Being afraid of failure is perfectly rational if one genuinely does not have any safety net. Something the middle class wealthy folks here probably forget.
Fear of failure itself is OK. Using lack of wealth as an excuse is not. While one guy who has access to the Internet and have enough time to post on hacker news is complaining about how he's screwed because he's not born into a "wealthy family", there are many people who are in much worse situations who actually get shit done on their own. It's just a difference in mindset. While this guy complains about how he can't take risks because he has no fallback, another guy in exactly the same situation may work 10 times harder exactly because he doesn't like his life without a fallback and wants to do something about it.