"This is a special collection of problems that were given to select applicants during oral entrance exams to the math department of Moscow State University. These problems were designed to prevent Jews and other undesirables from getting a passing grade. Among problems that were used by the department to blackball unwanted candidate students, these problems are distinguished by having a simple solution that is difficult to find. Using problems with a simple solution protected the administration from extra complaints and appeals. This collection therefore has mathematical as well as historical value."

(Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3096793 and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4759642)

If someone fails, does that necessarily mean they didn't deserve success? Or is it possible that external forces took from them something they had, "with moral certainty", earned?

The article points out that white males are overrepresented in SV success stories. Are you going to argue that they are dozens of times more productive than women, or non-white people?

Let me make the point in a way that does not pit groups of people against each other. If you do the same thing over and over, hustling and making pitches, and then one day you get someone to fund you, does that make you inherently better on that day? Do you have more "virtue" on that day than you did the day before?

Let's say someone founds a company and it fails. This person feels like they didn't deserve to fail, so they start another company and it succeeds. This person will take the success as s true measure of what they deserve, and will ignore the failure as a fluke. But they will look at failed companies around them and feel superior, even though they also failed once.

There are lots of people founding similar companies, making similar pitches to the same investors. I can't see an argument that they "deserve" wildly different valuations.

Holding wealth creation as a virtue devolves very quickly into worshiping money. Anyone with money is to be respected, and anyone who doesn't have money has nothing interesting to say.

It's fine if your premise is that people who have money deserve it a priori. But let's be honest. A great many haven't worked orders of magnitude harder despite orders of magnitude greater wealth. A great many are not themselves (but for their wealth) orders of magnitude inherently more valuable to society than everyone who has less.

In addition to shifting the blame, this is a convenient way to avoid taking any sort of responsibility for our own behavior or our peers, so congratulations on squaring that circle.