5 ms·

By the same token, Elon Musk is someone who succeeded, while thousands upon thousands of entrepreneurs fail, end up with debt, and don't have much to show for t

by raiyu 6y ago

By the same token, Elon Musk is someone who succeeded, while thousands upon thousands of entrepreneurs fail, end up with debt, and don't have much to show for their work. So using survivorship bias to compare yourself to Elon Musk which is an atypical result when it comes to business formation doesn't make sense. You should probably compare yourself to the average business creator and see how you fare compared to them. It's like saying I'm not that great at Basketball, but let me compare myself to Michael Jordan.

ryanmercer 6y ago
No, not remotely. It's like pointing out the absurdity of 1 man, over the past year, having his net worth increase 2.32 million times the annual median household income (of the U.S.) of $68,703 (2019, per census.gov). While something like 20% of the planet doesn't even have access to reliably safe drinking water and something like 800 million lack the amount of food require for an active life.
- raiyu 6y ago
  Well the original post was someone who had access to reliable safe drinking water, so I'm not sure where that is coming from. Also if you look historically over the past 100 years overall rates of poverty have declined everywhere. If you look even further back in time the amount of rights that global citizens enjoy today is fundamentally a million times better than it was 100, 200, 300, 400 years ago. Humans were ruled by kings and queens, where land was inherited, there was no upward social mobility, slavery of peoples was much more rampant than it is today. Humanity was never equal, in it's history, but today if you ignore the top 1% we as a people actually enjoy fundamentally more equality than our predecessors who weren't part of the 1%. Also, while the inequality exists between the 1% and the 99% today, today actually have upward social mobility to become part of the 1%, where 400 years ago that wasn't really all that possible. I'm not saying the world is perfect, but if you look at it has actually gotten better overall. I'm also pretty sure that the implied worth of Rockefeller and some of those old guard monopolists on a inflation adjusted and power adjusted basis was probably many times higher than even Elon Musk's net worth today.
  - ryanmercer 6y ago
    >Well the original post was someone who had access to reliable safe drinking water That someone was me, in the same text I also mentioned homeless persons and individuals living in "third world" nations. And I only have access to reasonably safe drinking water because I added filtration equipment totaling about 2.5% of my annual gross to reduce the nearly 'unacceptable' lead levels in my well for my drinking water and have to, with some regularity, test that water on an ongoing basis to make sure the well hasn't been contaminated by any number of natural and man-made pollutants (chemical spills, chemical fertilizers from neighboring farms, etc). I don't have the luxury of turning on the tap and knowing that an entire industry is testing and chemically treating my water on a daily basis but I still have it a lot better than at least 1/5 of the world.
  - saint_abroad 6y ago
    Progress over the last 400 years is being undone by regressions of the last 40 years. > individuals born in 1980 have only a 45% chance of outearning their parents at age 30, compared to 93% for those born in 1940. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwards-decline-usa-us-america-economics/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwar...
    - username90 6y ago
      Sounds like progress stopped, not that it reversed. When things are stable you'd expect that a bit less than 50% are richer than their parents.
      - Jochim 6y ago
        It hasn't though, the rate of gain for the wealthy has increased.
      - mbroncano 6y ago
        I find it difficult to believe that progress stopped at some point in the later 70's
letstaxtherich 6y ago
Except Michael Jordan is arguably the best ever at Basketball and Elon fails to delivery consistently.
scollet 6y ago
I also doubt GP's parents benefited from apartheid.

by raiyu 6y ago

ryanmercer 6y ago

No, not remotely. It's like pointing out the absurdity of 1 man, over the past year, having his net worth increase 2.32 million times the annual median household income (of the U.S.) of $68,703 (2019, per census.gov). While something like 20% of the planet doesn't even have access to reliably safe drinking water and something like 800 million lack the amount of food require for an active life.

raiyu 6y ago
Well the original post was someone who had access to reliable safe drinking water, so I'm not sure where that is coming from. Also if you look historically over the past 100 years overall rates of poverty have declined everywhere. If you look even further back in time the amount of rights that global citizens enjoy today is fundamentally a million times better than it was 100, 200, 300, 400 years ago. Humans were ruled by kings and queens, where land was inherited, there was no upward social mobility, slavery of peoples was much more rampant than it is today. Humanity was never equal, in it's history, but today if you ignore the top 1% we as a people actually enjoy fundamentally more equality than our predecessors who weren't part of the 1%. Also, while the inequality exists between the 1% and the 99% today, today actually have upward social mobility to become part of the 1%, where 400 years ago that wasn't really all that possible. I'm not saying the world is perfect, but if you look at it has actually gotten better overall. I'm also pretty sure that the implied worth of Rockefeller and some of those old guard monopolists on a inflation adjusted and power adjusted basis was probably many times higher than even Elon Musk's net worth today.
- ryanmercer 6y ago
  >Well the original post was someone who had access to reliable safe drinking water That someone was me, in the same text I also mentioned homeless persons and individuals living in "third world" nations. And I only have access to reasonably safe drinking water because I added filtration equipment totaling about 2.5% of my annual gross to reduce the nearly 'unacceptable' lead levels in my well for my drinking water and have to, with some regularity, test that water on an ongoing basis to make sure the well hasn't been contaminated by any number of natural and man-made pollutants (chemical spills, chemical fertilizers from neighboring farms, etc). I don't have the luxury of turning on the tap and knowing that an entire industry is testing and chemically treating my water on a daily basis but I still have it a lot better than at least 1/5 of the world.
- saint_abroad 6y ago
  Progress over the last 400 years is being undone by regressions of the last 40 years. > individuals born in 1980 have only a 45% chance of outearning their parents at age 30, compared to 93% for those born in 1940. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwards-decline-usa-us-america-economics/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwar...
  - username90 6y ago
    Sounds like progress stopped, not that it reversed. When things are stable you'd expect that a bit less than 50% are richer than their parents.
    - Jochim 6y ago
      It hasn't though, the rate of gain for the wealthy has increased.
    - mbroncano 6y ago
      I find it difficult to believe that progress stopped at some point in the later 70's

letstaxtherich 6y ago

Except Michael Jordan is arguably the best ever at Basketball and Elon fails to delivery consistently.

scollet 6y ago

I also doubt GP's parents benefited from apartheid.