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by subject117 2344 days ago
Work, save up, start a business of your own choosing. So many excuses for those unable to achieve this simple formula that our forefathers fought and died for us to have the right to.
4 comments

> Work, save up, start a business of your own choosing. So many excuses for those unable to achieve this simple formula that our forefathers fought and died for us to have the right to.

That dream is only viable for a very, very small population.

see: Those who have to work multiple jobs to support family, those saddled with crushing loans, those with ailing family while being the sole provider, those who are denied loans because the happen to be born in a zip code a biased algorithm deemed as more risky, etc. etc.

Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is a great move when your privilege and opportunities align well.

I’m skeptical that America’s forefathers envisioned a future where a reasonable degree of financial security is exclusively for business-owners.
At that time, financial security did not exist at all (or almost). There was no social safety net, no food stamps, no tax to redistribute. There was no reason to envision there will ever be different.
Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's incredibly delusional and illogical to think that everyone can start and run successfully their own business, and especially so to claim that this was the founding fathers' vision. If that was the case, where would the workers come from? The founding fathers had slaves. Where do I sign up to receive the slaves for my business? Because anyone can build a business on slavery and any society can be successful on the back of slaves.

What about the slaves themselves? What did the founding fathers say about them? Obviously, they cannot start their own business as that would be illegal. What do you suggest for them in your great wisdom? They are not allowed by law to start a business, yet according to you, that's just an "excuse."

What you're advocating also wasn't possible for women until the last few decades. Or Chinese. Or Mexicans. Etc. So why should they work to compete with the established businesses/family wealth that had hundreds of years to grow and slaves to work. All of a sudden, everyone should just compete with them and somehow be on equal footing despite them getting hundreds of years of head start, capital, and free labor?

But yeah, so many excuses for being unable to achieve this almost unachievable formula. Slavery. Oppression. Racism. Violence. Etc. Not to mention the sheer insanity of expecting everyone to be a business owner and therefore none to be a worker. Yup. So simple. Only people deserving of death through destitution couldn't follow such a simple formula.