Yeah this is something he writes about regularly, and it is certainly anachronistic. I also think it's important for rich nerds to justify their position to the

Yeah this is something he writes about regularly, and it is certainly anachronistic. I also think it's important for rich nerds to justify their position to themselves somehow, and to have some imagined hardship to point to in their past that helps explain their superiority (ha!) over the non-nerds. In reality, it's mostly a bunch of rich kids who would have been rich no matter what nonsense they got up to. Maybe not billionaire rich, but rich enough for the distinction to be sort of meaningless. I think PG falls into numerous traps in this piece, and many other posts, but I appreciate his writing all the same. In particular, I think the idea that making some business, even if trying to solve a "serious" problem, can never really be fully earnest. There is so little room for pure problem solving, it's all politics. There are more than enough talented people, more than enough funding, to solve all sorts of problems. What remains is the negotiation about who will get the opportunity. Politics.