5 ms·

Plenty of people were born into wealth or have enough saved up that they could afford to take a risk. The safety net enabled people in lower socioeconomic clas

Plenty of people were born into wealth or have enough saved up that they could afford to take a risk. The safety net enabled people in lower socioeconomic classes, who didn't have the birthright benefits to survive a tumble, to take the same type of risks that the upper classes could. The erosion of the net effectively killed the bottom of the ladder The extreme downvoting probably reflect the affluent upbringing of a large portion of the HN community.

fzeroracer 8y ago
As someone who was raised in the bottom of the socioeconomic classes it's interesting and a bit frustrating talking to people who don't understand what risk taking meant for us versus people with more money and a safety net. For me, many of the risks I took to get to this point would've involved either bankruptcy or my death if they had failed. When I talked to my coworkers on how they feel people should rise up the ladder, they didn't seem to get that the people that made it simply had a good roll of the dice.
- TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  This is an underreported and unfortunately minimized part of the story of most successes. For example, Bill Gates had a solid financial backing when he left Harvard: http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ > [Bill Gates' Great-Grandfather] Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III. Bezos' parents kicked money into what would become Amazon: > The first initial start-up capital for Amazon.com came primarily from my parents, and they invested a large fraction of their life savings in what became Amazon.com
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    And Musk started with very little - at one point seeing if could get by on a dollar a day if it came to that. Or Kalanick who things went bad enough for that he was forced to move back in with his parents as an adult, and then later to Thailand for a lower cost of living. Or Dell who worked as a dish washer and newspaper boy - eventually using those funds to drop out of college to focus on his booming computer assembly/upgrade 'business' he was running out of his dorm room.
    - TAForObvReasons 8y ago
      Musk absolutely didn't start from "very little": https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/04/10/2014-rocket-man-the-otherworldly-ambitions-of-elon-musk/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/04/10/2014-rocket-man-the-o... > After [Musk's parents] divorced in 1980, Elon mostly lived with his father, who says he owned thoroughbred horses, a yacht, several houses and a Cessna. One of their homes was in Waterkloof, a leafy suburb of Pretoria that was popular with foreign diplomats. > Wanderlust ran on both sides of the family. On holidays, Errol [Musk's Dad] and his kids would travel, he said: to Europe, Hong Kong, throughout the United States. Or they’d take the plane to Lake Tanganyika, where Errol had a stake in an emerald mine. Elon would later get his own pilot’s license, but he no longer has time to fly. > While wealthy South Africans typically hired maids and gardeners, Errol decided that his children would do chores and cook their own food, taking shifts. Michael Dell: http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ca-Ge/Dell-Michael.html http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ca-Ge/Dell-Michael.ht... > In 1984, as a first-year college student in Austin, Texas, Michael Dell borrowed $1,000 from his parents to start a computer accessories business. To put this in perspective, in 2015 less than 30% of Americans have $1000 in their savings: https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/savings-account/62-percent-americans-under-1000-savings-survey-finds/ https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/savings-account/62-pe... Kalanick's parents: https://www.recode.net/2017/5/27/15705290/bonnie-kalanick-mother-uber-ceo-dies-boating-accident https://www.recode.net/2017/5/27/15705290/bonnie-kalanick-mo... > From teaming over complex science projects like building a real electrical transformer to giving him his first experience programming computers, [Kalanick's dad] had been the one to bring home early computers for his tech-curious son to fiddle with.
      - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
        You know I could provide more detail on the Musk thing (look up his relationship with his now estranged father - you're presenting a woefully misleading tale) but really I don't think you care. You're arguing here that Dell getting $1000 from his parents is something? $1000 is literally 2 weeks of overtime working at a McDonalds for the federal minimum wage - $7.25. I don't entirely understand why people do this. It just seems pitiable. Rather than learn from others, people seem more interested in trying to look for reasons why they can't achieve.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  I also started from the bottom and experienced plenty of adversity on the way up, yet I feel that my path is very replicable. We live in a nation where if you do well, even in a shit school, that's a fast track to admittance to a top tier university where you'll invariably have all the financial aid in the world, and then some, available literally [and exploitatively] at the click of a button. And from there success is not really in question so long as you major in something that's commercially viable. And in that regard it's not really an economic issue as much as a social issue. People that come from families with no value for education, or individuals that themselves don't take their education seriously are obviously going to struggle. But those actions are something beyond socioeconomic reasons - as the same is true of somebody born into a rich family - though granted in that case the individual will obviously have more resources to rely on to subsidize his failure. While I'm sure your circumstances may have dictated such, I'm not really understanding what you're talking about with such a high cost of failure. When I failed, and I did, it simply meant it was time to get a job and work myself up to be able to take shot #x. When one 'sticks', you're set and can use that to enable your future shots.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    "When I failed, and I did, it simply meant it was time to get a job and work myself up to be able to take shot #x" Years ago I did some real estate deals together with a few guys from rich families. The first deal went bad leaving me with debt that lasted more than 10 years to pay off. The other guys got more money from family, did a few more deals that went well and are now successful businessmen. When you don't have money you often can't afford to fail in the same way wealthy people can. The consequences are much more severe.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    I think we might have very different experiences and definitions as what counts as the bottom My bottom was having very little money in my name, with parents that were poor and disabled as a result of the hardships of being fishermen. I had barely enough to take care of my family and go to college (with financial aid) as a result of other very personal circumstances. Even then, I had to make a choice. I could either spend some of that money on my failing health and never graduate from college, or focus on my education and hope I can fix it later. I went with the latter. Financial aid can only go so far when you're one medical issue away from disaster. When I finally got a career I had to have multiple rotting and infected teeth extracted because I couldn't afford to get them fixed prior. My family had a history of bad dental issues and I managed to hit it hard. This is what I mean by the bottom. If my dental issues had gotten worse, then I would've been screwed. This is the reality for a lot of people that grow up in poverty. It doesn't necessarily matter if we can get financial aid when there are other circumstances stopping us, affecting our education or worse.
s2g 8y ago
> The extreme downvoting probably reflect the affluent upbringing of a large portion of the HN community. No, it's just hardcore techno-libertarian insanity.

fzeroracer 8y ago

As someone who was raised in the bottom of the socioeconomic classes it's interesting and a bit frustrating talking to people who don't understand what risk taking meant for us versus people with more money and a safety net. For me, many of the risks I took to get to this point would've involved either bankruptcy or my death if they had failed. When I talked to my coworkers on how they feel people should rise up the ladder, they didn't seem to get that the people that made it simply had a good roll of the dice.

TAForObvReasons 8y ago
This is an underreported and unfortunately minimized part of the story of most successes. For example, Bill Gates had a solid financial backing when he left Harvard: http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ > [Bill Gates' Great-Grandfather] Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III. Bezos' parents kicked money into what would become Amazon: > The first initial start-up capital for Amazon.com came primarily from my parents, and they invested a large fraction of their life savings in what became Amazon.com
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  And Musk started with very little - at one point seeing if could get by on a dollar a day if it came to that. Or Kalanick who things went bad enough for that he was forced to move back in with his parents as an adult, and then later to Thailand for a lower cost of living. Or Dell who worked as a dish washer and newspaper boy - eventually using those funds to drop out of college to focus on his booming computer assembly/upgrade 'business' he was running out of his dorm room.
  - TAForObvReasons 8y ago
    Musk absolutely didn't start from "very little": https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/04/10/2014-rocket-man-the-otherworldly-ambitions-of-elon-musk/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/04/10/2014-rocket-man-the-o... > After [Musk's parents] divorced in 1980, Elon mostly lived with his father, who says he owned thoroughbred horses, a yacht, several houses and a Cessna. One of their homes was in Waterkloof, a leafy suburb of Pretoria that was popular with foreign diplomats. > Wanderlust ran on both sides of the family. On holidays, Errol [Musk's Dad] and his kids would travel, he said: to Europe, Hong Kong, throughout the United States. Or they’d take the plane to Lake Tanganyika, where Errol had a stake in an emerald mine. Elon would later get his own pilot’s license, but he no longer has time to fly. > While wealthy South Africans typically hired maids and gardeners, Errol decided that his children would do chores and cook their own food, taking shifts. Michael Dell: http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ca-Ge/Dell-Michael.html http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ca-Ge/Dell-Michael.ht... > In 1984, as a first-year college student in Austin, Texas, Michael Dell borrowed $1,000 from his parents to start a computer accessories business. To put this in perspective, in 2015 less than 30% of Americans have $1000 in their savings: https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/savings-account/62-percent-americans-under-1000-savings-survey-finds/ https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/savings-account/62-pe... Kalanick's parents: https://www.recode.net/2017/5/27/15705290/bonnie-kalanick-mother-uber-ceo-dies-boating-accident https://www.recode.net/2017/5/27/15705290/bonnie-kalanick-mo... > From teaming over complex science projects like building a real electrical transformer to giving him his first experience programming computers, [Kalanick's dad] had been the one to bring home early computers for his tech-curious son to fiddle with.
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      You know I could provide more detail on the Musk thing (look up his relationship with his now estranged father - you're presenting a woefully misleading tale) but really I don't think you care. You're arguing here that Dell getting $1000 from his parents is something? $1000 is literally 2 weeks of overtime working at a McDonalds for the federal minimum wage - $7.25. I don't entirely understand why people do this. It just seems pitiable. Rather than learn from others, people seem more interested in trying to look for reasons why they can't achieve.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
I also started from the bottom and experienced plenty of adversity on the way up, yet I feel that my path is very replicable. We live in a nation where if you do well, even in a shit school, that's a fast track to admittance to a top tier university where you'll invariably have all the financial aid in the world, and then some, available literally [and exploitatively] at the click of a button. And from there success is not really in question so long as you major in something that's commercially viable. And in that regard it's not really an economic issue as much as a social issue. People that come from families with no value for education, or individuals that themselves don't take their education seriously are obviously going to struggle. But those actions are something beyond socioeconomic reasons - as the same is true of somebody born into a rich family - though granted in that case the individual will obviously have more resources to rely on to subsidize his failure. While I'm sure your circumstances may have dictated such, I'm not really understanding what you're talking about with such a high cost of failure. When I failed, and I did, it simply meant it was time to get a job and work myself up to be able to take shot #x. When one 'sticks', you're set and can use that to enable your future shots.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  "When I failed, and I did, it simply meant it was time to get a job and work myself up to be able to take shot #x" Years ago I did some real estate deals together with a few guys from rich families. The first deal went bad leaving me with debt that lasted more than 10 years to pay off. The other guys got more money from family, did a few more deals that went well and are now successful businessmen. When you don't have money you often can't afford to fail in the same way wealthy people can. The consequences are much more severe.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  I think we might have very different experiences and definitions as what counts as the bottom My bottom was having very little money in my name, with parents that were poor and disabled as a result of the hardships of being fishermen. I had barely enough to take care of my family and go to college (with financial aid) as a result of other very personal circumstances. Even then, I had to make a choice. I could either spend some of that money on my failing health and never graduate from college, or focus on my education and hope I can fix it later. I went with the latter. Financial aid can only go so far when you're one medical issue away from disaster. When I finally got a career I had to have multiple rotting and infected teeth extracted because I couldn't afford to get them fixed prior. My family had a history of bad dental issues and I managed to hit it hard. This is what I mean by the bottom. If my dental issues had gotten worse, then I would've been screwed. This is the reality for a lot of people that grow up in poverty. It doesn't necessarily matter if we can get financial aid when there are other circumstances stopping us, affecting our education or worse.

s2g 8y ago

> The extreme downvoting probably reflect the affluent upbringing of a large portion of the HN community. No, it's just hardcore techno-libertarian insanity.