[adventured]

Are you suggesting his privilege wrote his software for him? Much less had the vision to start a software company in the 1970s - which his parents thought was a bad idea. They did not like the idea of him dropping out, he did it anyway.

Paul Allen didn't come from any kind of privilege. So is the theory that he should be robbed of his amazing success and effort also, by association with Gates' association with his father and his father's association with Gates' grandfather? He did go to the same school as Gates after all.

[nilkn]

Where I live, the wife of an oil & gas billionaire recently started up a donut shop. As for the location of her shop, she casually chose a quaint little shopping center in the heart of the most expensive and historically rich neighborhood in the entire surrounding metropolitan area and possibly the whole state. While having a shop in this area would be a dream for most, for her it was a given.

It's been a nice little success. It might be the most successful independently owned donut shop in the area.

But we all know that her donut shop, despite the significant amount of cash necessary to purchase the building and jumpstart the business, is just a hobby for her, the same way sewing quilts is a hobby to my mom. My mom doesn't fret about the few hundred bucks she may put into her quilts, even if she doesn't make a dime off of them. And the billionaire's wife won't fret if the hundreds of thousands of dollars necessary to even test the business all go to waste because nobody buys their donuts. They will barely notice the money has been spent. If my mom wanted to just start up a donut shop here for fun, well, that would be absolutely impossible--it wouldn't even be an option.

Why do I bring any of this up? Because context matters. Bill Gates is self-made, yes, but you have to interpret "self-made" in context. His little jumpstart, which appears minor in the shadow of Microsoft, constituted more success than most people in America will ever enjoy over the course of their lifetimes.

[ryandrake]

The privilege of having a well-to-do family gives you the ability to take more risks, knowing that if they fail you have a cushion to fall on.

I worked with someone who failed businesses over and over, each time going back to live off his family's wealth for a bit until trying the next businesses, until finally one of them hit and made tons of money. If you ask him, he'll tell you he didn't inherit a cent, and was a self-made millionaire. Technically accurate, but doesn't tell the full story.

[vidarh]

Many people wrote software in the 1970s and started software companies in the 1970s.

He is not suggesting his privilege wrote Gates software for him, but that privilege gave Gates a substantial advantage over the large number of other people writing software and starting software companies at the same time.

His privilege is unlikely to have been a sufficient condition to explain his success, but it is also entirely unrealistic to assume that his privileged background did not provide him with a number of benefits, down to even basic stuff like growing up in an environment where success and ambition is expected and normal.

[gbhn]

Something I think often is left out of success accounting is an advantage almost everyone born in a large, well-functioning society enjoys: access to a large, well-functioning society.

If the civilization into which Bill Gates sold software were 1/10th the size, it would have generated 1/10th the value with almost the identical amount of work on his part. There's an enormous lift given to fortunes just by the fact that they are built in the context of a civilization which is large enough to support them.

None of that is to say that either specific inherited status or personal hard work aren't huge contributors to success as well, but it takes an enormous amount of work and attention to make sure that a large, well-functioning civilization remains large and well-functioning, and that's an oft-neglected factor in how big these large fortunes become.

[nonchalance]

I think you miscategorize the opposition here. The argument isn't that Gates didn't work hard. The issue is that by din of his family's socioeconomic status, he was presented with opportunities that most people didn't have.

If you want to put it in numerical terms: going from 100M to 100B is arguably easier than going from -10K to +100M (even though there is less money involved)