’s didn’t despite harping on the very same strings. It’s all chaos, and luck, and happenstance. That guy managed to convince his banker, this guy didn’t.
Hard work my arse. Everybody works hard. Even the burger flipper. And, yes, some folks play chance on easy mode to be sure.
And, yes, some folks play chance on easy mode to be sure. It’s a lot easier to become a millionaire on a 400k starter capital than with one’s dick in one’s hand. IIRC some 80%+ of the world’s top 500 fortunes were inherited or built on inherited capital (but I can’t provide a source, nor can be arsed to look it up)
If you think this, you don’t really understand what privilege is.
What you know is very much a function of how you are raised. One’s socioeconomic status determines their educational opportunities and their socialization. There’s a reason why the wealthier classes tend to think that poor folks are gauche and ill-mannered. Poor folks are not socialized the same way that rich people are. Just like men aren’t socialized the same way that women are, and different cultures socialize differently. A typical 20-something black woman is going to be disadvantaged when trying to hobnob with a bunch of typical middle-aged white guys. She’s going to have to work a lot harder to connect with them than a typical 20-something white guy. In this context, he will be privileged over her. But put the two in an all-black and/or all-women environment, and she’ll probably have the advantage.
It should go without saying that privilege increases the likelihood that an individual will be able to develop competencies. If Bill Gates had been forced by his parents to care for his little sisters and brothers after school, no one would know who he is right now.
Privilege also makes it so that you don’t have to know quite as much or be as sociable as someone without privilege. A white person who lacks an Ivy League academic pedigree and comes from a humble background has to work harder to get noticed than a white person who comes from money, regardless of his or her academic institution.
My only point (if there is one) is that work is more important in shaping individual outcomes - even within the small subset of the “privileged,” however you wish to define that. If you don’t believe or understand that, you might be a disenfranchised slacker who blames others for your own problems.
Reassuring, but wrong. We do not live in a just universe.
It’s the thing you control, So you ought to focus on that, but it’s hubris to think hard work guarantees success.
No it doesn’t. Of course there are such correlations, but history is replete with many examples of people who have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams coming from and "un"privileged background.
So IOW, a person needs to work harder to be successful in more challenging environments.
Not on this planet. You are conflating cause and effect. Neither work nor privilege excludes the ability to capitalize on opportunities. Large and small opportunities are available to everyone all the time. What is made of them depends entirely on work.
That sounds like a great idea for a sitcom - and just a preposterous. How do you know what Bill Gates is capable of?
Sounds like either a privileged failure or a jealous slacker. Either way, you got it wrong.
Like I said, life is not fair, nor should it be. You are not going to get privilege and opportunity fairly dealt out to everybody. That is a Utopian pipe dream. Only work will bring desirable reality to the unwashed masses. The privileged get it for free. Whether or not they squander it is up to them, the same as earning it the hard way.
IMHO privilege gets you opportunities, as does wealth, but you still have to do the work. Wealth also grants you the ability to recover from failure.
So, we have two individuals.
Bob is the son of a founder of a major corporation. He’s socialized to hobnob with the wealthy. He does a fair amount of coke, never really takes his schooling seriously, has a giant trust fund.
Frank is the son of a minimum wage worker of the same major corporation. He’s socialized to survive in a neighborhood run by one of the guys that deals to Bob. He takes his schooling seriously, but also must work a job after school in order to help his family pay bills. He does some coke, but not nearly as much as Bob.
By what measure do you think that Frank’s relatively harder work is going to lead to a more comfortable life?
I’ll agree that being privileged is better. Can’t imagine where I’d be now, were that the case for me.
Now try to tell me I’m not happy and successful.
It depends on how long Bob lasts and whether or not Frank has a well-diversified connection network.
Easy. Bob is going to end up either dead or in long-term rehab because of his coke addiction. That is the greatest equalizer of all. It doesn’t matter how much money you have when you are dead because of drugs. Just ask Michael Jackson, Prince, John Belushi or countless others. Frank should probably hold off on the coke too but maybe his lack of cash is actually helping him in that regard.