4 ms·
> I'm curious how many of them did so by leveraging family or inherited wealth. Its interesting to note that many of our own prized meritocratic examples owe t
by Quarrelsome 6y ago
> I'm curious how many of them did so by leveraging family or inherited wealth.
Its interesting to note that many of our own prized meritocratic examples owe their parents in terms of intellectual inheritance or first-round funding.
I believe Trump's father (a billionaire in 2018 dollars) was given start up capital by his father who owned a diner in gold territory during the rush. Elon Musk I believe also was the beneficiary of a small amount of investment from his parents.
The question is whether or not that "counts". It certainly counts when discussing disparate outcomes between demographic groups when discussing success/failure with broad brush strokes but probably doesn't when comparing aristocratic-like inheritances to startup wealth.
- FireBeyond 6y ago> Elon Musk I believe also was the beneficiary of a small amount of investment from his parents. There's so much mythology around this. I've heard the argument, "he had no support from his father", and I've read in more detail that one of the examples of said lack of support was "Elon and his friends wanted to buy and operate a video game arcade when they were teenagers, but his father refused to provide financial assistance". There's a whole world between "deadbeat" and "wouldn't buy his son and his friends their own video arcade".