"Actually, when I started reading your post I thought to myself, "seems like this guy just finished his chapter on Perfect Competition"." I will admit to being

"Actually, when I started reading your post I thought to myself, "seems like this guy just finished his chapter on Perfect Competition"." I will admit to being an economics student, but I've known about this principle for years, I didn't just learn about it yesterday. I made this post because five people on a forum I frequent were all talking about how great it was for them that startups required very little capital. "But the main difference is that regular people have the opportunity to actually strike it rich." Regular people have always had the opportunity to strike it rich, and for most of the US's history, it was easier than it is today. The idea that technology startups are some sort of fundamental shift in US social mobility dynamics is a harmful, dangerous lie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Thomas-Stanley/dp/0671015206 http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Thomas-Stanley/d... "High capital requirements tend to mean you need social connections to people with money." You need those connections anyway. Or, at least, you need to be part of the upper third of society. It's not an accident that Bill Gates's father was a name partner in the largest law firm in Seattle. Why do you think Y Combinator has so many applicants? It's because they provide the connections people need, and the applicants know that. "than you see low capital requirement markets are in fact a blessing," Low capital requirements are good for the customer, and I explicitly stated that fact. What I was saying is: they aren't necessarily good for the entrepreneur.