Yea indeed. This is very important to remember. Without financial backing and connections, most businesses don’t go very far.
I think we should shatter these “started in the garage” myths as they do in this article. The average family doesn’t earn enough to give their kids a good enough education or finance their dreams.
Hence most people end up doing some or other job they loath, for the rest of their lives.
Starbucks CEO Howard Schulz grew up in a Brooklyn Housing project, George Soros survived the holocaust and worked waiting tables, David Murdock of Dole Foods was homeless. There’s tons of examples.
Here’s a fun article that ranks the whole Fortune 400 list. 80% of them inherited their wealth or at least grew up middle class.
Jeff Bezos actually scores high on the list because his Mom had him when he was 17, he flipped burgers in high school and by and large did not grow up rich.
Now how many are utter psychopaths (or “just” people without empathy)?
They’re an evil bunch and that’s about it IMO. Don’t kill them or anything but being able to have already a Billion dollars is just breaking our social contract, so tax that away from them. They can argue who’s got 56 millions instead of 56 billions, for them it will be the same game.
Yep, if I was rich I’d already be a professional game dev. Since I’m not I work IT and dev at night. Its obvious, rich people can take risks cause they’re rich. Which means they end up deciding what gets made for the most part.
And they can just focus on the things that are important. For a lot of people, a job is just a means to an end, to finance hobbies or side projects. But at the end of the day I’m already exhausted to do any of the fun stuff.
I was hating Bill Gates long before the conspiracy people decided Bill Gates was putting 5G nanobots in vaccines.
Now I have to defend the guy against accusations of making people magnetic or WTF ever while hating on him for ruining software and opposing social wellfare programs.
In this niche art field I was in, the most successful people either grew/sold weed or had wealthy parents. Makes a huge difference when both your parents are doctors and can just buy you a $50,000 studio, and you don't have to worry about making smaller work or having a sustainable business for years and are free to experiment and think big.
I would have to disagree. Sure, in the modern world, one function of art is to “move money around,” but it’s far from the only function or even the most important function.
Your favorite painting was likely commissioned by a rich person, and the person who received credit for it probably had most of the work done by an apprentice of theirs.
Rich people don’t like fine art and wine because they are so much more intellectually advanced than we are, they like them because they are a great tool of the wealthy. These people can’t tell the difference between a $7 wine and their $25,000 wine in a blind taste test, and if you tell them so, they will smile and nod, because the taste isn’t the point.
Your grandmother’s knit sweaters would be considered fine art if it could be used to launder money.
You’re not wrong but I think you’re making too strong a version of your argument. Many people, including wealthy people, are genuinely, deeply moved by art. I love the symphony, opera, and ballet. If I were rich I’d absolutely commission the shit out of some music and get a lot of real joy out of that.
Having rich family versus none provides a safety net that lessens the consequences of risk taking, and sets a baseline of how bad your life can get.
It’s like playing a game with check points versus one that has you start at the beginning if you die. You still have to do all the hard work to reach your goal yourself, but those retro style non check point games are incredibly hard compared to games with check points, saves, or cheating with save states.
By hard work, you mean buying yourself exclusive education which gets you contacts to add to your families. Not to mention ready access to startup capital and the graces of people willing to give you more.
Yeah, “millionaire” just means “having $40k/year to spend in retirement.” Nowadays, literally every American should become a millionaire by the time they retire. It is very much no longer the flex it was a century ago.
"Self-made millionaire" is not referring to people who have a solid retirement based on investments. It is referring to people who started a business and became rich early in their career.
I'm not sure how you consider Musk "bad" at it. He got $28,000 in funding from his father for his first company, peaked at $320 billion net worth, and is only down to about $138 billion according to the last info my quick Googling dug up.
$28,000 is really not all that big a "seed fund". Lots of entrepreneurs start with more.
Edit: Wow, how dare I say something that isn't 100% hating on Elon Musk. Seriously, is saying that a man who reached the "richest man on Earth" threshold is maybe kinda a good businessman really beyond the pale? He can still be a colossal asshole, that's independent of his ability to make money.
Where’d you get the idea he only got 28 thousand? That’s a car. Not even a luxury car. Is that the lie he claims is reality? He’s a spoiled rich brat gem mine kid who grew old but not up.
You people have to do your research and read his biography.
He wakes up at 5 AM, works 7 days a week and never takes a vacation.
He co-founded PayPal and that is where he earned all his money through hard work.
/s
(Yeah, he claims a lot of things, but others around him have told the truth, including his first wife. He had a lot of money as a kid from his dad and was never at risk of having to live an average middle class life)
His dad literally paid for everything when he moved to America. It’s easy to start a business when your education is fully paid for and there is literally no financial risk at all. Acting like he was self made is fucking ridiculous.
Acting like he’s dumb and only succeeded through his father’s money and luck is also ridiculous. I wish people would try to have nuance views on famous people instead of this primitive love or hate dualism.
Let’s say he really only had a 28 000$ loan (which I doubt), he could still fail monumentally and not be destitute.
Then, when your parents are filthy rich, they usually have a lot of influencial people in their network.
If he really only had 28k in a vacuum, maybe that would be a different story. But he had the backing of the gem mine money + the network of his parents.
Let’s take Bill Gates. When he grew up, he went to a school that had a computer, that he was able to use. It is a big fucking deal at that time. Very few schools had computers, much less gave access to their students.
So a man whose wealth has largely been built off lying to investors and consumers about his products told you that his father only gave him $28,000, and you just believed him?
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