10 ms·

This is such nonsense. First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirt poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receiv

by darawk 8y ago

This is such nonsense. First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirt poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receive lots of help from their parents and amount to precisely nothing. IMO it's fair to refer to your success as "self made" if you exceed the median success level of your class peer group by a substantial margin. If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you get yourself a law degree and an upper middle class income - that's self made success. If you're born in the US and your entire family is lawyers, maybe that same accomplishment is not "self made success". But if you say, start Microsoft and become a billionaire i'd say that it's fair to call that self-made success. I feel like this trope that self-made success is a myth comes almost entirely from people like the author of this article. People who were born with lots of advantages, who still couldn't hack it. They want to justify their own failure to live up to their family's expectations by tearing other people down. Whether or not self-made success is a thing, self-made failure certainly is, and i'd say the author of this article more than qualifies for it.

radmuzom 8y ago
Down-voted for such a strong word - "nonsense". See my other comment [1]. I am as self-made as anyone can be, with a very high standard of living in my country without taking even one cent from my parents beyond a certain age. But all that is because of one stroke of luck - I am proud of the fact that I was able to use that luck to my advantage but under no illusion that all my success is due to me alone. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19200621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19200621
- darawk 8y ago
  The fact that you did not do whatever it is that you did without any modicum of help or luck does not mean you are not self-made. You can take credit for your accomplishments. It's ok. We don't have to live in a binary, all or nothing world. You can acknowledge that you got lucky, while simultaneously acknowledging that you were smart and hard working to achieve whatever it is that you have. Maybe in your case it was entirely due to luck, but I seriously doubt it.
- ip26 8y ago
  Even the superheros in the movies are permitted a little luck occasionally. "Only people who had the worst possible luck at every turn may be considered self-made" or similar is a ridiculous goalpost-moving standard. Next we'd be sitting around a table competing over who faced the most hardship to be considered legitimate. I was able to use that luck to my advantage That's what counts.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  >But all that is because of one stroke of luck - I am proud of the fact that I was able to use that luck to my advantage but under no illusion that all my success is due to me alone. I would call you fortunate, not lucky. You didn't fall sideways into your success; you were given an opportunity and _you_ made the most of it. Many others may not have done the same. We all owe a part of our success to _some_ number of external factors, but go deep enough and it gets absurd (e.g. we all owe our success to irrigation because, without it, we'd be subsistence farmers.) Seeing an opportunity and pouncing on it is not the same as being handed a trust fund and a full ride to Harvard.
koolba 8y ago
> But if you say, start Microsoft and become a billionaire i'd say that it's fair to call that self-made success. Bill Gate’s family clearly contributed to his and Microsoft’s success. His mother in particular had direct contact with the chairman of IBM which lead to a scrappy software company landing a life changing contract. I’m not saying that to discount the rest of his achievements or effort either. The greatest among us not only have the drive, the intuition, and put in the work, but they also seize upon opportunities when they come knocking. If it were not his mother and instead a friend’s mother or father that had similar contacts, I have no doubt that Bill Gates would have been just as successful. He would have found that nut and cracked it one way or another. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates
- beaner 8y ago
  Not everyone, if put in Bill Gates' shoes, would have been able to take advantage of such an opportunity. Can you say that if you were there, you'd have done the same? And executed as well afterward, into a multi-billion dollar company?
  - tux1968 8y ago
    That's the wrong question. Would Bill Gates have been able to do what he did if he grew up poor, with poor nutrition and poor education? We all owe our success to good fortune and the prosperous society we find ourselves lucky enough to be a part of.
    - darawk 8y ago
      Maybe, maybe not. But what's definitely true is he's exception with respect to his own peer group. Tons of kids had the advantages he had. Only one of them started Microsoft.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - 8y ago
mountainofdeath 8y ago
I mean, nobody is saying that it doesn't exist. What people are saying is that the majority of it is an illusion. It's easy to take risks when you have multiple levels to fallback to. I've worked with both backgrounds of people in the same group and there couldn't be a starker difference in attitudes.
- darawk 8y ago
  Sure, but lots of people are born rich and don't go anywhere. Yes, it's helpful to have something to fall back on, and yes, successful people from well off backgrounds should acknowledge that fact. But it doesn't mean that their accomplishments aren't their own.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    We have a metric for this. It's called socioeconomic mobility. In general your claim that people are born rich but don't go anywhere is only somewhat true. People that are born rich and wealthy in the US generally do not fall to a lower socioeconomic class, and people in the lower classes tend to not rise. Assuming that skill levels are equal among both groups, can you explain why this is the case? If skill was so important, then we should see overall upward mobility be relatively similar.
    - smallgovt 8y ago
      > People that are born rich and wealthy in the US generally do not fall to a lower socioeconomic class This is inaccurate. Only 40% of people in the top quintile of wealth stay there as adults; 60% fall into a lower bracket. > People in the lower classes tend to not rise This is also inaccurate. 57% of people born into the bottom quintile escape this quintile as adults. The reality of the situation in the US is that from an absolute mobility standpoint, it's easier for the poorest quintile of americans to escape their economic class, but the income disparity between classes continues to grow so quickly that relative mobility is severely lower for the poor. For more info, see: https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/reports/economic_mobility/pursuingamericandreampdf.pdf https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpe...
donaldknuth123 8y ago
Of course there are people that are actually self made but they are outliers. That's the point of the article. At least in the US the vast majority of people in the highest income brackets were born to families already in those brackets.
foldr 8y ago
>IMO it's fair to refer to your success as "self made" if you exceed the median success level of your class peer group by a substantial margin. Even if success were 100% down to luck, there'd still be people who exceeded the median success level of their class peer group by a substantial margin. It's begging the question to simply assert that a majority of these people can fairly claim to be "self made".
- darawk 8y ago
  Ok, then, calculate the t-statistic of your income level with respect to your starting cohort then, if you want to be rigorous about it. I think my point stands.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - foldr 8y ago
    That does nothing to show that it's not down to luck. By your logic, anyone who wins the lottery can claim to be "self made" (since so few other ticket holders had anywhere near the same degree of success).
    - darawk 8y ago
      It is a necessary but not sufficient condition. In determining whether someone is self-made, you'd want to examine conditions like that. That being said, it is absolutely not the case that it "does nothing" to show it's not down to luck. Filtering by that criteria substantially increases the probability of someone being 'self-made'.
      - foldr 8y ago
        >Filtering by that criteria substantially increases the probability of someone being 'self-made'. Of course it does, because non-successful people by definition can't be "self-made"! (In order to be a self-made millionaire, you have to at least be a millionaire.) What it doesn't do is tell us anything about how much of any given person's success is down to luck. If you are just going to insist that a majority of successful people (as compared to their peers) are self-made, then you continue to beg the question at issue.
fzeroracer 8y ago
Do you have an argument against the authors points that does not consist of adhominem and projection? The self-made illusion is precisely that because we ignore the many things that gave us a headstart in life and allowed us to do the things that would've caused other people to fail. The only reason why I'm here now is because I took on a risk of going bankrupt moving across the country for a job opportunity in an industry that suddenly became very volatile. Had I been laid off or had the winds shifted and resulted in my first job being downsized, I would've been financially destroyed and dropped right back into poverty. We ignore the sheer amount of luck and circumstance in our career and lives in favor of telling a story where we're the hero.
- darawk 8y ago
  > Do you have an argument against the authors points that does not consist of adhominem and projection? Did you read the first part of my comment? Literally the first two paragraphs are exactly what you're asking for. > The self-made illusion is precisely that because we ignore the many things that gave us a headstart in life and allowed us to do the things that would've caused other people to fail. The only reason why I'm here now is because I took on a risk of going bankrupt moving across the country for a job opportunity in an industry that suddenly became very volatile. Had I been laid off or had the winds shifted and resulted in my first job being downsized, I would've been financially destroyed and dropped right back into poverty. We ignore the sheer amount of luck and circumstance in our career and lives in favor of telling a story where we're the hero. The fact that luck is involved does not make being 'self-made' an illusion. You're probably an intelligent person, if this opportunity would have blown up for you, you'd have done something else.
  - astrodust 8y ago
    Yeah, like fall back into poverty. People that are wildly successful often hit some very narrow window. You can be persistent and try and try again which increases your odds, but it's still a crap-shoot.
    - weberc2 8y ago
fireflash38 8y ago
I feel like your response here is only against the title, not the content of the article, since your complaints are explicitly addressed in the article.
- darawk 8y ago
  They're mentioned. They're not addressed.
throwaway-1283 8y ago
Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, and Spiegel all came from wealthy families...
honkycat 8y ago
> First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirty poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receive lots of help from their parents and amount to precisely nothing. There are way more people who are born wealthy and continue being wealthy. There are way more people who go from poor to poor. Social mobility is piss poor right now in the US. If "having a nice family and a wonderful house and a great life" is amounting to nothing, I will take it. > If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you get yourself a law degree and an upper middle class income - that's self made success. If you're born in the US and your entire family is lawyers, maybe that same accomplishment is not "self made success". But if you say, start Microsoft and become a billionaire i'd say that it's fair to call that self-made success. First of all, Bill Gates had a TON of opportunity and privilege funneled to him from his parents. Second of all, we are not talking about Bill Gates or Elon Musk. We are talking about the legions of Bradleys going from Georgetown Prep to ivy league schools to finance to the executive class. You cannot POSSIBLY believe that there is no wealth disparity in the US? That there is not a disparity in opportunity between the wealthy and the middle class/poor? > I feel like this trope that self-made success is a myth comes almost entirely from people like the author of this article. People who were born with lots of advantages, who still couldn't hack it. They want to justify their own failure to live up to their family's expectations by tearing other people down. Whether or not self-made success is a thing, self-made failure certainly is, and i'd say the author of this article more than qualifies for it. This is just completely unfounded. You think this entire discussion is propped up by other failed millionaires? I can't speak to this person's reason for writing the article, but the reason the "self-made success is a myth" is a trope is that people SEE the research, SEE the disparity around them, and smell the bullshit.
- simonsarris 8y ago
  [some person] had a TON of opportunity and privilege funneled to him from his parents. What percentage of those persons became billionaires? Is it less than 0.1%? (What percentage of them die broke? I bet greater than 1%)
  - jameane 8y ago
    No one is saying Bill Gates didn't earn his success. But we can't deny that having access to certain levels of privlege makes success much more probably than for those without those advantages. With Bill Gates' upbringing, it is quite unlikely he would have struggled with housing insecurity.
ataturk 8y ago
Which billionaires came from "dirty poverty?" List them, please. Extra credit: I'm a lowly millionaire, how do I get a seat on a Board of Directors? I have a PhD, 20+ years in the technology field. Am more than qualified for any kind of corporate governance role, etc.
- tzs 8y ago
  Rex Sinquefield comes to mind. Also Howard Schultz. Oprah Winfrey. Leonardo Del Vecchio. Maybe Kenneth Langone, Sheldon Adelson, and John Paul DeJoria.
mindcrime 8y ago
Exactly. When you buy into the "everything is luck, blah, blah" mentality then you have a built-in excuse to let yourself off the hook. You can be as lazy as you want, and when you fail, you can explain it away as "well, I wasn't lucky enough, aww shucks." Whereas if you believe that you can build yourself up through effort and exertion, and believe that those things are the primary factors in your success, you have no excuses if you fail. You might still fail, but at least it won't be for lack of even bothering to give a sincere effort. And I don't know about you guys, but I'm OK with failing if I fail for reasons that are totally outside of my control. What I'm not OK with, is failing because I didn't make a sincere effort within the scope of the things that I can control.
refurb 8y ago
Exactly. The logic of this argument seems to be: luck is involved in being successful, therefore personal effort plays no role at all. It makes no sense. I like your measure relative to what you were born into. Didn’t get enough to eat when you were a child and are now a millionaire. Self-made! Born into a millionaire family and turned that into a billion? Self-made! I’m personally thankful the tall poppy syndrome isn’t that common in the US. I’d hate an environment where success is looked down up. No, being rich isn’t everything, but if that’s what you want, I’m happy you found it.
- EliRivers 8y ago
  If I was born poor, and then someone gives me a bunch of money, by this argument I am self-made.
  - lwhalen 8y ago
    Yeah, that's what we call "a job". Make yourself useful to a rich enough person or group of people, they'll "give you a bunch of money" and call it a "salary".
    - EliRivers 8y ago
      Yeah, that's what we call "passive aggressive childishness". Or perhaps I need to really spell it out to you. Under this definition, if I am born poor and someone gives me, free and for gratis, with no obligation or return on my part, a big pile of money, I am self-made. Like that nice man who let George Clooney sleep on his couch for a while, and Clooney came back twenty years later and gave him a million dollars. Self-made. Or those people who win the lottery. Self-made. Or those people who inherit a fortune from a relative who didn't give them spit while they were alive. Self-made. Or a lady born in 1950 in South Korea, in a village without electricity, whose grandson now maintains her in an eye-wateringly expensive flat in Seoul because he rode the rise of South Korea to riches. She's self-made too.
  - refurb 8y ago
    If someone gave you $1M and a decade later you had $1.5M, no you're not self made. If someone gave you $1M and a decade later you had $100M, yes, you are self made.
rchaud 8y ago
> If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you get yourself a law degree and an upper middle class income - that's self made success. A student from Senegal who attended my alma mater now works in Wall Street. In an alumni issue, he described what it was like to go from his tiny village to the capital city in Senegal for an interview for a scholarship at a prestigious international school (where his grades got him another scholarship for college). He described hitching multiple rides just to get to the city, and needed to borrow heavily to pay for the flights once he was admitted. He named many families and community leaders from his village that he says were instrumental in helping him on that first major step. Where he is today wouldn't have happened without the trust and support of fellow community members. They made sacrifices so he could achieve a dream and eventually repay them. "Self-made" means different things to different people.
- darawk 8y ago
  Are you trying to say that this Senegalese fellow would be remiss to describe his own success as "self made"? Sure, people helped him, but he worked extremely hard, and overcome tremendous odds to get where he was. I think he deserves credit for that. Don't you?
ska 8y ago
Relying on "self made person" as a model for success and economic mobility is very much like relying on "win a lottery" as a model for retirement planning. The fact you can find a few people for whom it worked is not a reflection on its viability in general.
CodeMage 8y ago
> I feel like this trope that self-made success is a myth comes almost entirely from people like the author of this article. People who were born with lots of advantages, who still couldn't hack it. They want to justify their own failure to live up to their family's expectations by tearing other people down. And there we go. That kind of attitude is why this trope was created initially. The problem people have with "self-made success" trope is that the self-made success story of someone with severe disadvantages is being equated, on an astoundingly regular basis, with the success of people with substantial advantages. That's how Bill Gates and Arnold Schwarzenegger are both dubbed "self-made" successes, despite their rather different histories. Even worse, it is being used to justify, defend and perpetuate inequality, by convincing everyone that the American Dream is that "anyone can make it". After all, if such-and-such person coming from dirt poor origins could become wildly successful, anyone can. Therefore, we must strive at all costs to avoid removing "incentives" that motivate people to reach for that elusive success. Naturally, this will generate resistance, and rightfully so. Despite the endless propaganda that permeates the fabric of our society, the self-made success story of Bill Gates is not the same thing as that of John Paul DeJoria. So yeah, I agree with you in one aspect: the self-made success is not a myth. It's something much worse -- it's propaganda. It brings to mind that quote by Anatole France: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
- darawk 8y ago
  > The problem people have with "self-made success" trope is that the self-made success story of someone with severe disadvantages is being equated, on an astoundingly regular basis, with the success of people with substantial advantages. That's how Bill Gates and Arnold Schwarzenegger are both dubbed "self-made" successes, despite their rather different histories. They are both self-made success stories. Schwarzenegger even moreso than Gates. > Even worse, it is being used to justify, defend and perpetuate inequality, by convincing everyone that the American Dream is that "anyone can make it". After all, if such-and-such person coming from dirt poor origins could become wildly successful, anyone can. Therefore, we must strive at all costs to avoid removing "incentives" that motivate people to reach for that elusive success. Anyone can make it. Not everyone can be Bill Gates or Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it is abundantly clear that anyone willing to put in the time and effort can make it into a well compensated profession. Software engineering, medicine, law, these are all things that an average person willing to dedicate themselves can learn and excel at. If you come from nothing, i'd say getting into any of those professions more than qualifies for "making it".
heedlessly3 8y ago
Oprah Winfrey is the best example of self-made success. Black woman born to an unwed single teenage mother, grew up in the projects to a billionaire.
danans 8y ago
> IMO it's fair to refer to your success as "self made" if you exceed the median success level of your class peer group by a substantial margin. "self made" isn't a statistical or legal term. It's a term of culture and art, and it is always employed by people through a subjective lens, whether to themselves or others. Trying to impose a statistical definition on it ignores the history of its use up to the present, whether that use was justified or not. > i'd say the author of this article more than qualifies for it The fact that you are willing to apply a statistical measure for "self-made success", yet despite how little you know about the article's author, you are willing to apply a term like "self-made-failure" to them based on your personal feelings of antipathy toward a particular class of people, indicates that you might not be arguing in good faith.
anthony_romeo 8y ago
Perhaps the real message ought to be that we all live as part of a broader continuum wherein we are all recipients of the privileges and hardships of the past, and as a consequence of that reality we ought to have better empathy for all of our brothers, sisters, and otherwise. IMO arguing whether people are 'truly' self-made is a discussion of semantics. Calling people self-made or not doesn't change the actual timeline of actions and events of an individual’s life.
gamblor956 8y ago
If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you get yourself a law degree and an upper middle class income - that's self made success. Ah. The law professors did absolutely nothing, I suppose? Or the law firm that hired an immigrant that may not have had an understanding of US professional norms? Or the US, which let the immigrant into the country to pursue their dreams of success while relying on taxpayer-funded social services? This trope of the "self made success" conveniently ignores that people are reliant in many ways on the efforts of others for their success. All those peple who rose from dirt poverty to become successful? Read their stories. At some point, they all relied on someone taking a chance on them--and without that chance, they'd be no different from the thousands of others of dirt poor people who never made it.
Tomminn 8y ago
Your first two paragraphs make a very important point. Outliers from every cohort exist, and often it is due to a kind of inner drive, and we should not ignore that truth. Your final paragraph is cruel. From every cohort the vast majority of people in that cohort will end up with around the mean outcome for that cohort. This is a statistical fact. Only a few can be outliers, and expecting everyone to be one is mathematically guaranteed to cause suffering in the world.
RankingMember 8y ago
Just because there are dirt poor people who are successful and well-off people who aren't doesn't mean they're equally likely. To your broader point, no one person exists in a vacuum- one person's "self-made" is another person's "took advantage of the right tax incentives and business climate and, most importantly, had the luck of timing that they were successful instead of plunging themselves deep into debt". My experience with people who talk warmly of "self-made" people is that they tend to leave out the role of luck.

by darawk 8y ago

radmuzom 8y ago

Down-voted for such a strong word - "nonsense". See my other comment [1]. I am as self-made as anyone can be, with a very high standard of living in my country without taking even one cent from my parents beyond a certain age. But all that is because of one stroke of luck - I am proud of the fact that I was able to use that luck to my advantage but under no illusion that all my success is due to me alone. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19200621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19200621

darawk 8y ago
The fact that you did not do whatever it is that you did without any modicum of help or luck does not mean you are not self-made. You can take credit for your accomplishments. It's ok. We don't have to live in a binary, all or nothing world. You can acknowledge that you got lucky, while simultaneously acknowledging that you were smart and hard working to achieve whatever it is that you have. Maybe in your case it was entirely due to luck, but I seriously doubt it.
ip26 8y ago
Even the superheros in the movies are permitted a little luck occasionally. "Only people who had the worst possible luck at every turn may be considered self-made" or similar is a ridiculous goalpost-moving standard. Next we'd be sitting around a table competing over who faced the most hardship to be considered legitimate. I was able to use that luck to my advantage That's what counts.
EpicEng 8y ago
>But all that is because of one stroke of luck - I am proud of the fact that I was able to use that luck to my advantage but under no illusion that all my success is due to me alone. I would call you fortunate, not lucky. You didn't fall sideways into your success; you were given an opportunity and _you_ made the most of it. Many others may not have done the same. We all owe a part of our success to _some_ number of external factors, but go deep enough and it gets absurd (e.g. we all owe our success to irrigation because, without it, we'd be subsistence farmers.) Seeing an opportunity and pouncing on it is not the same as being handed a trust fund and a full ride to Harvard.

koolba 8y ago

> But if you say, start Microsoft and become a billionaire i'd say that it's fair to call that self-made success. Bill Gate’s family clearly contributed to his and Microsoft’s success. His mother in particular had direct contact with the chairman of IBM which lead to a scrappy software company landing a life changing contract. I’m not saying that to discount the rest of his achievements or effort either. The greatest among us not only have the drive, the intuition, and put in the work, but they also seize upon opportunities when they come knocking. If it were not his mother and instead a friend’s mother or father that had similar contacts, I have no doubt that Bill Gates would have been just as successful. He would have found that nut and cracked it one way or another. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates

beaner 8y ago
Not everyone, if put in Bill Gates' shoes, would have been able to take advantage of such an opportunity. Can you say that if you were there, you'd have done the same? And executed as well afterward, into a multi-billion dollar company?
- tux1968 8y ago
  That's the wrong question. Would Bill Gates have been able to do what he did if he grew up poor, with poor nutrition and poor education? We all owe our success to good fortune and the prosperous society we find ourselves lucky enough to be a part of.
  - darawk 8y ago
    Maybe, maybe not. But what's definitely true is he's exception with respect to his own peer group. Tons of kids had the advantages he had. Only one of them started Microsoft.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - 8y ago

mountainofdeath 8y ago

I mean, nobody is saying that it doesn't exist. What people are saying is that the majority of it is an illusion. It's easy to take risks when you have multiple levels to fallback to. I've worked with both backgrounds of people in the same group and there couldn't be a starker difference in attitudes.

darawk 8y ago
Sure, but lots of people are born rich and don't go anywhere. Yes, it's helpful to have something to fall back on, and yes, successful people from well off backgrounds should acknowledge that fact. But it doesn't mean that their accomplishments aren't their own.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  We have a metric for this. It's called socioeconomic mobility. In general your claim that people are born rich but don't go anywhere is only somewhat true. People that are born rich and wealthy in the US generally do not fall to a lower socioeconomic class, and people in the lower classes tend to not rise. Assuming that skill levels are equal among both groups, can you explain why this is the case? If skill was so important, then we should see overall upward mobility be relatively similar.
  - smallgovt 8y ago
    > People that are born rich and wealthy in the US generally do not fall to a lower socioeconomic class This is inaccurate. Only 40% of people in the top quintile of wealth stay there as adults; 60% fall into a lower bracket. > People in the lower classes tend to not rise This is also inaccurate. 57% of people born into the bottom quintile escape this quintile as adults. The reality of the situation in the US is that from an absolute mobility standpoint, it's easier for the poorest quintile of americans to escape their economic class, but the income disparity between classes continues to grow so quickly that relative mobility is severely lower for the poor. For more info, see: https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/reports/economic_mobility/pursuingamericandreampdf.pdf https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpe...

donaldknuth123 8y ago

Of course there are people that are actually self made but they are outliers. That's the point of the article. At least in the US the vast majority of people in the highest income brackets were born to families already in those brackets.

foldr 8y ago

>IMO it's fair to refer to your success as "self made" if you exceed the median success level of your class peer group by a substantial margin. Even if success were 100% down to luck, there'd still be people who exceeded the median success level of their class peer group by a substantial margin. It's begging the question to simply assert that a majority of these people can fairly claim to be "self made".

darawk 8y ago
Ok, then, calculate the t-statistic of your income level with respect to your starting cohort then, if you want to be rigorous about it. I think my point stands.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- foldr 8y ago
  That does nothing to show that it's not down to luck. By your logic, anyone who wins the lottery can claim to be "self made" (since so few other ticket holders had anywhere near the same degree of success).
  - darawk 8y ago
    It is a necessary but not sufficient condition. In determining whether someone is self-made, you'd want to examine conditions like that. That being said, it is absolutely not the case that it "does nothing" to show it's not down to luck. Filtering by that criteria substantially increases the probability of someone being 'self-made'.
    - foldr 8y ago
      >Filtering by that criteria substantially increases the probability of someone being 'self-made'. Of course it does, because non-successful people by definition can't be "self-made"! (In order to be a self-made millionaire, you have to at least be a millionaire.) What it doesn't do is tell us anything about how much of any given person's success is down to luck. If you are just going to insist that a majority of successful people (as compared to their peers) are self-made, then you continue to beg the question at issue.

fzeroracer 8y ago

Do you have an argument against the authors points that does not consist of adhominem and projection? The self-made illusion is precisely that because we ignore the many things that gave us a headstart in life and allowed us to do the things that would've caused other people to fail. The only reason why I'm here now is because I took on a risk of going bankrupt moving across the country for a job opportunity in an industry that suddenly became very volatile. Had I been laid off or had the winds shifted and resulted in my first job being downsized, I would've been financially destroyed and dropped right back into poverty. We ignore the sheer amount of luck and circumstance in our career and lives in favor of telling a story where we're the hero.

darawk 8y ago
> Do you have an argument against the authors points that does not consist of adhominem and projection? Did you read the first part of my comment? Literally the first two paragraphs are exactly what you're asking for. > The self-made illusion is precisely that because we ignore the many things that gave us a headstart in life and allowed us to do the things that would've caused other people to fail. The only reason why I'm here now is because I took on a risk of going bankrupt moving across the country for a job opportunity in an industry that suddenly became very volatile. Had I been laid off or had the winds shifted and resulted in my first job being downsized, I would've been financially destroyed and dropped right back into poverty. We ignore the sheer amount of luck and circumstance in our career and lives in favor of telling a story where we're the hero. The fact that luck is involved does not make being 'self-made' an illusion. You're probably an intelligent person, if this opportunity would have blown up for you, you'd have done something else.
- astrodust 8y ago
  Yeah, like fall back into poverty. People that are wildly successful often hit some very narrow window. You can be persistent and try and try again which increases your odds, but it's still a crap-shoot.
  - weberc2 8y ago

fireflash38 8y ago

I feel like your response here is only against the title, not the content of the article, since your complaints are explicitly addressed in the article.

darawk 8y ago
They're mentioned. They're not addressed.

throwaway-1283 8y ago

Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, and Spiegel all came from wealthy families...

honkycat 8y ago

> First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirty poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receive lots of help from their parents and amount to precisely nothing. There are way more people who are born wealthy and continue being wealthy. There are way more people who go from poor to poor. Social mobility is piss poor right now in the US. If "having a nice family and a wonderful house and a great life" is amounting to nothing, I will take it. > If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you get yourself a law degree and an upper middle class income - that's self made success. If you're born in the US and your entire family is lawyers, maybe that same accomplishment is not "self made success". But if you say, start Microsoft and become a billionaire i'd say that it's fair to call that self-made success. First of all, Bill Gates had a TON of opportunity and privilege funneled to him from his parents. Second of all, we are not talking about Bill Gates or Elon Musk. We are talking about the legions of Bradleys going from Georgetown Prep to ivy league schools to finance to the executive class. You cannot POSSIBLY believe that there is no wealth disparity in the US? That there is not a disparity in opportunity between the wealthy and the middle class/poor? > I feel like this trope that self-made success is a myth comes almost entirely from people like the author of this article. People who were born with lots of advantages, who still couldn't hack it. They want to justify their own failure to live up to their family's expectations by tearing other people down. Whether or not self-made success is a thing, self-made failure certainly is, and i'd say the author of this article more than qualifies for it. This is just completely unfounded. You think this entire discussion is propped up by other failed millionaires? I can't speak to this person's reason for writing the article, but the reason the "self-made success is a myth" is a trope is that people SEE the research, SEE the disparity around them, and smell the bullshit.

simonsarris 8y ago
[some person] had a TON of opportunity and privilege funneled to him from his parents. What percentage of those persons became billionaires? Is it less than 0.1%? (What percentage of them die broke? I bet greater than 1%)
- jameane 8y ago
  No one is saying Bill Gates didn't earn his success. But we can't deny that having access to certain levels of privlege makes success much more probably than for those without those advantages. With Bill Gates' upbringing, it is quite unlikely he would have struggled with housing insecurity.

ataturk 8y ago

Which billionaires came from "dirty poverty?" List them, please. Extra credit: I'm a lowly millionaire, how do I get a seat on a Board of Directors? I have a PhD, 20+ years in the technology field. Am more than qualified for any kind of corporate governance role, etc.

tzs 8y ago
Rex Sinquefield comes to mind. Also Howard Schultz. Oprah Winfrey. Leonardo Del Vecchio. Maybe Kenneth Langone, Sheldon Adelson, and John Paul DeJoria.

mindcrime 8y ago

Exactly. When you buy into the "everything is luck, blah, blah" mentality then you have a built-in excuse to let yourself off the hook. You can be as lazy as you want, and when you fail, you can explain it away as "well, I wasn't lucky enough, aww shucks." Whereas if you believe that you can build yourself up through effort and exertion, and believe that those things are the primary factors in your success, you have no excuses if you fail. You might still fail, but at least it won't be for lack of even bothering to give a sincere effort. And I don't know about you guys, but I'm OK with failing if I fail for reasons that are totally outside of my control. What I'm not OK with, is failing because I didn't make a sincere effort within the scope of the things that I can control.

refurb 8y ago

Exactly. The logic of this argument seems to be: luck is involved in being successful, therefore personal effort plays no role at all. It makes no sense. I like your measure relative to what you were born into. Didn’t get enough to eat when you were a child and are now a millionaire. Self-made! Born into a millionaire family and turned that into a billion? Self-made! I’m personally thankful the tall poppy syndrome isn’t that common in the US. I’d hate an environment where success is looked down up. No, being rich isn’t everything, but if that’s what you want, I’m happy you found it.

EliRivers 8y ago
If I was born poor, and then someone gives me a bunch of money, by this argument I am self-made.
- lwhalen 8y ago
  Yeah, that's what we call "a job". Make yourself useful to a rich enough person or group of people, they'll "give you a bunch of money" and call it a "salary".
  - EliRivers 8y ago
    Yeah, that's what we call "passive aggressive childishness". Or perhaps I need to really spell it out to you. Under this definition, if I am born poor and someone gives me, free and for gratis, with no obligation or return on my part, a big pile of money, I am self-made. Like that nice man who let George Clooney sleep on his couch for a while, and Clooney came back twenty years later and gave him a million dollars. Self-made. Or those people who win the lottery. Self-made. Or those people who inherit a fortune from a relative who didn't give them spit while they were alive. Self-made. Or a lady born in 1950 in South Korea, in a village without electricity, whose grandson now maintains her in an eye-wateringly expensive flat in Seoul because he rode the rise of South Korea to riches. She's self-made too.
- refurb 8y ago
  If someone gave you $1M and a decade later you had $1.5M, no you're not self made. If someone gave you $1M and a decade later you had $100M, yes, you are self made.

rchaud 8y ago

> If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you get yourself a law degree and an upper middle class income - that's self made success. A student from Senegal who attended my alma mater now works in Wall Street. In an alumni issue, he described what it was like to go from his tiny village to the capital city in Senegal for an interview for a scholarship at a prestigious international school (where his grades got him another scholarship for college). He described hitching multiple rides just to get to the city, and needed to borrow heavily to pay for the flights once he was admitted. He named many families and community leaders from his village that he says were instrumental in helping him on that first major step. Where he is today wouldn't have happened without the trust and support of fellow community members. They made sacrifices so he could achieve a dream and eventually repay them. "Self-made" means different things to different people.

darawk 8y ago
Are you trying to say that this Senegalese fellow would be remiss to describe his own success as "self made"? Sure, people helped him, but he worked extremely hard, and overcome tremendous odds to get where he was. I think he deserves credit for that. Don't you?

ska 8y ago

Relying on "self made person" as a model for success and economic mobility is very much like relying on "win a lottery" as a model for retirement planning. The fact you can find a few people for whom it worked is not a reflection on its viability in general.

CodeMage 8y ago

> I feel like this trope that self-made success is a myth comes almost entirely from people like the author of this article. People who were born with lots of advantages, who still couldn't hack it. They want to justify their own failure to live up to their family's expectations by tearing other people down. And there we go. That kind of attitude is why this trope was created initially. The problem people have with "self-made success" trope is that the self-made success story of someone with severe disadvantages is being equated, on an astoundingly regular basis, with the success of people with substantial advantages. That's how Bill Gates and Arnold Schwarzenegger are both dubbed "self-made" successes, despite their rather different histories. Even worse, it is being used to justify, defend and perpetuate inequality, by convincing everyone that the American Dream is that "anyone can make it". After all, if such-and-such person coming from dirt poor origins could become wildly successful, anyone can. Therefore, we must strive at all costs to avoid removing "incentives" that motivate people to reach for that elusive success. Naturally, this will generate resistance, and rightfully so. Despite the endless propaganda that permeates the fabric of our society, the self-made success story of Bill Gates is not the same thing as that of John Paul DeJoria. So yeah, I agree with you in one aspect: the self-made success is not a myth. It's something much worse -- it's propaganda. It brings to mind that quote by Anatole France: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

darawk 8y ago
> The problem people have with "self-made success" trope is that the self-made success story of someone with severe disadvantages is being equated, on an astoundingly regular basis, with the success of people with substantial advantages. That's how Bill Gates and Arnold Schwarzenegger are both dubbed "self-made" successes, despite their rather different histories. They are both self-made success stories. Schwarzenegger even moreso than Gates. > Even worse, it is being used to justify, defend and perpetuate inequality, by convincing everyone that the American Dream is that "anyone can make it". After all, if such-and-such person coming from dirt poor origins could become wildly successful, anyone can. Therefore, we must strive at all costs to avoid removing "incentives" that motivate people to reach for that elusive success. Anyone can make it. Not everyone can be Bill Gates or Arnold Schwarzenegger, but it is abundantly clear that anyone willing to put in the time and effort can make it into a well compensated profession. Software engineering, medicine, law, these are all things that an average person willing to dedicate themselves can learn and excel at. If you come from nothing, i'd say getting into any of those professions more than qualifies for "making it".

heedlessly3 8y ago

Oprah Winfrey is the best example of self-made success. Black woman born to an unwed single teenage mother, grew up in the projects to a billionaire.

danans 8y ago

> IMO it's fair to refer to your success as "self made" if you exceed the median success level of your class peer group by a substantial margin. "self made" isn't a statistical or legal term. It's a term of culture and art, and it is always employed by people through a subjective lens, whether to themselves or others. Trying to impose a statistical definition on it ignores the history of its use up to the present, whether that use was justified or not. > i'd say the author of this article more than qualifies for it The fact that you are willing to apply a statistical measure for "self-made success", yet despite how little you know about the article's author, you are willing to apply a term like "self-made-failure" to them based on your personal feelings of antipathy toward a particular class of people, indicates that you might not be arguing in good faith.

anthony_romeo 8y ago

Perhaps the real message ought to be that we all live as part of a broader continuum wherein we are all recipients of the privileges and hardships of the past, and as a consequence of that reality we ought to have better empathy for all of our brothers, sisters, and otherwise. IMO arguing whether people are 'truly' self-made is a discussion of semantics. Calling people self-made or not doesn't change the actual timeline of actions and events of an individual’s life.

gamblor956 8y ago

If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you get yourself a law degree and an upper middle class income - that's self made success. Ah. The law professors did absolutely nothing, I suppose? Or the law firm that hired an immigrant that may not have had an understanding of US professional norms? Or the US, which let the immigrant into the country to pursue their dreams of success while relying on taxpayer-funded social services? This trope of the "self made success" conveniently ignores that people are reliant in many ways on the efforts of others for their success. All those peple who rose from dirt poverty to become successful? Read their stories. At some point, they all relied on someone taking a chance on them--and without that chance, they'd be no different from the thousands of others of dirt poor people who never made it.

Tomminn 8y ago

Your first two paragraphs make a very important point. Outliers from every cohort exist, and often it is due to a kind of inner drive, and we should not ignore that truth. Your final paragraph is cruel. From every cohort the vast majority of people in that cohort will end up with around the mean outcome for that cohort. This is a statistical fact. Only a few can be outliers, and expecting everyone to be one is mathematically guaranteed to cause suffering in the world.

RankingMember 8y ago

Just because there are dirt poor people who are successful and well-off people who aren't doesn't mean they're equally likely. To your broader point, no one person exists in a vacuum- one person's "self-made" is another person's "took advantage of the right tax incentives and business climate and, most importantly, had the luck of timing that they were successful instead of plunging themselves deep into debt". My experience with people who talk warmly of "self-made" people is that they tend to leave out the role of luck.