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A lot of people who are just as smart and motived as Elon Musk or Steve Jobs will never be able to start their own companies and get rich. Because they have fa

A lot of people who are just as smart and motived as Elon Musk or Steve Jobs will never be able to start their own companies and get rich. Because they have family obligations that take priority. Because they live outside high-income countries. Because they have no access to support network, so when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom. Because they may have made a crippling mistake in their pasts that now prevents them from reaching their full potential. And so on and on. While I would still recommend everyone to pursue the dreams over never trying to do so - being poor is the single most powerful force that prevents people from doing that.

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ackbar03 6y ago
While I agree to some extent with the point your trying to make, the way you phrase and portray this sounds like more of an excuse than a strong argument. >Because they have family obligations that take priority This is on you. If your serious about it you should see this coming. Elons familial situation isn't exactly all flowers and roses. A lot of my friends who managed to start successful business started yong precisely because they saw this coming and new it would be difficult to do with a family. I would argue the exception is if you have parents who are sick or need heavy financial support or whatever. If this is the case, would be a fair argument in favor of being rich (or at least middle class) helps you get rich. >Because they live outside high-income countries I would argue this goes both ways. If anything a lot of countries are trying to pile into developing countries now cause that's where the growth is. Similarly I used to work in hk where living costs are absurd. Then I was relocated to China and after a while I quite my job to try my own thing because it was affordable to take the risk. You could live decently by being frugal with some savings and the benefit is still vastly in favor of being an owner than an employee. Access to education might be a differentiator but so many things are available for free online now. >Because they have no access to support network, so when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom I think this is related to two somewhat. It's also totally feasible to position yourself so that even if you fail you can still land on your feet, you just have to be conscious of it. >Because they may have made a crippling mistake in their pasts that now prevents them from reaching their full potential Again this is the same for everyone and is on you personally. Don't do anything stupid. But like I said, I generally agree that being rich or middle class definitely helps you become rich, but if you can go on and on about all these reasons your probably want to adjust your mindset as well
- d_silin 6y ago
  Well, I don't want to present my view in an absolutist manner, but there is a lot of survivorship bias in success stories. People tend not to note positive environment factors if they lived all their lives with them. And if you got burned through externalities beyond your control, you tend to be a bit sceptical on fairness of the game. Last, but not the least - "don't do anything stupid" is easy post-hoc, but think of your teenage mistakes and consequences of "doing stupid" during those years.
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- jiofih 6y ago
  Your mention of Musk should raise an alarm to your sense of reality. He comes from a well off family, moved to Canada at 17 to attend university. This alone already puts him at the top 1% of humanity in terms of privilege. Then he went on to attend Stanford... Not that it takes away from any of his achievements, but you are failing hard at realizing what things actually look like. > It's also totally feasible to position yourself so that even if you fail you can still land on your feet, you just have to be conscious of it This is the famous “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” said by someone who’s obviously never had to.
  - ackbar03 6y ago
    My point about musk was more about his own children and relationships and how "family obligations" should be an obvious consideration if you want to start your own company. You shouldn't really complain about it after the fact. But fair enough, I'm not going to argue too much. Reading through the comments it seems that access to decent education and a stable family seems to be a generous assumption for many people around the world. I would say where I grow up in Asia, cases of abusive/dysfunctional families tends to be less than the west, and people in general have decent access to and awareness of the importance of education. There are a fair number of successful entrepreneurs who used to be villagers, mostly because a fairly large portion of people were farmers back then
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ironman1478 6y ago
This. Poverty doesn't just cause immediate issues it can also cause long term issues that can effect not only adults, but the children who grew up in that environment. This is largely because families in poverty tend to also abuse their kids at higher rates (this includes mental abuse) or at least foster an extremely unhealthy environment due to the stress it causes. So even a generation later it can be difficult for a family tree to be lifted out of that situation. It's brutal not having a support system in place for people. What sucks is that it's probably bad for overall productivity to not help people in these situations, but the usa has chosen to say screw it for many years (hopefully that is changing). Imo forget being "rich", just growing up in a relatively sane environment is an advantage.
- reader_mode 6y ago
  I grew up in a family of 7 (4 younger siblings), during civil war, father was into gamling and drinking, mother was unemployed and constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown (understandable given the conditions she was living in). To paint the picture, I have vivid memories of vomiting a boiled onion I ate after not eating for days (I think I was arround 5 years old). And we were poor well into my early 20s untill I left home. It took a long time to get out of that, and material problems were an issue for sure, but I would say the biggest obstacle for me was that I had no rolemodel and was forced to discover everything on my own. In retrospect I had plenty of opportunities to get out of my situation way earlier and I could have done a lot of things better, and it was pretty common sense to most normal/functioning people - but I didn't have a lot of those arround me. And that wouldn't change if you gave my parents money - after my grandparents died my mother inherited some land and a house, in a year she managed to squander it away with terrible spending decisions and no long term planning (coupled with the sense of entitlement and expectation that things will just work out). I also never viewed school as something relevant, teachers were hardly authoritative figures (from my perspective their job was to babysit me and they were poorly paid - why would I accept them as authority on anything). So I don't think it's something you can solve with money alone, having functional parents is always going to set you up to do better in life.
  - onion2k 6y ago
mulcahey 6y ago
But is the portion of people without those restrictions increasing or decreasing? How would you measure it?
- d_silin 6y ago
  In the US at least, it is definitely decreasing. Income inequality is growing, as the original essay noted.
  - solveit 6y ago
    Increasing income inequality does not necessarily imply that. In fact, the US poverty rate has been more or less stable for the past 50 years[1]. And the worldwide poverty rate is dropping like a stone. [1] To be clear, I very much view this as a failure given how much richer the US has become in the same period. Nevertheless, it is not true (or at least not clear) that the portion of people who are able to actualize their potential is falling.
    - ludocode 6y ago
      This statistic is misleading. The U.S. government defines the poverty line based on a 1955 model of spending patterns. It's completely inadequate for modern needs. The poverty line for a family of four is defined as a household income of $26,200. Any reasonable person knows it's impossible to pay rent and feed and clothe two adults and two kids on less than $2200 a month. Nevermind owning a home, having a car, saving for emergencies or retiring. Yet the U.S. government does not consider that to be poverty. From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold#Cutoff_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold#Cutoff_issue... > Most experts and the public agree that the official poverty line in the United States is substantially lower than the actual cost of basic needs. In particular, a 2017 Urban Institute study found that 61% of non-elderly adults earning between 100–200% of the poverty line reported at least one material hardship, not significantly different from those below the poverty line. The cause of the discrepancy is believed to be an outdated model of spending patterns based on actual spending in the year 1955; the number and proportion of material needs has risen substantially since then. The reality is that poverty in the U.S. is increasing. It has been for decades.
atweiden 6y ago
> And so on and on. While I would still recommend everyone to pursue the dreams over never trying to do so - being poor is the single most powerful force that prevents people from doing that. IMO this is what offsets the dystopia of the coming human IPO market. Many millions of humans would economically benefit from having their own board of directors.
EvilEy3 6y ago
> Because they have family obligations that take priority. Is that "I have kids!" I hear now? > Because they live outside high-income countries. Well then move to high-income country. > Because they have no access to support network, so when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom. That's unfortunate, but that's life. A lot of people don't have that safety. And not all of them are poor. > Because they may have made a crippling mistake in their pasts that now prevents them from reaching their full potential. That's also part of a "potential". I "potentially" could've been next Ali, Tyson or Lomachenko, I'm not. Is that because if my mistake, or mistake of my parents or who else? > And so on and on. While I would still recommend everyone to pursue the dreams over never trying to do so - being poor is the single most powerful force that prevents people from doing that. What you're describing is not poor, it is unfortunate.
- yladiz 6y ago
  > I "potentially" could've been next Ali, Tyson or Lomachenko, I'm not. Is that because if my mistake, or mistake of my parents or who else? It's unfortunate, but yes it's your mistake and your mistake alone, not any outside factor like genetics. You should work harder, get stronger, be better to reach your potential and achieve the dream.
  - EvilEy3 6y ago
    A) you have no idea about my genetics, but you assumed for some reason that I was limited by it B) not sure what your sarcasm means in this case, that chances of me becoming next Tyson are non-existent? I acknowledge that, and found passion in something else. And you don't see me complaining everywhere that it is Tyson's problem that I didn't become world champion in boxing. Like it is a zero sum game somehow.
  - LightG 6y ago
    You have a very limited idea of what it takes for people to reach their potential.
- danillonunes 6y ago
  > Well then move to high-income country. You can't just take an Uber to a rich country. You have to do a lot of work to get there. All that work is wasted years compared to someone who was just born there in the first place and can focus 100% on their actual path of getting rich.
rypskar 6y ago
And a lot of people who are as smart and motivated will start their own company but will not get rich because they are not as lucky. Luck play a big part in success
- dmitriid 6y ago
  The more money you have the luckier you are.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    Are you sure? From what I see around me, people who have money are a constant target of other people who want to drop their beaks into it, so to say. Starting with distant relatives that got into trouble and suddenly found a familial love for them, continuing with various false friends, gold diggers of both sexes and people hustling investment opportunities. Ending with lawyers and doctors who might induce you to undergo procedures that are more expensive, but not necessarily in the best interest for you. The price for being rich is being on constant alert and distrust against "luck" that isn't really luck, but a veiled threat. Edit: OK, I get it, not everywhere is Eastern Europe. Countries with old money have systems in place that mitigate this problem. (Although I am not so sure about mafia-heavy countries like Italy.)
    - mordae 6y ago
      Yes. Having extra cash means you can eat out (saves 1+ hour a day), buy an automated vacuum, dishwasher (extra 30 minutes a day), get a car or use taxi (1-2 hours, depending on location), hire a personal assistant (better organization, hard to estimate), get better medical care (less pain = better concentration)... You also have access to specialists. You can hire a lawyer, people to help you with research, people to help you present yourself on social media. In the end, you can extend your day and improve your productivity significantly, resulting in more hours available "to get lucky" effectively. I mean, being lucky when washing dishes does not help a lot, but being lucky when shopping for business opportunities...
      - 6y ago
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
"A lot of people who are just as smart and motivated as ..." Wealth is not synonymous with intelligence. And certainly not with motivation. A lot of people who are wealthy will never be as smart as ... nor as motivated.
- input_sh 6y ago
  I'm always reminded of this quote by Stephen Jay Gould: > I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
lordnacho 6y ago
The thing that I'd expand upon is the support network. Somehow I have a wider range of friends and family than most people, and the thing that is missing from this conversation is that most people by far don't know anyone wealthy, especially if they're not themselves wealthy. The issue with that isn't just the money and connections themselves. There's a cultural gap of "I couldn't do that, only people on TV do that" whether it's starting a startup or pursuing one of those one in a million type careers like acting or sports. There's a risk behaviour that is also affected by background. Basically you're pushed to not take too much risk: your parents' entire productive output has gone into your education, you can't just take a chance on it. Case in point is my family. The parents all got spread around the world as refugees back in the 1970s. Everyone worked really hard but they told their kids to go the safe route. I have a cluster of cousins in the bay area, what do they do? None of them do startups. Doctors, nurses, and Google.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  I have a cluster of cousins in the bay area, what do they do? None of them do startups. Doctors, nurses, and Google. I wouldn't describe this as risk-averse behaviour. The simple fact is in the modern startup ecosystem, even if the startup has a successful exit, even early stage engineers will see very little wealth having been massively diluted, and would have been much, much better off having worked for an established company over the same time period. An early stage employee takes all the risk but all the reward goes to the founders and the VCs. It's not worth it.
  - lordnacho 6y ago
    Maybe I should have expanded upon it. When I went to visit SF with a startup, I naturally thought one of my dozen cousins in the area would know someone who did something with one of the many startups in the world's startup capital. They don't just not work in startups, they seem to not have any connections to it. Granted, I didn't do a thorough survey, but if they knew someone in a prominent firm I think they'd have told me. Which is kinda surprising, but I guess for all the noise they make it's still a pretty small network.
kortilla 6y ago
So? Is this somehow related to the fact that getting rich by creating these companies is now an option? Just because you can think of 99 reasons people can’t do this doesn’t mean app people shouldn’t.
emmanueloga_ 6y ago
Agreed. It is not only about discrete circumstances ... environment also nurtures and affects development of people over time. Being exposed to better odds over time is also a factor (ppl that were able to create good networks in their youth vs ppl that somehow "made it" later in life...).
namelosw 6y ago
100% Agree. Just add another point: Rich people with supportive networks of course can pursuit their goals easier. Occasionally people from not very good families can do this as well because they're so screwed by the environment and tried to get rid of everything in (the book 'Masters of DOOM' is an example assuming it doesn't try to be too dramatic). It's much harder to do the same as middle classes with a lot of life obligations, distractions, and most importantly they are by default need to follow linear career developments - it's much harder to be adventurous to had drastic improvement compared to previous categories.
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olalonde 6y ago
Of course all of that is true but it's irrelevant because you have to take a systemic view when talking about economics. The fact is that capitalism and entrepreneurship, while not fair in the cosmic sense you present it, is the best system we have for creating wealth for both the poor and the rich.
- Firadeoclus 6y ago
  There are many knobs and levers. The extent to which it harnesses "capitalism and entrepreneurship" for wealth creation is not the only thing defining an economic system, and arguably the poor are not best served by maximising capitalism and entrepreneurship.
3327 6y ago
Gotta love blog posts piggy backing PG's thesis and recycling it.
randomsearch 6y ago
I agree, but I’d add that hard working talented people can still do great things without money and despite difficulties. It’s just that the reach or scale is amplified by the money. Money and opportunity are amplifiers. You can be the “Elon musk” of your world, that is you can hit the ceiling of what you were offered. Don’t compare yourself to Elon musk, compare yourself to what was possible for you. Maybe that’s depressing for some people but I see it as liberating.
- ddelt 6y ago
  It might be more liberating if the success narrative in the US focused on relative success instead of “absolute” success. But afaik and have seen in my life thus far, the people everyone knows, worships, or revered for their <INSERT_ACCOMPLISHMENT> are 95% of the time the absolute best (sports star, movie star, fortune 50 CEO, bigwig politician, superstar dev, most well known doctor, most fancy medical practice in the US/world, etc)
noxer 6y ago
Half of that is caused by their own past decisions and the other half by their own present decision to not put 100% of their effort into changing it. >being poor is the single most powerful force that prevents people from doing that. IMO absolutely wrong. The real reason is people dont try and risk it all. And they search for reasons why they would not be able to make it, including the oh so unfair starting points in this "game". Yes its unfair very very unfair even. But it is so for almost everyone. And more importantly it can not be changed and even if it would, it would not retroactively have an effect on existing people. Everyone has one life and the number one reason to not reach a set goal is if it was not set and not attempted. You can make up all the good reasons why you would not attempt it because life is unfair but that doesn't change the fact that you yourself reduced your chance to reach it to zero by your own decision to let circumvention stop you from trying. >Because they have no access to support network, so when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom. Failing is an possibility if you try, if you dont, its certain. Also what exactly is so "scary" about failing? Do people think they end up homeless under a bridge or something? I see a practically zero chance that could ever happen to someone who fights. You need to have some serious mental health problems and probably drugs to fall this deep. And given that health in unfair too you may get this anyway so even more reason to get yourself in a poison where health problems wont make you fall to the bottom. Ive financially failed before, as long as zero is the bottom (I dont make debts) is just a setback its not stopping me. I certainly had a good start in life but money was never given to me. I started form zero as a teenager and I almost went back to zero in my early twenties partially do to circumstances outside of my control partially due to bad decisions. I could have another 50 years trying so why would that stop me. My goals a higher than ever and the speed at which I chase them only got faster.
- EliRivers 6y ago
  Also what exactly is so "scary" about failing? Do people think they end up homeless under a bridge or something? I see a practically zero chance that could ever happen to someone who fights. You need to have some serious mental health problems and probably drugs to fall this deep. Well this is just not true. You have a fantasy view of life that does not ally with reality.
golemiprague 6y ago
How many people become Jobs or Musk anyway? You need a lot of stars to align in order to get to this level. What matters is how most of the population is doing, not some very extreme people on the edge of the bell curve. I also don't think being poor is the end of the world, there are many poor people who manage to change their position within one generation, like poor new immigrants, and many middle class who fall back to poverty like many black families. Money doesn't solve inherent problem in the family and community.
agumonkey 6y ago
Veritasium had a video about success vs luck and survivor bias. There's a bit of that here too. That said, I'd love to have a graph or model (or book even) to describe the tipping point at which things become increasingly better and easier. I observed that in the crypto bubble. Once you lifted off (fortune by accident maybe) you can comfortably ride the game from the back seat and pick what kind of new wealth you're gonna pick up this month.
- 0wis 6y ago
  This ! So much easier to hussle if you have a clear goal in mind. The threshold to « wealth » should be clearer. FIRE « levels » seems a good approximation but more detailed studies would be great.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    Honestly I wasn't even trying to make it easier to get rich but so that everybody can understand how easy some have it and how hard other may have it. It's difficult to understand unless you lived in it, and I only had a small taste of the bad. Urgency forces you to lower places where you get less and less acceptable conditions and you don't even have time to think about getting rich.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I video url
WalterBright 6y ago
It's never been easier to start a company in the US. All you need is a computer. You can create a product on it and reach a worldwide audience, all for free. As for Jobs, he started Apple for a few hundred bucks. It's a pretty low bar.
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  > All you need is a computer. Plus free time. Plus motivation and energy which is probably in short supply when you've already done 8 hours in a supermarket / your second job / a full day of childcare / etc. > a few hundred bucks. It's a pretty low bar. For a lot of people in the US, a few hundred bucks is the difference between eating that month and going without. Or being able to pay the rent and not be evicted. Or being able to afford transport to/from their job.
  - taurath 6y ago
    Of course they’re not talking about “those people”, aka the 63% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. When the ultra rich speak they’re only speaking to the upper middle 40%. We love a good rags to riches story but economic class changes less in the US than many other countries, despite this “ease”. Show me any group of founders and you can point to a few outliers but people who have had jobs like grocery store clerk by and large do not go on to make a business. The bar is lowered enough for upper middle class only, with few exceptions.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      > 63% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck That doesn't mean they're poor. I've known many, many people with zero savings living paycheck to paycheck. They had new cars, nice houses, good furniture, expensive clothes, took vacations, and ate regularly at restaurants. They simply spent it all.
      - TheButlerian 6y ago
        Get cancer and die
euske 6y ago
> when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom. Thank you for this. I love when HN provides a view outside a typical Western middle-class cohort. At a larger scale, I think the same thing could be said to an entire society. In a poor society, your small mistake might lead to loss of healthcare, loss of voting rights, arrest by secret police, mob lynching, public shaming, or other forms of social bullying. There are many rich people who live in such a society, but they're always in a somewhat precarious position. I don't envy that.
deepGem 6y ago
Yet, there are many examples of those who made big from rags to riches. Am not talking about movie stars but business tycoons. Carol Bartz, Dhirubai Ambani, Naval Ravikant, Chamath to name a few. Bartz for instance "Bartz was born in Winona, Minnesota. After losing her mother at a young age, she moved with her brother to her grandparent's farm in Alma, Wisconsin. She took a job at a bank at age 15 to help support her family. Good grades in high school earned her a scholarship to William Woods, a prestigious all-girls college in Missouri. She transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked her way through college as a waitress. In 1971, she earned her degree in computer science." Being poor can work as the single most powerful force for people to get out of poverty and pursue their dreams. Not to be rude, but for those who want to find excuses will find excuses. Those who want to break out and go get things done, will find no excuses.
- EliRivers 6y ago
  "Those who want to break out and go get things done, will find no excuses." Bullshit. Many people are constrained by things they cannot control.
  - deepGem 6y ago
    No doubt. Things out of your control are not excuses.
    - jes 6y ago
      What things are truly within your control?
      - deepGem 6y ago
        For one poverty. I believe it is in your control to crawl yourself out of poverty, may be not in childhood but in your high school or once you turn 18. Am not saying everyone should become rich but you don't have to be poor. Your mind is in your control. Keeping your body and brain healthy is in your control but for medical conditions though.
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
Success is 100% luck.
- bouncycastle 6y ago
  You still need to make an effort turn up though.
- saint_abroad 6y ago
  > Success is 100% luck. If that were the case, then there would be no disparity.* * That is, unless luck is a function of circumstance. Which is kind of the point of the OP.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  That's a very cynical perspective. How did you come to believe that?
varispeed 6y ago
If you are born poor it is extremely difficult to escape poverty, especially because of high taxes that you are going to experience as soon as your education and determination lands you a good job. This severely inhibits your means to save or to invest. The progressive taxation is like a back-stop to keep everyone in check and prevent people from going up the class ladder. Meanwhile the rich, that are supposed to be the target of progressive tax, laugh and carry on paying very little.
- southerntofu 6y ago
  Taxes isn't the reason why more people aren't richer. In fact, taxes is the reason why more people aren't poorer, because they pay for essential social services. At least in most countries, when receiving hospital bills you're not afraid to end up with crippling debt. The reason more people aren't richer is because of private property and the capitalist system. As a whole, humanity is pretty rich and is severely destroying the environment to make sure of that. Only a fucked up economic system with all the wrong incentives makes sure some people starve when we produce more food than needed to feed the entire population, sleep on the streets when there's millions of empty/abandoned housing units, etc. So, to be honest with you, i don't think taxes is the solution, because as long as money and private property are a thing, taxes will only be a band-aid on this cancer. Arguably, taxes are also often misused to fund more human misery in the form of military and police services and other harmful institutions we should entirely get rid of. But i would say claiming high taxes is responsible for poverty is really missing the point of how capitalism works.
  - throwaways885 6y ago
    Give a viable alternative that doesn't descend into fascism. Capitalism is called the 'least worst' system for a reason, and some countries have an excellent QoL under it.
    - allendoerfer 6y ago
      Social market economy. Socializing some things does not mean you have to put up red flags everywhere, hold big party meetings and kill all the intellectuals. You can still keep markets where they make sense and outcompete others in a global capitalist system. Extremists are always wrong.
bambax 6y ago
Yeah, but income and/or wealth inequality is a problem in itself, and that's what libertarians such as PG don't understand (or refuse to consider). It doesn't matter if wealth acquisition was "fair" or "warranted". It doesn't matter if the process that allowed wealth to be acquired resulted in a net gain for society. When a group of people become incredibly more wealthy than the general population, their interests diverge and it breaks society apart. It's even worse when said group is not diverse but is instead composed of just the same privileged people as it has always been.
kypro 6y ago
Not that I disagree with anything you said necessarily, but it's so much more complicated than this. Sometimes being less fortunate is what motivates people to become rich. The truth is I had a huge amount of stuff holding me back as a child, and still do, but imo that is why I managed to succeed (relatively at least) where others I knew who had similar intelligence and better backgrounds did not. Even in my own family the difference between my sister and myself is massive, she's probably in the bottom 10% and I'm probably in the top 1-2%, yet she has almost the exact same background as myself. Being poor might just be the single greatest motivator. It also teaches people a lot of valuable lessons for acquiring wealth such as how to save and ration. If you look at wealth statistics in the UK some of the wealthy people here are immigrants or second generation immigrants from India and East Asia which doesn't really fit with this narrative of rich people get rich, while poor people stay poor. I understand sometimes people are so unlucky that the obstacles in front of them are insurmountable, but I also don't think this paints a full picture. I also generally agree with the article, although I think it's easy to criticise without providing answers. It would have been nice to see some suggestions on how to fix the problem of wealth inequality, because unfortunately many of the popular solutions (raising taxes, expanding welfare programs, etc) could just make things worse.
- catears 6y ago
  I think there is some truth to this. Obviously too complicated subject for me to understand everything, but I wanted to add my own experience. One of the most motivating things I did to get a well-paying job and work hard to earn it was by having a deadend job as a kid. There is nothing that has motivated me to study hard as much as the realization that some people will be stuck stacking boxes their entire life. Motivation makes a big difference, but obviously those who always think about how to make rent and still have food on the table don't always have the opportunity to live a better life...
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Being poor is only a motivator for an incredibly tiny number of people who are probably prone to risk-taking anyway. The unfortunate reality is that some of them shade into outright narcissism. https://www.psypost.org/2021/02/narcissists-make-their-way-to-ceo-positions-faster-than-their-counterparts-study-finds-59517 https://www.psypost.org/2021/02/narcissists-make-their-way-t... It's vastly easier to become rich if you don't care about employees, customers, tenants, and co-workers, or if you can persuade yourself that people who don't take risks and succeed are somehow inherently morally inferior and deficient. In fact a good safety net is likely to increase entrepreneurial activity, because it makes it possible to fail into a safety net instead of failing into homelessness and catastrophe. Tax increases are a separate issue. But generally wealth inequality is politically as well as financially toxic. You want to reward smart, clever, inventive individuals. But you do also want to make sure they don't automatically get privileged legal or ethical treatment which encourages destructive narcissistic and authoritarian behaviours in the culture as a whole.
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hnbad 6y ago
It's somewhat "ironic" that pg seemingly has a blind spot on this when the norm for startups is to start with a "family and friends" funding round. Most people don't have family and friends able to lend them a few thousand dollars, let alone tens of thousands, to invest in a complete moonshot (given that we all agree that most startups fail, i.e. lose the investment). This makes the startup scene extremely self-selecting. Even if you pretend that Elon Musk is a rags to riches story because he says he had to sleep in the office when he started out, he wouldn't have had the millions of dollars to invest in Tesla if he hadn't had an extremely lucky exit with Global Link and then again with X.com. Not to mention that he had previous access to both UPenn and Stanford, which also means massive networking opportunities (assuming he had access to those networks, which again requires a certain inherited status).
qazpot 6y ago
On HN I see the sentiment that you expressed a lot of times. I live in a country which will be categorized by western countries as a developing country. There is no social support system in my country, you are pretty much on your own. Nobody is coming to help you. And I have made serious mistakes when I was in school which resulted in not being able to go to a good college which makes things in my country ten times more harder. Even today if I were to apply to a good company (There are Google, Amazon Dev centers in my country), my resume would not get through the first pass, because I do not have a good college name on my resume. I make 5 times what my school mates and my college mates make, which makes me a lot more successful, atleast financially. When I meet anyone from my school or college they tell me the same things that you are writing here. They attribute my success to - Having no family obligations - Which is BS, My parents are middle class, I have been taking care of them since I got a job. Having good parents, support network - I have zero support from my parents, they were downright abusive. Since, I have been a teenager, there has not been one week where my father has not told me that I will be failure in life. My mother tried to pressure me to commit suicide on numerous occastions. Getting Lucky - I had the same education that my peers had, same economic level. Same razor thin opportunites that they had. The only differentiator is that whatever tiny opportunity I got however small, I fought tooth and nail to capitalize on it. Worked for 15 hours every day, only 5 hour sleep. Ate one meal a day to save money and time. I hate it when people like you, my school friends, my college friends try to attibute it to some external factor. You will attibute my success to anything in the world, except my relentless hardwork. I have taken huge risks whose downside was total ruin. There is no social security checks, some benevolent relative waiting for me to fail. If I fail, I die, my family will perish. That's how high the stakes are. Everything I had, I earned it with blood, sweat and tears. I have spent 12 hours coding in high fever just to make the release. I will close off this rant with one last statement. It all comes to down to how much you want and how much are will sacrifice and work hard for it. Rest are just excuses. This sounds like a motivational cliche but it is true.
- foxhill 6y ago
  congratulations. that truly sounds awful, and i'm glad you've got this far so we can even have this discussion. without attempting to belittle your story, i'd place a large bet that for every one of you, there are tens - if not hundreds - of people with a better start/more luck in life, that have worked harder than you, and have less than you do.
ozim 6y ago
Why people are doing this? How can you compare Elon or Steve Jobs wealth level to well anyone? There are CEO's of successful companies that worked their whole lives and never got to that level. Aiming for that is well crippling. People should aim to have a good life...
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
  What's a good life? I know what I want from life, and what it costs, and I don't want extravagance. I don't have the capital to spend the 4-12 years training to increase my earning potential. My lack of capital is no fault of my own, I lost the womb lottery, why must I be relegated to live a meager life toiling for decades and have nothing to show for it while these billionaires you mentioned steal more money in a month than I'll see in 10 lifetimes?
  - ozim 6y ago
    Why do you focus on these billionaires? There are literally scum people who sell drugs, are working on human trafficking and chop people heads off to be billionaires, maybe you want to focus your anger more on people like Pablo Escobar than Bill Gates?
    - Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
      Every billionaire is a failure of government, culture, and society. Pablo Escobar is dead, why should I waste my breath on a corpse? Bill Gates behaves like a king, moving his pawns around the world, controlling people and resources in a way that Hitler could not even imagine. Zuckerberg benefits from, enables, and has helped fascists take power, commit genocides, and mislead hundreds of millions-billions of people while having a direct hand on scales of public discourse the world over. Musk is an imperialist technofacist. So, I guess a better question, is why do you revere these sociopaths and not the more overt ones too? What's the difference between idolizing a child pump, drug dealer, hit man, or racketeer and a person that treats their staff as slaves, or one who funds experimentation on humans in the third world, or who leverages their capital to coup a democratic government for natural resources? They're all the same scum to me. No amount of money spent on PR will erase the harm they caused to get their plunder. >No amount of charity and spending such fortunes can compensate in any way for the misconduct in acquiring them. -Teddy Roosevelt General background reading/listening https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-45-the-not-so-benevolent-billionaire-bill-gates-and-western-media-b1f8e0fe092f https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-45-the-not-so-ben...
api 6y ago
I agree, but I don't see a solution on the present political landscape. Free enterprise seems to allow some tiny fraction of such highly motivated geniuses to excel, lets say 0.0000001%. Other systems seem to allow 0% of these people to excel, or at least to do so anywhere near their full potential. The comparison seems to be between a horrible system where almost nobody can excel and more horrible systems where absolutely nobody can excel. You occasionally get historical anomalies where bureaucratic or authoritarian states innovate, such as when the state machinery of the US and USSR raced to the Moon or the burst of innovation in Nazi Germany. In that case the forcing function was war (or Cold War in the US/USSR sense), and war seems the only thing capable of motivating bureaucracies. I guess the other source of historical anomalies is when you have the explicit blessing of a king or someone really close to the throne, but the bandwidth for that is strictly limited and you often get long periods of idiot kings where nothing happens. Without war or extreme will at the top all you get is meetings to plan the meeting to do a study on the effectiveness of more meetings. In more militaristic/fascist state regimes you also get a perpetual "game of thrones" at the upper echelons. Maybe what we need is a more egalitarian socialist system coupled with a perpetual threat of alien invasion? Wait... isn't this sort of how you got the Star Trek socialist utopia? We need some Klingons. Edit: the trouble, I think, is that innovation and achievement are antisocial. We often like the result, but the act is always a form of rebellion. It's often a rebellion limited to the mind of the actor, but it's rebellion nonetheless. All human social systems act to suppress deviance, so what you need for innovation is a system that tolerates deviance and manages to do so in a peaceful way. Interdependent social structures of any kind suppress rebellion and channel human effort into social game playing such as the "meetings about meetings" and "game of thrones" phenomena I mentioned. Capitalism is the only system I know of that allows non-violent antisocial acts of innovation at scale. By violence in this context I am including lies, bureaucratic subterfuge, and fraud. (Yes you do get those in capitalism but they're not required. There is a way to get there without them.) In all the other systems you have to hack your way out of the social jungle with a machete to innovate... or you have to be king and there's only one of those. In any other system Elon Musk would probably have had to engineer a coup at the space agency by getting its present head thrown in prison for "corruption" (as they do in China) to assume his position and have an opportunity to get Falcon or Starship built. To get them across the finish line he'd probably have to focus a great deal of his energy on planting knives in the backs of his bureaucratic challengers. There would be only one space agency so there would be only one such throne to fight over, so if Elon's approach failed there would be no Blue Origin or RocketLab. Basically we suck at politics. Every political system is horrible. I think this is largely because politics is still pre-scientific. We think in terms of political ideologies (fantasies more or less) dreamed up in an irrational evidence-free manner by arrogant mountebanks or populist meme wars. Instead we should start with game theory. AFAIK game theory and simulation have never even been leveraged to cook up a hypothetical political system.
downandout 6y ago
You left out the most significant reason: that most people just aren't as lucky as those guys. In the US, you can become a millionaire through hard work and dedication and not much luck. However, there is nowhere that you can become a billionaire without tremendous luck. Amassing that type of wealth depends on many other people embracing your ideas, and random events that are entirely beyond your control working out in your favor. There are ways to improve your odds of reaching this level of success - if you never start a business, your odds are zero. But luck is the ultimate decider of who becomes a "self-made" billionaire out of those that are actively trying to become one.
dkdbejwi383 6y ago
I think also coming from "humble" beginnings can mean you're happy to "settle for less" as some may see it. I'm a mid-level developer, reasonably successful, with one bachelor's degree, and a modest home I bought. Some folk might not see that as much and want to achieve more, but I am already much better off than I imagined I'd be 15 years ago, growing up in a financially poor family in council housing.
credit_guy 6y ago
It's easy to tell yourself you are as good as Musk or Jobs or Bezos. And comforting. But there's also the possibility that they are truly different. More talented, more focused, more hard working, more driven. And more willing to take risks. I don't know any of these guys, but I know plenty of people who got much farther in life than me because they were simply better than me in some respect. I also know some people who got farther by pure luck, but the thing is, when I look around me, I find more cases of merit- than luck-based advancement. So, yes, this, or that or that can hold you back in life. But, conversely, when you don't succeed in life, we always find excuses, don't we? It's never "I wasted hours on social media sites", it's "I didn't have the same connections as Gates".
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  Even if you aren't the most talented and smartest person, having the advantages they did would still almost certainly mean you'd be in a better position then you would be without them.
specialist 6y ago
> family obligations that take priority There's a severe lack of small businesses in the USA. Totally fixable. So many low hanging fruit. Affordable health insurance and childcare would be revolutionary. I forfeited my fledgling software startup, just as it started to gain traction, once we got pregnant. I needed insurance for my family. For decades, young parents have struggled with health insurance, day care, and other really basic stuff. 30 years ago, cost of childcare was ridiculous, and very hard to find. Today, it's completely insane. Of course new business formation is at historical lows. (Pre-pandemic, of course, in anticipation of the inevitable pedantry.)
mattacular 6y ago
All this is true but you've left out an even big key differentiator: most people cannot get a 250,000$ "business loan" from their mom and dad like eg. Bezos did.
NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
One of example that pops into my mind watching Elon Mush show, he said something along the lines "it is not difficult to get money there is plenty of money and investors who want to invest, I can just turn few phone and I will have investment of few hundred millions". Because hast that type of the network. For me and probably most of the people I know, I do not know where to begin, most average income people networks are not investors type, so we do not have a clue, where to even find people who are willing to listen for a five minute pitch, without feeling that you are begging for money... In that regard poor or middle class will never be the same as rich, it is amount of struggling to keep up the daily needs. If rich person gets bankrupt, he can easily bounce back, with connections he has, he can turn few phone calls and again pop up on the ladder, issue with other people they are not even close to ladder, until you get to ladder, there is path through swamp, forest, dark cave, and dragon on two ...
toomuchredbull 6y ago
For someone as smart as Elon Musk to never be able to start their own companies they really have to be born in a real shit hole country, in a real shit hole part of the country. Even in India or China they would be identified and given opportunity.
gadf 6y ago
I'm sorry but this is consolations for the losers. This will sound really harsh and I'm not directing it at you (except where I say "you") but at this kind of tall tale I see a lot. If they (in the above story) were so smart and motivated (towards starting corps and getting rich), why'd they: Make a family and let that get in the way of that? Not H1B or student-visa / postgrad it to "high-income countries"? Not cultivate and create their support network? Not overcome "crippling" mistake? And so on? And endless list of weak excuses for why they'll only ever be mediocre, but hey, they're just as smart as Elon Must and Steve Jobs. That idea can buzz off. If they were, they'd be doing like them. Did Musk and Jobs always "have it easy"? No, they got back up. Take 100 Musk and Jobs clones, I think only 25 will make it to the same approximate place they did. The rest will get done in by random stuff, and scattered across various levels of successful but not super successful. But I think only 1 or 2 will be "failures" or "average people" without any major success. That's the character of these people. Succeed anywhere. But the "story" about it in the above comment, this story make it like choices don't matter. A story to excuse "they"s own failure. A smug content, well, "coulda shoulda woulda" while wrongly taking the responsibility away from "they" and the "Musks and Jobses" for what they each got. Consolation that disempowers. It's bad to do so. To tell people "poor is a state that something else decided for you. You have not much power to escape." A person I think must have had it so easy to never have to work out how much you can accomplish if you commit and persevere. This sort of "smug, content, rich country attitude" that people in "high income countries" can afford to take, because everything, even the "poor levels" are so comfortable. Easy times, so they never have to get pushed to learn to take themselves higher. Symptom of privilege and an easy, unchallenged life to have these armchair opinions that success is meted out by powerful forces outside the ken of individuals and their choices. If one comes from adversity, one is more likely to learn their own power. But the easy-rich-country folk can choose to give themselves adversity to make up for this. Sad to see delusions like the above story. This delusion is the poverty of privilege, a sickness of the easy-riding armchair theorists content to coast through effortless existence. Adversity does crush, and does demoralize, but I bet you 10 folk from "low income countries" have twice the mettle, grit and heart that 100 folks from easy-riding "high income countries" with their easy excuses, and zero-cost "regrets" can afford. Give me 10 of the first lot anyday, better than the whining mewling of ne'er-do-wells too lucky to know how impoverished they really are in spirit, and how much they could have accomplished had they wanted it more. Heavy sigh. All these loser excuses the above "story" describes here pathetic and not the stuff that these "Musks and Jobses" would let get in their way. I think from the way you write about it, you have no idea. I think you, and many others, are blind to the absolute smug arrogance (and waste via consoling thinking) of telling yourself sure that guy could be as good as Musk but he didn't set it up that way, and made all these mistakes he couldn't recover from, is blaming externalities when he had choices. How dare you take that from them. How dare you take that from yourself. What you chose. Musk's hardships: awful father, abusive father-son relationship, no SA support network, social anxiety, had to leave SA over "crippling mistake" Jobs hardships: didn't know his real father, never felt belonged to the adoptive family, no support network had to go his own way, had child early and paid for the "crippling mistake" of abandoning that family, no money in 1976 Bezos hardships: didn't know his real father, bullied in high school, had kids early, made plenty of mistakes Others: Keanu Reeves, Meghan Markle, you think you can take these people and just say, "they had it easy, the cream floats to the top", any woman who's been successful (has to have 10x the grit of men to move through all the shit they get), any person who gets successful (has to have 10x the grit of non-successful people to get there, and stay there). Again, I'm sorry this is not at you, but this story that poor stops people, is such a broken story.

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ackbar03 6y ago

While I agree to some extent with the point your trying to make, the way you phrase and portray this sounds like more of an excuse than a strong argument. >Because they have family obligations that take priority This is on you. If your serious about it you should see this coming. Elons familial situation isn't exactly all flowers and roses. A lot of my friends who managed to start successful business started yong precisely because they saw this coming and new it would be difficult to do with a family. I would argue the exception is if you have parents who are sick or need heavy financial support or whatever. If this is the case, would be a fair argument in favor of being rich (or at least middle class) helps you get rich. >Because they live outside high-income countries I would argue this goes both ways. If anything a lot of countries are trying to pile into developing countries now cause that's where the growth is. Similarly I used to work in hk where living costs are absurd. Then I was relocated to China and after a while I quite my job to try my own thing because it was affordable to take the risk. You could live decently by being frugal with some savings and the benefit is still vastly in favor of being an owner than an employee. Access to education might be a differentiator but so many things are available for free online now. >Because they have no access to support network, so when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom I think this is related to two somewhat. It's also totally feasible to position yourself so that even if you fail you can still land on your feet, you just have to be conscious of it. >Because they may have made a crippling mistake in their pasts that now prevents them from reaching their full potential Again this is the same for everyone and is on you personally. Don't do anything stupid. But like I said, I generally agree that being rich or middle class definitely helps you become rich, but if you can go on and on about all these reasons your probably want to adjust your mindset as well

d_silin 6y ago
Well, I don't want to present my view in an absolutist manner, but there is a lot of survivorship bias in success stories. People tend not to note positive environment factors if they lived all their lives with them. And if you got burned through externalities beyond your control, you tend to be a bit sceptical on fairness of the game. Last, but not the least - "don't do anything stupid" is easy post-hoc, but think of your teenage mistakes and consequences of "doing stupid" during those years.
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jiofih 6y ago
Your mention of Musk should raise an alarm to your sense of reality. He comes from a well off family, moved to Canada at 17 to attend university. This alone already puts him at the top 1% of humanity in terms of privilege. Then he went on to attend Stanford... Not that it takes away from any of his achievements, but you are failing hard at realizing what things actually look like. > It's also totally feasible to position yourself so that even if you fail you can still land on your feet, you just have to be conscious of it This is the famous “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” said by someone who’s obviously never had to.
- ackbar03 6y ago
  My point about musk was more about his own children and relationships and how "family obligations" should be an obvious consideration if you want to start your own company. You shouldn't really complain about it after the fact. But fair enough, I'm not going to argue too much. Reading through the comments it seems that access to decent education and a stable family seems to be a generous assumption for many people around the world. I would say where I grow up in Asia, cases of abusive/dysfunctional families tends to be less than the west, and people in general have decent access to and awareness of the importance of education. There are a fair number of successful entrepreneurs who used to be villagers, mostly because a fairly large portion of people were farmers back then
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ironman1478 6y ago

This. Poverty doesn't just cause immediate issues it can also cause long term issues that can effect not only adults, but the children who grew up in that environment. This is largely because families in poverty tend to also abuse their kids at higher rates (this includes mental abuse) or at least foster an extremely unhealthy environment due to the stress it causes. So even a generation later it can be difficult for a family tree to be lifted out of that situation. It's brutal not having a support system in place for people. What sucks is that it's probably bad for overall productivity to not help people in these situations, but the usa has chosen to say screw it for many years (hopefully that is changing). Imo forget being "rich", just growing up in a relatively sane environment is an advantage.

reader_mode 6y ago
I grew up in a family of 7 (4 younger siblings), during civil war, father was into gamling and drinking, mother was unemployed and constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown (understandable given the conditions she was living in). To paint the picture, I have vivid memories of vomiting a boiled onion I ate after not eating for days (I think I was arround 5 years old). And we were poor well into my early 20s untill I left home. It took a long time to get out of that, and material problems were an issue for sure, but I would say the biggest obstacle for me was that I had no rolemodel and was forced to discover everything on my own. In retrospect I had plenty of opportunities to get out of my situation way earlier and I could have done a lot of things better, and it was pretty common sense to most normal/functioning people - but I didn't have a lot of those arround me. And that wouldn't change if you gave my parents money - after my grandparents died my mother inherited some land and a house, in a year she managed to squander it away with terrible spending decisions and no long term planning (coupled with the sense of entitlement and expectation that things will just work out). I also never viewed school as something relevant, teachers were hardly authoritative figures (from my perspective their job was to babysit me and they were poorly paid - why would I accept them as authority on anything). So I don't think it's something you can solve with money alone, having functional parents is always going to set you up to do better in life.
- onion2k 6y ago

mulcahey 6y ago

But is the portion of people without those restrictions increasing or decreasing? How would you measure it?

d_silin 6y ago
In the US at least, it is definitely decreasing. Income inequality is growing, as the original essay noted.
- solveit 6y ago
  Increasing income inequality does not necessarily imply that. In fact, the US poverty rate has been more or less stable for the past 50 years[1]. And the worldwide poverty rate is dropping like a stone. [1] To be clear, I very much view this as a failure given how much richer the US has become in the same period. Nevertheless, it is not true (or at least not clear) that the portion of people who are able to actualize their potential is falling.
  - ludocode 6y ago
    This statistic is misleading. The U.S. government defines the poverty line based on a 1955 model of spending patterns. It's completely inadequate for modern needs. The poverty line for a family of four is defined as a household income of $26,200. Any reasonable person knows it's impossible to pay rent and feed and clothe two adults and two kids on less than $2200 a month. Nevermind owning a home, having a car, saving for emergencies or retiring. Yet the U.S. government does not consider that to be poverty. From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold#Cutoff_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold#Cutoff_issue... > Most experts and the public agree that the official poverty line in the United States is substantially lower than the actual cost of basic needs. In particular, a 2017 Urban Institute study found that 61% of non-elderly adults earning between 100–200% of the poverty line reported at least one material hardship, not significantly different from those below the poverty line. The cause of the discrepancy is believed to be an outdated model of spending patterns based on actual spending in the year 1955; the number and proportion of material needs has risen substantially since then. The reality is that poverty in the U.S. is increasing. It has been for decades.

atweiden 6y ago

> And so on and on. While I would still recommend everyone to pursue the dreams over never trying to do so - being poor is the single most powerful force that prevents people from doing that. IMO this is what offsets the dystopia of the coming human IPO market. Many millions of humans would economically benefit from having their own board of directors.

EvilEy3 6y ago

> Because they have family obligations that take priority. Is that "I have kids!" I hear now? > Because they live outside high-income countries. Well then move to high-income country. > Because they have no access to support network, so when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom. That's unfortunate, but that's life. A lot of people don't have that safety. And not all of them are poor. > Because they may have made a crippling mistake in their pasts that now prevents them from reaching their full potential. That's also part of a "potential". I "potentially" could've been next Ali, Tyson or Lomachenko, I'm not. Is that because if my mistake, or mistake of my parents or who else? > And so on and on. While I would still recommend everyone to pursue the dreams over never trying to do so - being poor is the single most powerful force that prevents people from doing that. What you're describing is not poor, it is unfortunate.

yladiz 6y ago
> I "potentially" could've been next Ali, Tyson or Lomachenko, I'm not. Is that because if my mistake, or mistake of my parents or who else? It's unfortunate, but yes it's your mistake and your mistake alone, not any outside factor like genetics. You should work harder, get stronger, be better to reach your potential and achieve the dream.
- EvilEy3 6y ago
  A) you have no idea about my genetics, but you assumed for some reason that I was limited by it B) not sure what your sarcasm means in this case, that chances of me becoming next Tyson are non-existent? I acknowledge that, and found passion in something else. And you don't see me complaining everywhere that it is Tyson's problem that I didn't become world champion in boxing. Like it is a zero sum game somehow.
- LightG 6y ago
  You have a very limited idea of what it takes for people to reach their potential.
danillonunes 6y ago
> Well then move to high-income country. You can't just take an Uber to a rich country. You have to do a lot of work to get there. All that work is wasted years compared to someone who was just born there in the first place and can focus 100% on their actual path of getting rich.

rypskar 6y ago

And a lot of people who are as smart and motivated will start their own company but will not get rich because they are not as lucky. Luck play a big part in success

dmitriid 6y ago
The more money you have the luckier you are.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  Are you sure? From what I see around me, people who have money are a constant target of other people who want to drop their beaks into it, so to say. Starting with distant relatives that got into trouble and suddenly found a familial love for them, continuing with various false friends, gold diggers of both sexes and people hustling investment opportunities. Ending with lawyers and doctors who might induce you to undergo procedures that are more expensive, but not necessarily in the best interest for you. The price for being rich is being on constant alert and distrust against "luck" that isn't really luck, but a veiled threat. Edit: OK, I get it, not everywhere is Eastern Europe. Countries with old money have systems in place that mitigate this problem. (Although I am not so sure about mafia-heavy countries like Italy.)
  - mordae 6y ago
    Yes. Having extra cash means you can eat out (saves 1+ hour a day), buy an automated vacuum, dishwasher (extra 30 minutes a day), get a car or use taxi (1-2 hours, depending on location), hire a personal assistant (better organization, hard to estimate), get better medical care (less pain = better concentration)... You also have access to specialists. You can hire a lawyer, people to help you with research, people to help you present yourself on social media. In the end, you can extend your day and improve your productivity significantly, resulting in more hours available "to get lucky" effectively. I mean, being lucky when washing dishes does not help a lot, but being lucky when shopping for business opportunities...
    - 6y ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

"A lot of people who are just as smart and motivated as ..." Wealth is not synonymous with intelligence. And certainly not with motivation. A lot of people who are wealthy will never be as smart as ... nor as motivated.

input_sh 6y ago
I'm always reminded of this quote by Stephen Jay Gould: > I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

lordnacho 6y ago

The thing that I'd expand upon is the support network. Somehow I have a wider range of friends and family than most people, and the thing that is missing from this conversation is that most people by far don't know anyone wealthy, especially if they're not themselves wealthy. The issue with that isn't just the money and connections themselves. There's a cultural gap of "I couldn't do that, only people on TV do that" whether it's starting a startup or pursuing one of those one in a million type careers like acting or sports. There's a risk behaviour that is also affected by background. Basically you're pushed to not take too much risk: your parents' entire productive output has gone into your education, you can't just take a chance on it. Case in point is my family. The parents all got spread around the world as refugees back in the 1970s. Everyone worked really hard but they told their kids to go the safe route. I have a cluster of cousins in the bay area, what do they do? None of them do startups. Doctors, nurses, and Google.

goatinaboat 6y ago
I have a cluster of cousins in the bay area, what do they do? None of them do startups. Doctors, nurses, and Google. I wouldn't describe this as risk-averse behaviour. The simple fact is in the modern startup ecosystem, even if the startup has a successful exit, even early stage engineers will see very little wealth having been massively diluted, and would have been much, much better off having worked for an established company over the same time period. An early stage employee takes all the risk but all the reward goes to the founders and the VCs. It's not worth it.
- lordnacho 6y ago
  Maybe I should have expanded upon it. When I went to visit SF with a startup, I naturally thought one of my dozen cousins in the area would know someone who did something with one of the many startups in the world's startup capital. They don't just not work in startups, they seem to not have any connections to it. Granted, I didn't do a thorough survey, but if they knew someone in a prominent firm I think they'd have told me. Which is kinda surprising, but I guess for all the noise they make it's still a pretty small network.

kortilla 6y ago

So? Is this somehow related to the fact that getting rich by creating these companies is now an option? Just because you can think of 99 reasons people can’t do this doesn’t mean app people shouldn’t.

emmanueloga_ 6y ago

Agreed. It is not only about discrete circumstances ... environment also nurtures and affects development of people over time. Being exposed to better odds over time is also a factor (ppl that were able to create good networks in their youth vs ppl that somehow "made it" later in life...).

namelosw 6y ago

100% Agree. Just add another point: Rich people with supportive networks of course can pursuit their goals easier. Occasionally people from not very good families can do this as well because they're so screwed by the environment and tried to get rid of everything in (the book 'Masters of DOOM' is an example assuming it doesn't try to be too dramatic). It's much harder to do the same as middle classes with a lot of life obligations, distractions, and most importantly they are by default need to follow linear career developments - it's much harder to be adventurous to had drastic improvement compared to previous categories.

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olalonde 6y ago

Of course all of that is true but it's irrelevant because you have to take a systemic view when talking about economics. The fact is that capitalism and entrepreneurship, while not fair in the cosmic sense you present it, is the best system we have for creating wealth for both the poor and the rich.

Firadeoclus 6y ago
There are many knobs and levers. The extent to which it harnesses "capitalism and entrepreneurship" for wealth creation is not the only thing defining an economic system, and arguably the poor are not best served by maximising capitalism and entrepreneurship.

3327 6y ago

Gotta love blog posts piggy backing PG's thesis and recycling it.

randomsearch 6y ago

I agree, but I’d add that hard working talented people can still do great things without money and despite difficulties. It’s just that the reach or scale is amplified by the money. Money and opportunity are amplifiers. You can be the “Elon musk” of your world, that is you can hit the ceiling of what you were offered. Don’t compare yourself to Elon musk, compare yourself to what was possible for you. Maybe that’s depressing for some people but I see it as liberating.

ddelt 6y ago
It might be more liberating if the success narrative in the US focused on relative success instead of “absolute” success. But afaik and have seen in my life thus far, the people everyone knows, worships, or revered for their <INSERT_ACCOMPLISHMENT> are 95% of the time the absolute best (sports star, movie star, fortune 50 CEO, bigwig politician, superstar dev, most well known doctor, most fancy medical practice in the US/world, etc)

noxer 6y ago

Half of that is caused by their own past decisions and the other half by their own present decision to not put 100% of their effort into changing it. >being poor is the single most powerful force that prevents people from doing that. IMO absolutely wrong. The real reason is people dont try and risk it all. And they search for reasons why they would not be able to make it, including the oh so unfair starting points in this "game". Yes its unfair very very unfair even. But it is so for almost everyone. And more importantly it can not be changed and even if it would, it would not retroactively have an effect on existing people. Everyone has one life and the number one reason to not reach a set goal is if it was not set and not attempted. You can make up all the good reasons why you would not attempt it because life is unfair but that doesn't change the fact that you yourself reduced your chance to reach it to zero by your own decision to let circumvention stop you from trying. >Because they have no access to support network, so when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom. Failing is an possibility if you try, if you dont, its certain. Also what exactly is so "scary" about failing? Do people think they end up homeless under a bridge or something? I see a practically zero chance that could ever happen to someone who fights. You need to have some serious mental health problems and probably drugs to fall this deep. And given that health in unfair too you may get this anyway so even more reason to get yourself in a poison where health problems wont make you fall to the bottom. Ive financially failed before, as long as zero is the bottom (I dont make debts) is just a setback its not stopping me. I certainly had a good start in life but money was never given to me. I started form zero as a teenager and I almost went back to zero in my early twenties partially do to circumstances outside of my control partially due to bad decisions. I could have another 50 years trying so why would that stop me. My goals a higher than ever and the speed at which I chase them only got faster.

EliRivers 6y ago
Also what exactly is so "scary" about failing? Do people think they end up homeless under a bridge or something? I see a practically zero chance that could ever happen to someone who fights. You need to have some serious mental health problems and probably drugs to fall this deep. Well this is just not true. You have a fantasy view of life that does not ally with reality.

golemiprague 6y ago

How many people become Jobs or Musk anyway? You need a lot of stars to align in order to get to this level. What matters is how most of the population is doing, not some very extreme people on the edge of the bell curve. I also don't think being poor is the end of the world, there are many poor people who manage to change their position within one generation, like poor new immigrants, and many middle class who fall back to poverty like many black families. Money doesn't solve inherent problem in the family and community.

agumonkey 6y ago

Veritasium had a video about success vs luck and survivor bias. There's a bit of that here too. That said, I'd love to have a graph or model (or book even) to describe the tipping point at which things become increasingly better and easier. I observed that in the crypto bubble. Once you lifted off (fortune by accident maybe) you can comfortably ride the game from the back seat and pick what kind of new wealth you're gonna pick up this month.

0wis 6y ago
This ! So much easier to hussle if you have a clear goal in mind. The threshold to « wealth » should be clearer. FIRE « levels » seems a good approximation but more detailed studies would be great.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  Honestly I wasn't even trying to make it easier to get rich but so that everybody can understand how easy some have it and how hard other may have it. It's difficult to understand unless you lived in it, and I only had a small taste of the bad. Urgency forces you to lower places where you get less and less acceptable conditions and you don't even have time to think about getting rich.
agumonkey 6y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I video url

WalterBright 6y ago

It's never been easier to start a company in the US. All you need is a computer. You can create a product on it and reach a worldwide audience, all for free. As for Jobs, he started Apple for a few hundred bucks. It's a pretty low bar.

zimpenfish 6y ago
> All you need is a computer. Plus free time. Plus motivation and energy which is probably in short supply when you've already done 8 hours in a supermarket / your second job / a full day of childcare / etc. > a few hundred bucks. It's a pretty low bar. For a lot of people in the US, a few hundred bucks is the difference between eating that month and going without. Or being able to pay the rent and not be evicted. Or being able to afford transport to/from their job.
- taurath 6y ago
  Of course they’re not talking about “those people”, aka the 63% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. When the ultra rich speak they’re only speaking to the upper middle 40%. We love a good rags to riches story but economic class changes less in the US than many other countries, despite this “ease”. Show me any group of founders and you can point to a few outliers but people who have had jobs like grocery store clerk by and large do not go on to make a business. The bar is lowered enough for upper middle class only, with few exceptions.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    > 63% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck That doesn't mean they're poor. I've known many, many people with zero savings living paycheck to paycheck. They had new cars, nice houses, good furniture, expensive clothes, took vacations, and ate regularly at restaurants. They simply spent it all.
    - TheButlerian 6y ago
      Get cancer and die

euske 6y ago

> when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom. Thank you for this. I love when HN provides a view outside a typical Western middle-class cohort. At a larger scale, I think the same thing could be said to an entire society. In a poor society, your small mistake might lead to loss of healthcare, loss of voting rights, arrest by secret police, mob lynching, public shaming, or other forms of social bullying. There are many rich people who live in such a society, but they're always in a somewhat precarious position. I don't envy that.

deepGem 6y ago

Yet, there are many examples of those who made big from rags to riches. Am not talking about movie stars but business tycoons. Carol Bartz, Dhirubai Ambani, Naval Ravikant, Chamath to name a few. Bartz for instance "Bartz was born in Winona, Minnesota. After losing her mother at a young age, she moved with her brother to her grandparent's farm in Alma, Wisconsin. She took a job at a bank at age 15 to help support her family. Good grades in high school earned her a scholarship to William Woods, a prestigious all-girls college in Missouri. She transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked her way through college as a waitress. In 1971, she earned her degree in computer science." Being poor can work as the single most powerful force for people to get out of poverty and pursue their dreams. Not to be rude, but for those who want to find excuses will find excuses. Those who want to break out and go get things done, will find no excuses.

EliRivers 6y ago
"Those who want to break out and go get things done, will find no excuses." Bullshit. Many people are constrained by things they cannot control.
- deepGem 6y ago
  No doubt. Things out of your control are not excuses.
  - jes 6y ago
    What things are truly within your control?
    - deepGem 6y ago
      For one poverty. I believe it is in your control to crawl yourself out of poverty, may be not in childhood but in your high school or once you turn 18. Am not saying everyone should become rich but you don't have to be poor. Your mind is in your control. Keeping your body and brain healthy is in your control but for medical conditions though.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

Success is 100% luck.

bouncycastle 6y ago
You still need to make an effort turn up though.
saint_abroad 6y ago
> Success is 100% luck. If that were the case, then there would be no disparity.* * That is, unless luck is a function of circumstance. Which is kind of the point of the OP.
ZephyrBlu 6y ago
That's a very cynical perspective. How did you come to believe that?

varispeed 6y ago

If you are born poor it is extremely difficult to escape poverty, especially because of high taxes that you are going to experience as soon as your education and determination lands you a good job. This severely inhibits your means to save or to invest. The progressive taxation is like a back-stop to keep everyone in check and prevent people from going up the class ladder. Meanwhile the rich, that are supposed to be the target of progressive tax, laugh and carry on paying very little.

southerntofu 6y ago
Taxes isn't the reason why more people aren't richer. In fact, taxes is the reason why more people aren't poorer, because they pay for essential social services. At least in most countries, when receiving hospital bills you're not afraid to end up with crippling debt. The reason more people aren't richer is because of private property and the capitalist system. As a whole, humanity is pretty rich and is severely destroying the environment to make sure of that. Only a fucked up economic system with all the wrong incentives makes sure some people starve when we produce more food than needed to feed the entire population, sleep on the streets when there's millions of empty/abandoned housing units, etc. So, to be honest with you, i don't think taxes is the solution, because as long as money and private property are a thing, taxes will only be a band-aid on this cancer. Arguably, taxes are also often misused to fund more human misery in the form of military and police services and other harmful institutions we should entirely get rid of. But i would say claiming high taxes is responsible for poverty is really missing the point of how capitalism works.
- throwaways885 6y ago
  Give a viable alternative that doesn't descend into fascism. Capitalism is called the 'least worst' system for a reason, and some countries have an excellent QoL under it.
  - allendoerfer 6y ago
    Social market economy. Socializing some things does not mean you have to put up red flags everywhere, hold big party meetings and kill all the intellectuals. You can still keep markets where they make sense and outcompete others in a global capitalist system. Extremists are always wrong.

bambax 6y ago

Yeah, but income and/or wealth inequality is a problem in itself, and that's what libertarians such as PG don't understand (or refuse to consider). It doesn't matter if wealth acquisition was "fair" or "warranted". It doesn't matter if the process that allowed wealth to be acquired resulted in a net gain for society. When a group of people become incredibly more wealthy than the general population, their interests diverge and it breaks society apart. It's even worse when said group is not diverse but is instead composed of just the same privileged people as it has always been.

kypro 6y ago

Not that I disagree with anything you said necessarily, but it's so much more complicated than this. Sometimes being less fortunate is what motivates people to become rich. The truth is I had a huge amount of stuff holding me back as a child, and still do, but imo that is why I managed to succeed (relatively at least) where others I knew who had similar intelligence and better backgrounds did not. Even in my own family the difference between my sister and myself is massive, she's probably in the bottom 10% and I'm probably in the top 1-2%, yet she has almost the exact same background as myself. Being poor might just be the single greatest motivator. It also teaches people a lot of valuable lessons for acquiring wealth such as how to save and ration. If you look at wealth statistics in the UK some of the wealthy people here are immigrants or second generation immigrants from India and East Asia which doesn't really fit with this narrative of rich people get rich, while poor people stay poor. I understand sometimes people are so unlucky that the obstacles in front of them are insurmountable, but I also don't think this paints a full picture. I also generally agree with the article, although I think it's easy to criticise without providing answers. It would have been nice to see some suggestions on how to fix the problem of wealth inequality, because unfortunately many of the popular solutions (raising taxes, expanding welfare programs, etc) could just make things worse.

catears 6y ago
I think there is some truth to this. Obviously too complicated subject for me to understand everything, but I wanted to add my own experience. One of the most motivating things I did to get a well-paying job and work hard to earn it was by having a deadend job as a kid. There is nothing that has motivated me to study hard as much as the realization that some people will be stuck stacking boxes their entire life. Motivation makes a big difference, but obviously those who always think about how to make rent and still have food on the table don't always have the opportunity to live a better life...
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Being poor is only a motivator for an incredibly tiny number of people who are probably prone to risk-taking anyway. The unfortunate reality is that some of them shade into outright narcissism. https://www.psypost.org/2021/02/narcissists-make-their-way-to-ceo-positions-faster-than-their-counterparts-study-finds-59517 https://www.psypost.org/2021/02/narcissists-make-their-way-t... It's vastly easier to become rich if you don't care about employees, customers, tenants, and co-workers, or if you can persuade yourself that people who don't take risks and succeed are somehow inherently morally inferior and deficient. In fact a good safety net is likely to increase entrepreneurial activity, because it makes it possible to fail into a safety net instead of failing into homelessness and catastrophe. Tax increases are a separate issue. But generally wealth inequality is politically as well as financially toxic. You want to reward smart, clever, inventive individuals. But you do also want to make sure they don't automatically get privileged legal or ethical treatment which encourages destructive narcissistic and authoritarian behaviours in the culture as a whole.

deleted 6y ago

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hnbad 6y ago

It's somewhat "ironic" that pg seemingly has a blind spot on this when the norm for startups is to start with a "family and friends" funding round. Most people don't have family and friends able to lend them a few thousand dollars, let alone tens of thousands, to invest in a complete moonshot (given that we all agree that most startups fail, i.e. lose the investment). This makes the startup scene extremely self-selecting. Even if you pretend that Elon Musk is a rags to riches story because he says he had to sleep in the office when he started out, he wouldn't have had the millions of dollars to invest in Tesla if he hadn't had an extremely lucky exit with Global Link and then again with X.com. Not to mention that he had previous access to both UPenn and Stanford, which also means massive networking opportunities (assuming he had access to those networks, which again requires a certain inherited status).

qazpot 6y ago

On HN I see the sentiment that you expressed a lot of times. I live in a country which will be categorized by western countries as a developing country. There is no social support system in my country, you are pretty much on your own. Nobody is coming to help you. And I have made serious mistakes when I was in school which resulted in not being able to go to a good college which makes things in my country ten times more harder. Even today if I were to apply to a good company (There are Google, Amazon Dev centers in my country), my resume would not get through the first pass, because I do not have a good college name on my resume. I make 5 times what my school mates and my college mates make, which makes me a lot more successful, atleast financially. When I meet anyone from my school or college they tell me the same things that you are writing here. They attribute my success to - Having no family obligations - Which is BS, My parents are middle class, I have been taking care of them since I got a job. Having good parents, support network - I have zero support from my parents, they were downright abusive. Since, I have been a teenager, there has not been one week where my father has not told me that I will be failure in life. My mother tried to pressure me to commit suicide on numerous occastions. Getting Lucky - I had the same education that my peers had, same economic level. Same razor thin opportunites that they had. The only differentiator is that whatever tiny opportunity I got however small, I fought tooth and nail to capitalize on it. Worked for 15 hours every day, only 5 hour sleep. Ate one meal a day to save money and time. I hate it when people like you, my school friends, my college friends try to attibute it to some external factor. You will attibute my success to anything in the world, except my relentless hardwork. I have taken huge risks whose downside was total ruin. There is no social security checks, some benevolent relative waiting for me to fail. If I fail, I die, my family will perish. That's how high the stakes are. Everything I had, I earned it with blood, sweat and tears. I have spent 12 hours coding in high fever just to make the release. I will close off this rant with one last statement. It all comes to down to how much you want and how much are will sacrifice and work hard for it. Rest are just excuses. This sounds like a motivational cliche but it is true.

foxhill 6y ago
congratulations. that truly sounds awful, and i'm glad you've got this far so we can even have this discussion. without attempting to belittle your story, i'd place a large bet that for every one of you, there are tens - if not hundreds - of people with a better start/more luck in life, that have worked harder than you, and have less than you do.

ozim 6y ago

Why people are doing this? How can you compare Elon or Steve Jobs wealth level to well anyone? There are CEO's of successful companies that worked their whole lives and never got to that level. Aiming for that is well crippling. People should aim to have a good life...

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
What's a good life? I know what I want from life, and what it costs, and I don't want extravagance. I don't have the capital to spend the 4-12 years training to increase my earning potential. My lack of capital is no fault of my own, I lost the womb lottery, why must I be relegated to live a meager life toiling for decades and have nothing to show for it while these billionaires you mentioned steal more money in a month than I'll see in 10 lifetimes?
- ozim 6y ago
  Why do you focus on these billionaires? There are literally scum people who sell drugs, are working on human trafficking and chop people heads off to be billionaires, maybe you want to focus your anger more on people like Pablo Escobar than Bill Gates?
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
    Every billionaire is a failure of government, culture, and society. Pablo Escobar is dead, why should I waste my breath on a corpse? Bill Gates behaves like a king, moving his pawns around the world, controlling people and resources in a way that Hitler could not even imagine. Zuckerberg benefits from, enables, and has helped fascists take power, commit genocides, and mislead hundreds of millions-billions of people while having a direct hand on scales of public discourse the world over. Musk is an imperialist technofacist. So, I guess a better question, is why do you revere these sociopaths and not the more overt ones too? What's the difference between idolizing a child pump, drug dealer, hit man, or racketeer and a person that treats their staff as slaves, or one who funds experimentation on humans in the third world, or who leverages their capital to coup a democratic government for natural resources? They're all the same scum to me. No amount of money spent on PR will erase the harm they caused to get their plunder. >No amount of charity and spending such fortunes can compensate in any way for the misconduct in acquiring them. -Teddy Roosevelt General background reading/listening https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-45-the-not-so-benevolent-billionaire-bill-gates-and-western-media-b1f8e0fe092f https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-45-the-not-so-ben...

api 6y ago

I agree, but I don't see a solution on the present political landscape. Free enterprise seems to allow some tiny fraction of such highly motivated geniuses to excel, lets say 0.0000001%. Other systems seem to allow 0% of these people to excel, or at least to do so anywhere near their full potential. The comparison seems to be between a horrible system where almost nobody can excel and more horrible systems where absolutely nobody can excel. You occasionally get historical anomalies where bureaucratic or authoritarian states innovate, such as when the state machinery of the US and USSR raced to the Moon or the burst of innovation in Nazi Germany. In that case the forcing function was war (or Cold War in the US/USSR sense), and war seems the only thing capable of motivating bureaucracies. I guess the other source of historical anomalies is when you have the explicit blessing of a king or someone really close to the throne, but the bandwidth for that is strictly limited and you often get long periods of idiot kings where nothing happens. Without war or extreme will at the top all you get is meetings to plan the meeting to do a study on the effectiveness of more meetings. In more militaristic/fascist state regimes you also get a perpetual "game of thrones" at the upper echelons. Maybe what we need is a more egalitarian socialist system coupled with a perpetual threat of alien invasion? Wait... isn't this sort of how you got the Star Trek socialist utopia? We need some Klingons. Edit: the trouble, I think, is that innovation and achievement are antisocial. We often like the result, but the act is always a form of rebellion. It's often a rebellion limited to the mind of the actor, but it's rebellion nonetheless. All human social systems act to suppress deviance, so what you need for innovation is a system that tolerates deviance and manages to do so in a peaceful way. Interdependent social structures of any kind suppress rebellion and channel human effort into social game playing such as the "meetings about meetings" and "game of thrones" phenomena I mentioned. Capitalism is the only system I know of that allows non-violent antisocial acts of innovation at scale. By violence in this context I am including lies, bureaucratic subterfuge, and fraud. (Yes you do get those in capitalism but they're not required. There is a way to get there without them.) In all the other systems you have to hack your way out of the social jungle with a machete to innovate... or you have to be king and there's only one of those. In any other system Elon Musk would probably have had to engineer a coup at the space agency by getting its present head thrown in prison for "corruption" (as they do in China) to assume his position and have an opportunity to get Falcon or Starship built. To get them across the finish line he'd probably have to focus a great deal of his energy on planting knives in the backs of his bureaucratic challengers. There would be only one space agency so there would be only one such throne to fight over, so if Elon's approach failed there would be no Blue Origin or RocketLab. Basically we suck at politics. Every political system is horrible. I think this is largely because politics is still pre-scientific. We think in terms of political ideologies (fantasies more or less) dreamed up in an irrational evidence-free manner by arrogant mountebanks or populist meme wars. Instead we should start with game theory. AFAIK game theory and simulation have never even been leveraged to cook up a hypothetical political system.

downandout 6y ago

You left out the most significant reason: that most people just aren't as lucky as those guys. In the US, you can become a millionaire through hard work and dedication and not much luck. However, there is nowhere that you can become a billionaire without tremendous luck. Amassing that type of wealth depends on many other people embracing your ideas, and random events that are entirely beyond your control working out in your favor. There are ways to improve your odds of reaching this level of success - if you never start a business, your odds are zero. But luck is the ultimate decider of who becomes a "self-made" billionaire out of those that are actively trying to become one.

dkdbejwi383 6y ago

I think also coming from "humble" beginnings can mean you're happy to "settle for less" as some may see it. I'm a mid-level developer, reasonably successful, with one bachelor's degree, and a modest home I bought. Some folk might not see that as much and want to achieve more, but I am already much better off than I imagined I'd be 15 years ago, growing up in a financially poor family in council housing.

credit_guy 6y ago

It's easy to tell yourself you are as good as Musk or Jobs or Bezos. And comforting. But there's also the possibility that they are truly different. More talented, more focused, more hard working, more driven. And more willing to take risks. I don't know any of these guys, but I know plenty of people who got much farther in life than me because they were simply better than me in some respect. I also know some people who got farther by pure luck, but the thing is, when I look around me, I find more cases of merit- than luck-based advancement. So, yes, this, or that or that can hold you back in life. But, conversely, when you don't succeed in life, we always find excuses, don't we? It's never "I wasted hours on social media sites", it's "I didn't have the same connections as Gates".

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Even if you aren't the most talented and smartest person, having the advantages they did would still almost certainly mean you'd be in a better position then you would be without them.

specialist 6y ago

> family obligations that take priority There's a severe lack of small businesses in the USA. Totally fixable. So many low hanging fruit. Affordable health insurance and childcare would be revolutionary. I forfeited my fledgling software startup, just as it started to gain traction, once we got pregnant. I needed insurance for my family. For decades, young parents have struggled with health insurance, day care, and other really basic stuff. 30 years ago, cost of childcare was ridiculous, and very hard to find. Today, it's completely insane. Of course new business formation is at historical lows. (Pre-pandemic, of course, in anticipation of the inevitable pedantry.)

mattacular 6y ago

All this is true but you've left out an even big key differentiator: most people cannot get a 250,000$ "business loan" from their mom and dad like eg. Bezos did.

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago

One of example that pops into my mind watching Elon Mush show, he said something along the lines "it is not difficult to get money there is plenty of money and investors who want to invest, I can just turn few phone and I will have investment of few hundred millions". Because hast that type of the network. For me and probably most of the people I know, I do not know where to begin, most average income people networks are not investors type, so we do not have a clue, where to even find people who are willing to listen for a five minute pitch, without feeling that you are begging for money... In that regard poor or middle class will never be the same as rich, it is amount of struggling to keep up the daily needs. If rich person gets bankrupt, he can easily bounce back, with connections he has, he can turn few phone calls and again pop up on the ladder, issue with other people they are not even close to ladder, until you get to ladder, there is path through swamp, forest, dark cave, and dragon on two ...

toomuchredbull 6y ago

For someone as smart as Elon Musk to never be able to start their own companies they really have to be born in a real shit hole country, in a real shit hole part of the country. Even in India or China they would be identified and given opportunity.

gadf 6y ago

I'm sorry but this is consolations for the losers. This will sound really harsh and I'm not directing it at you (except where I say "you") but at this kind of tall tale I see a lot. If they (in the above story) were so smart and motivated (towards starting corps and getting rich), why'd they: Make a family and let that get in the way of that? Not H1B or student-visa / postgrad it to "high-income countries"? Not cultivate and create their support network? Not overcome "crippling" mistake? And so on? And endless list of weak excuses for why they'll only ever be mediocre, but hey, they're just as smart as Elon Must and Steve Jobs. That idea can buzz off. If they were, they'd be doing like them. Did Musk and Jobs always "have it easy"? No, they got back up. Take 100 Musk and Jobs clones, I think only 25 will make it to the same approximate place they did. The rest will get done in by random stuff, and scattered across various levels of successful but not super successful. But I think only 1 or 2 will be "failures" or "average people" without any major success. That's the character of these people. Succeed anywhere. But the "story" about it in the above comment, this story make it like choices don't matter. A story to excuse "they"s own failure. A smug content, well, "coulda shoulda woulda" while wrongly taking the responsibility away from "they" and the "Musks and Jobses" for what they each got. Consolation that disempowers. It's bad to do so. To tell people "poor is a state that something else decided for you. You have not much power to escape." A person I think must have had it so easy to never have to work out how much you can accomplish if you commit and persevere. This sort of "smug, content, rich country attitude" that people in "high income countries" can afford to take, because everything, even the "poor levels" are so comfortable. Easy times, so they never have to get pushed to learn to take themselves higher. Symptom of privilege and an easy, unchallenged life to have these armchair opinions that success is meted out by powerful forces outside the ken of individuals and their choices. If one comes from adversity, one is more likely to learn their own power. But the easy-rich-country folk can choose to give themselves adversity to make up for this. Sad to see delusions like the above story. This delusion is the poverty of privilege, a sickness of the easy-riding armchair theorists content to coast through effortless existence. Adversity does crush, and does demoralize, but I bet you 10 folk from "low income countries" have twice the mettle, grit and heart that 100 folks from easy-riding "high income countries" with their easy excuses, and zero-cost "regrets" can afford. Give me 10 of the first lot anyday, better than the whining mewling of ne'er-do-wells too lucky to know how impoverished they really are in spirit, and how much they could have accomplished had they wanted it more. Heavy sigh. All these loser excuses the above "story" describes here pathetic and not the stuff that these "Musks and Jobses" would let get in their way. I think from the way you write about it, you have no idea. I think you, and many others, are blind to the absolute smug arrogance (and waste via consoling thinking) of telling yourself sure that guy could be as good as Musk but he didn't set it up that way, and made all these mistakes he couldn't recover from, is blaming externalities when he had choices. How dare you take that from them. How dare you take that from yourself. What you chose. Musk's hardships: awful father, abusive father-son relationship, no SA support network, social anxiety, had to leave SA over "crippling mistake" Jobs hardships: didn't know his real father, never felt belonged to the adoptive family, no support network had to go his own way, had child early and paid for the "crippling mistake" of abandoning that family, no money in 1976 Bezos hardships: didn't know his real father, bullied in high school, had kids early, made plenty of mistakes Others: Keanu Reeves, Meghan Markle, you think you can take these people and just say, "they had it easy, the cream floats to the top", any woman who's been successful (has to have 10x the grit of men to move through all the shit they get), any person who gets successful (has to have 10x the grit of non-successful people to get there, and stay there). Again, I'm sorry this is not at you, but this story that poor stops people, is such a broken story.