You seems to be mixing a lot of perspective to arrive at your conclusion. Let's try to unpack them one by one : > This is patently untrue. My parents emigrated

You seems to be mixing a lot of perspective to arrive at your conclusion. Let's try to unpack them one by one : > This is patently untrue. My parents emigrated to the States in 1997 (from the post-Communist Romania) with two briefcases, two kids, and $2,000 -- hardly privileged. Compared to whom ? the average american in 1997 or the average Romanian in 1997 ? I am pretty sure compared to the average romanian your parent wouldnt call them selves under-privileged. As an immigrant myself, i am not sure what definition of risk you are using to call immigrating from Romania to the US a risk. If anything, the ability to emigrate to a richer nation is an opportunity that literally millions of people are still, 20 years latter, dreaming of. So much so that the US as a green card "lottery"... > my college-educated parents had to work menial jobs like washing Target toilets, cleaning houses, and flooring and construction. Again, unless you are omitting some stuff , i am not seeing any risk taking behavior here. I feel i need to say this, as someone who also had the luck (and yes luck, because parental investments is sadly a very under appreciated form of privilege) to be on the receiving hand of extreme parental investments, you parent were hard-working and dedicated, but from your own description, and my experience with other immigrants not risk taking. > I recently quit my cozy six-figure job in ad-tech to try and bring some of my ideas to fruition. And this is where i think you are proving the authors point. You waited to be financially secure before taking those risk. Had you been richer while young, you would have probably done so earlier; And more importantly had you not have a "couchy"job (and i am guessing some savings ?) would you have made the same decision ? > Everyone can take risks. Yes, but that's not the point of the article. The author is simply pointing that the costs of risky behavior is are not the same for everybody. under-privilege people have much worst outcome when they fail. And thus, the difference in risk taking/risk aversion behavior that we are observing might be a reflection of people rationally evaluating business venture within their own situation and coming up with different outcome. > Investing $10,000 and 6 months of your life in a startup is not ruin-inducing. It's because you are in a situation where this sentence is true, that you tried. But this is not true for everybody (like let say a single parent with an enfant child) > The purpose of life is not wallowing in self-pity, but rising above the adversity. Telling people about the cost of risky behavior is not self-pity it's pragmatism And as a closing though, you seem to think that you are reaping the reward of you parent taking risk, my read of the situation is that you reaping the reward of hard consistent work. And to some extent i find this to be a much more pragmatic way of living one's life.