[ryandrake]

It means these guys didn't literally start from nothing. They had a house in the suburbs with a garage, and that implies at least some level of funding and privilege. A leg up that the guy in the trailer park might not have.

[mbrumlow]

Sure. But I think the notion is that a huge group of people also had that same level funding and privilege, but did nothing with it.

Like why did these guys neighbors not end up billionaire. Or the other people in their class or school.

While they may have had some money it’s not like they took fathers 500 billion and turned it in to a nice 200 billion for them self.

They clearly did something different out of the very large common group they belonged to.

[ryandrake]

> They clearly did something different

Survivorship bias that results from looking back at the winners. If we asked 1000 people to flip a coin 10 times, probability says one will end up flipping heads 10 times in a row. Looking only backwards after the fact, what did he do different? Is he just a better coin flipper?

There is likely a person in their 20s right now who in 40 years we will look back on because they founded the world's first $100T company. Who is it? If we knew it was deterministic and that some "thing they did" caused success, we would all just do that thing.

[dgfitz]

I think the point is, most people don't even flip the coin, you're making a false equivalence.

[bluefirebrand]

Realistically most people don't get many opportunities to flip the coin

Then many who do get that chance choose not to, they choose a less risky path

It is very few people who even can attempt to flip the coin ten times

And "the 1%" can flip it as many times as they want until it lands on heads 10 times in a row

[ryandrake]

Instead of coin flipping, I look at it like a baseball game:

Most people are never even given an at-bat. They're born without money/opportunity (on the bench), and they will have to stay on the bench for life.

Some working / middle class people get one or two at-bats. They swing and maybe hit the home run, but maybe instead have a safe base hit or they strike out. That was their chance. Afterwards they're out of money/opportunity.

The top 0.1% or so get as many at-bats as they want. Their parents own the team and the ballpark so they just keep swinging until they get their home run, and then spend the rest of the game talking about how life is a meritocracy, and you succeed by being the best.

[dgfitz]

How quickly we forget being teenagers and young adults.

Computers, and knowledge in general, is the the most accessible it’s ever been, in the history of mankind.

So you’re claiming that the trillions of dollars that have been spent trying to uplift the youth of yesteryear were a complete an utter waste?

Or has social media been the somma Huxley was talking about all along?

Nothing stops anyone from reading and learning, having hope for the future, and pursuing it. WhatsApp had a staff of like 15-25 people. Linux wa started by some dork with an idea and a lot of time.

Treating the world like victims that need protecting isn’t the play.

[ambicapter]

I think the false equivalence is in your very comment, the point GP is making is that everyone is flipping the coin, just that one guy will get heads 100 times in a row, and the vast majority of people won't.

[layer8]

Most people don’t want to end up in debt in the likely case that the coin-flipping doesn’t succeed.

[shadowgovt]

There is only but so much room in the capital ecosystem for billionaires, even when you factor in creation of wealth through resource-extraction and refinement or labor.

We hear much from the Jobs and Gates of society, and little from the other garage-folk who just didn't make it: they ran out of time, ran out of steam, ran out of funding, or were doing something that would have worked great and made them billionaires if Apple hadn't hit the market three months sooner than them.

Billionaires in garages are a confirmation-bias story.

[jacobsenscott]

Random chance, and maybe a little skill.

[bluefirebrand]

Don't forget connections

Having well connected parents and family is huge, and a big part of why a lot of these people are so wildly successful

[FuriouslyAdrift]

That's how Elizabeth Holmes went from a rando Stanford drop out to a "billionaire"

Her father was head of a Federal govt agency at one point and a VP at Enron (I know, I know).

Also, a direct descendant of the Fleischmann yeast family.

Her mother also had worked as a Congressional aide.

[Jensson]

Everyone starts with something, the guy in the trailer park is thousands times better off than the guy in the savannah. But an average person in USA starts out with a garage, that isn't a high bar.