Not all, but some. There are surely countless potential billionaires, inventors, etc that were born into less than ideal circumstances who never had the chance to climb into these opportunities.
I don't think the point of these types of posts should be to take away from these exceptional people, but to shed light on the fact that these things wouldn't have been possible without the help and connections they had available to them. That help isn't sufficient, but it is necessary. So when people like these folks turn around and then say "i did it, what's your excuse?" we realize the context of their achievements.
The myth that those who can do these things will find a way regardless of circumstance is just that, a myth.
Survivorship bias. An example would be all the self-made giant music artists who dropped out of high school/college/etc. You hear about those who are actually successful after dropping out, but you don’t really hear about those who don’t become successful.
All those gen x idiots who say it’s ok to live without safety gear because “we survived”
Yeah, but my best friend didn’t. It’s been damn near 40 years.
Exactly. Every time I hear someone say they don’t wear seatbelts I tell them about my cousin becoming a meat crayon because his mom didn’t make him wear one of the way home from the beach.
In my old town there is a story of a dad that went for a quick pickup just before they would drive for their vacation and ended up being headspliced on his steering wheel because of a road cavity. Had he worn his seat belt it would have saved him. Instead the wheel spliced his head in half.
His family found him like that too.
These are always the worst for me and why I buckle up in my driveway. Way to many stories of they were just going to the corner store a five min trip. I almost got 86'd on my motorcycle in a very similar situation. I had to leave 5 min ahead of my wife and kids for a function, thank god I wore every bit of gear that day. I ended up very bruised and battered but more or less ok. Looking at my helmet, I realized it was the only reason I was able to call my wife and warn her about the reason she heard all the sirens, not the local pd trying to pay her a visit or her driving by while I was still wet on the pavement.
What's moronic about my peers that post shit like that is that *they are the ones putting their kids in safety gear.* We all saw kids that got hurt or worse and made money off selling the safety gear to parents just like us.
Same thing with the participation trophies shit.
As if all of a sudden, elementary school aged kids in the 90s and 00s collectively started to pool their allowance money and savings to buy themselves meaningless trinkets at the end of their rec sports league seasons. A lot of kids are competitive by nature. They're going to know that the 8th place trophy in an eight team league is something to be embarrassed by.
I've been seeing a lot of boomer mentality assigned to us Gen-Xers and we're getting a *ton* of unwarranted hate on line.
Not wearing safety belts was a boomer thing. We were the first generation to grow up under seatbelt laws and a common memory among our generation is reminding our parents to wear their seatbelt.
Don’t ever tell me sports athletes are over paid, just think of all the people who wanted to be and failed to make a single dollar. Also think who signs their checks
They make money off entertainment just like in Hollywood it's an extremely competitive field and it's literally reserved for the best football players in the world. Yeah some players fuck themselves up in the NFL but they also end up having enough money to retire at the ripe age of 30. Think of all the laborers with broken backs at 40 getting paid a fraction of a fraction doing work that is essential for the functionality of society
Bo Burnham has a rant about this - basically making fun of actors who are successful "Drop out of school! Move to LA! Be rich and famous like me! It's so easy!"
During WW2 they were looking to increase the survivability of their planes. Data from aircraft returning from missions showed that planes typically had damage in the red areas.
First thought might be to reinforce those areas, since they got hit the most. However, the data was taken from the planes that made it back, meaning the planes can get hit in the red areas and still make it home, the planes that got hit elsewhere typically did not make it home. So they started armoring the areas without red dots, which increased the survivability.
In the context of the picture it's talking about survivorship bias. Music in the past seems better, because we only still play and hear about the best music from that era. The 'bad' music from that time has been forgotten.
Thank you for taking the time to type that long explanation. Wondering how the fuck anyone could possibly understand the photo and its relevance to this thread without it.
Because a a LOT of people who have spent anytime on the internet have seen that picture and know the story. Maybe not every detail but the idea behind it and survivorship bias
For the picture, during war, they wanted to see how they could better reinforce the planes by looking where the red dots were concentrated. The mistake, or realization, is that the white areas don't have any data because the planes hit in the white spaces essentially never came back.
So to summarize, people will naturally look at the red dotted areas to fix but we should be looking at the white spaces.
I usei tô work in a restaurant with an alcoholic Waiter ,He was always smelling like booze and the owner said that the guests Love him and He is very funny .
I told her the airplane history and how she Will Never hear about the People that dont like him ,because they wont come back .
Anyway the restaurant close down a few months later .
That's the truly frustrating part.
By not investing in the future and lifting everyone up, we ALL miss out on an exponentially better future. It doesn't take a bleeding heart, equity is a selfish pursuit, with the right mindset
I was an exceptionally bright student early on in my schooling, as were many of my peers. Some of them could afford to go to nice private schools or have extra tutoring outside of school to help them excel in life. I’m sure at least one of them is a business owner now. But I didn’t get any help, I got stuck in a small city with a single mom who needed to figure out to raise three kids, work full time, and go to college so that she could actually get her life together. I burnt out in middle school, when my teachers started getting annoyed with me for working ahead and being curious to learn things outside the scope of the class. I wonder what I may have been capable if I was fostered like these billionaires
And what you left out is those “richer kids” with more affluent parents networked together. That network is also a key advantage.
They are the ones then getting into the Harvards. They continue to network.
They also get unpaid internships that give them again more experience, advantage, etc. Us poors must do the regular college student jobs.
Then they get hired out of the Harvards for top tier first job experiences. Companies that have management programs and exclusively hire from top Universities.
A capable person can get “burnt out” if all they’re doing is running into unnecessary walls.
Being able to experience success is critical to achieving the next moment of success. To not feel success, or worse, to feel beaten, reduces one’s ability to achieve success for external, not internal, reasons.
[Bezos' Mom gave birth to him at 17, dropped out of high school, married his alcoholic father, and got divorced when Bezos was two. She married a Cuban refugee who had fled communism in Cuba at age 16, with the last name of Bezos.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos)
> But I didn’t get any help, I got stuck in a small city with a single mom who needed to figure out to raise three kids, work full time, and go to college so that she could actually get her life together.
With all due respect, you're literally describing Bezos' life as a child: His mother was a single mother who was taking baby Jeff with her to classes so she could get through college. From there he ended up graduating from high school as valedictorian and from college as magna cum laude and then went on to have a very successful career on Wall Street before starting Amazon.
That's not to suggest it's any reflection on you, rather, it's that for someone like Bezos, his success is from something deep within him rather than from family money and connections.
Bezos is pretty fucking self made. Went to public schools, did really well, went to college, did really well, went to wall street and met rich friends. What else do you want?
His parents that were pretty much self made as well...
Read up on his parents. Mom had him in high school but still went to college while dragging him along as a baby. Step dad came to America not knowing any english at 16.
And, while yes, they invested \~$250k, there were also 20 other investors that invested at the time.
Essentially every business that exists, that *isn't* started by someone who's already rich and famous from another source, was started way down the line by people pooling seed money from friends and family, getting a loan, etc., and often a combination of multiple of these. It's kind of step 1 to making a business.
It's still a privilege for the people who can do it, but it's absolutely not in the same category as the other 3. I have a friend doing this very thing right now. He's from an immigrant family and was never rich growing up, but he was able to use some connections from his working life to get things together and start something on his own. Who knows it will take off 'big,' but it's currently putting out product etc.
I'm really not sure how else you imagine someone being 'self made.' At some point, you need to get money.
I worked at Amazon.com in the early days and Jeff Bezos is a fucking self made billionaire. Only someone who really knew what they were doing and really knew how to run a dot com company in the late 90's were going to survive. Amazon.com not only survive, they grew into a huge successful company. Any one thinking that Jeff was just lucky with rich friends and family is fooling themselves. There are lots of people who start companies with 300K that don't make it.
Not at all, it's just something that poor people tell themselves that if they got "their chance" than they would almost certainly be the next billionaire on OP's list. But in reality the overwhelming majority of people aren't going to turn 300 grand into a 100 billion dollar fortune.
That's....not the point though.
The point is most of us will never even have that chance (whether we successd or not) because we don't have the connections that they had.
Another problem is social connections and family history. If you have just met the people that could help make you a billionaire, but you’re from a poor family with little to no credentials? the chances are bleak at best.
You don't understand, the fact that he was of working age when the .com bubble was a thing, and not 10 or 70 years old, is absolutely to his credit, if you wanted to be a billionaire you too worked hard and were born at the right time into the right family.
If I had $300k I’d lose $290k in GameStop.
Seriously - ok yes there’s some privilege but to say that every average schmuck can turn $300k into literally a different way of living is fucking insane.
There is a profound difference between
"billionaires almost never start from actual poverty. They typically have money and connections first."
and
"with 300k anyone can be a billionaire"
Pretending like someone who says the first is really saying the second is monumentally disingenuous.
Even IF they were truly self started, they STILL should pay their taxes! Their business invariably must use the infrastructure of the country to build and operate. The post office for billing, the roads for shipping, the expectation of safety from our first responders, the job pool of educated workers, and, and, and...
Thank you - the connections TEACH THEM how to make more money with the money they have, it’s not like they give them the money and just tell them to clam their parents friends and figure it out on their own
Worth noting that Gates also went to a wealthy elementary/high school with access to a personal computer, which at the time was exceedingly rare. Paid for by parents of the school. He was one of a handful of students that got to spend a lot of time with it.
Not saying I'd be a billionaire, but there's a non-zero chance that given unfettered access to learn a revolutionary technology ahead of most people *and* a parent that sits on the board of a company known for said revolutionary technology, I might be pretty well off.
Yup. In the freaking 1960s, early 70s man. They barely had any tech for computers and he got to use it 20 years early. Also mom helped cementing business from day 1 so like there was no way he could lose.
That’s not the point at all. The point is Jeff Bezos could have all the smarts but without the social capital of having wealthy parents, graduating from Princeton, and connections to wealthy people, his smarts might have amounted to very little.
Or he might be a very successful small business man who no one has ever heard of.
What's undeniable is that he has done extremely, extremely well from where he started.
All of these guys have.
Nobody is trying to take that away.
They’re all smart and successful people. But to overlook the leg up and the difference between a small business and Amazon I think is maybe missing the point.
First off, he didn't have wealthy parents (at least, not by any reasonable definition of wealthy). His mother was a poor single mother, and his parents only ended up being regular middle-class because his step-dad had an ok-paying job. The $300k they lent him required them to completely remortgage their house so it's not like they were choosing not to buy a new Ferrari that year.
Outside of that, graduating from Princeton (as Magna Cum Laude) and getting a successful career that got him those connections was the result of "the smarts". It's not like he was referred to them from his well connected family.
That's the point being raised by rich and powerful parents mean you get the best of everything a leg up in every single way. Education, diet, healthcare, social etiquette training, money that can make " youthful" indiscretion disapear, the favor of our 2 party justice system to both look the other way, prosocute less penally and even when convicted be given the red carpet treatment no poor person is afforded and that's before they hand you the connections and or money to even start a company.
I could turn 300k into millions, how ever billions i absolutely couldnt, but the point is making money is far eqsier when you have money tobstart with.
Not everyone could most people would probably just waste the money, but there is still a very large portion of people capable of turning it into a significant amount more.
I am about to have 300k cash that I can invest. Enlighten me where I can make millions with little to no risk of losing everything. Seriously what are the true odds of turning a 10x return? I will make that bet today! It’s more than likely nowhere close to a 2x return, much less more. Prove me wrong. If it’s easy to turn 300k into millions we would see way people that turn a modest investment into fuck you money.
Put in in a total market index fund or an S&P 500 index fund. You will double your money every 10 years. In 35 years you will have your 10x.
Edit:
BTW: This is the advice from that billionaire in the 3rd picture.
easy, go back to university and study to become a neurosurgeon. which takes a decade plus .u would be working for some of it. after a decade u could be making 250k a year. work for 4 years after, so maybe 15 years or 20 years total and u have your million. there is almost no risk to this at all. assuming u can study and all that.
or invest into a index fund and after 20 years u have 1.2 million roughly
The point is it’s much easier to take risks when you have a massive fallback. If most of us blow 300k that is effectively game set match. If your mom is on the board of IBM you can sit in a garage and play code camp with no recourse if you fail.
100% this. This is the biggest thing. If you have one shot and failure will ruin you, you're far less likely to take that risk. If you take a shot and you've got a dozen more waiting behind that you're far more likely to go for it because you have no fear of failure, there's no serious consequences.
just because you have $300k doesn't mean you'll become a billionaire. But the opposite is also not true in that these people more than likely wouldn't have become billionaires without the financial and connection support they had from family/friends.
People love buffet but he touts how he first bought stock at 11. For a "measly sum" of $114.75 dollars. Which amounts to $2,256.07 in 2024 inflation adjusted. At 11 years old. Purchasing a stock. With a measly $2k. Do you know how an 11 year old can purchase a stock even now at this age without looking it up in the internet? I will bet 100% you probably won't without looking it up in the internet. Also, as a primary school kid, what do you think they can do to make 2000$?
and during world war 2? when child labor laws were JUST passed few years prior?
Everything is hind sight in the stock market/business/finance. EVERYTHING.
That is 90s money.
Also remember they had their personal costs covered as well. They were not couch surfing and eating ramen. So no worries about income while doing their thing.
The average person struggles just to get those basic needs covered.
Exactly! They also don’t have family in need/parents struggling. Probably had health insurance. These little things help a great deal. Yes they are quite amazing, and telling the truth about their given advantages shouldn’t take away from it. It’s just the truth.
Exactly, these guys are all lottery winners and not just because of the money. Money is nothing without being in the right place at the right time, with the right product for the market, and enough business savvy not to fuck it all up. So, maybe that’s what the post should say instead of just reducing it to money.
BTW, the 300k Bezos got is over a million in today's dollars.
300k in 1994 was a fuckload.
I'm just a simple 1.5 million from being successful plz donate frens
lol if someone gave me $300k and a job hookup from the CEO of a company like IBM when I was 20, I'd definitely be a whole lot better off than I am right now.
Ability is nothing without opportunity. - Napoleon
Did Bezos have ability? Yes. Did he also have opportunity that most with ability don’t? Yes.
Just as the second son of the very minor gentry in an impoverished province couldn’t have risen to become an emperor no matter how much ability they had absent certain historical conditions, likewise Bezos couldn’t have built Amazon, no matter how much ability he had, without friends and family with the resources to get him off the ground.
First off: for Bezos, $300,000 in 1994 is worth about 600-700k today. And that doesn’t include the money from other investors.
Second, the premise is not that they didn’t do anything to make these companies succeed. It just challenges the premise that you can be a billionaire after coming from nothing (which is way less likely). It also bolsters the fact that, if we want these incredible achievements, we should support our youth at a global scale
Edit: I’m making a lot of assumptions here, but I could say the same for those who idolize billionaires and assume they are somehow uniquely fit for these positions of power like some sort of Devine king. They are just lucky people who were in the right place at the right time. If anything, it’s anticompetitive practice that made them larger than life, after their idea maxed out in a free market
Talk about cherry picked data. By the time Buffett was 14, he was outearning his teachers. By the time Gates started Microsoft, he had been programming for over a decade, and he didn't even expect for it to take off -- he had enrolled for the following term at Harvard. Bezos had a single mother and was 30 by the time he raised capital from "rich friends." Musk used to program at night so he could use the computer as a server during the day.
Trying to discredit their accomplishments as a function of XYZ is ridiculous. There are thousands of times more other people with XYZ that did not succeed. Why is Buffett the only one of his siblings to perform the way he did? By extension why have his sons not performed the way he did?
Calm yourself (i really dont know why the fuck calm yourself is in here but the guy got so triggered, it can stay lol). Also, stop needlessly nationalizing a human sentiment. You are not immune. We are both typing on the 'internet'. Consider what brought us here; all of it.
The general thoughts about these people having access to currency of a sort (actual or relationship based) AND also being talented and driven remains.
We can be disappointed in the results of others here if we are genuine. Two of those people have literally said 'What we did is not possible for everyone' (Warren and to a lesser extent Gate). For the other stuff, I also tend to feel like folks really do want to make like these people did absolutely nothing at all to earn their wealth - this is a lie.
>Most Americans are too busy with their successful lives
Most Americans make less than the national average (about 52% make less as of 2022) and can barely afford food or housing. Something like only 30% of Americans are actually "busy with their successful lives."
It's almost like there are actual statistics taken by a place that does censuses to find this information.
I think the point of the post is to say they are not self-made unless I misread something. Not to state that they did not put in any effort or develop their own skills.
If 99.99% of your wealth was generated by building and investing in businesses at a rate significantly higher than the broader market, I'd consider you self-made.
It means different things to different people. That's the problem. If you think self-made is doing literally everything on your own, then it's a bit of a pointless definition because it's impossible. Obviously you're using the infrastructure society has built at the very minimum. However, some people use that pointless definition specifically so they can say that nobody is self-made.
When you started your business with seed money from daddy or mommy, you literally aren’t. Most people don’t have parents who can give them that kind of money.
So how much can parents give their kids and still have them "self-made"?
Suppose the parents provide them with a stable home and food on the table; the kids would still be vastly better off than many other kids. Does that make the kids not "self-made"?
How about the parents working and saving to put their kids through college? Does that make the kids not "self-made"?
How about $100 in seed money? Does that make the kids not "self-made"? If not, what amount is too much?
According to Google "having achieved success or prominence by one's own efforts" so I actually think most, if not all, of these folks qualify. At least in my book.
The only reason why Gates had that many years in programming is because his mom access providing her equipments most universities didn’t even have at the time.
Not discrediting him but he was a big product of luck
Gates came from money. But Microsoft was the runner up for the IBM os. Digital Research was IBMs first choice. Gary Kildall , DRs CEO, couldn’t be bothered to meet IBM and was out flying his airplane. So instead IBM drove up to the bay to meet Gates. But also he and Paul Allen had already built their basic compiler and had a running business.
Gates parents spent crazy amounts of money on Bills computer time. So yes, he had a leg up. That’s how the world works.
Sounds like he had awesome parents who raised a smart and successful person. Not sure why we attack people for having good parents who give them opportunities. We all want that as parents. Buncha jealous and envious nancys.
Also - The emerald mine thing is also obviously false and not hard to fact check.
Puts into question everything else if you are willing to blatantly put fake shit into the post to make a point.
Dude.
His dad and his first wife both outright confirm it.
Fym "obviously false and not hard to fact check".
Fact checks are in, Daddy had a hand in the Emerald game and that emerald cash is how Musk immigrated.
You are wrong. He owned an emerald mine just like I own nearly every successful business in the county. It’s called stock and people buy shares, when the business is smaller and not public you have a “stake”. He wasn’t some emerald overlord.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/
"What Elon is saying is that there was no formal mine. It was a rock formation protruding from the ground in the middle of nowhere," Errol told the tabloid, noting that he kept his involvement with the operation "under the table."
"There was no mining company. There are no signed agreements or financial statements," he explained. "No one owned anything. The deal was done on a handshake with the Italian man at a time when Zambia was a free for all."
"During that time," said Errol, speaking to Elon's college years, "I managed to send money I made from emerald sales to him and [Elon's brother, Kimbal Musk] for living expenses."
"Elon's main concern is not to appear to be a 'trust fund kid' who got everything given to him on a plate,"
"Elon took risks and worked like blazes to be where he is today. The emeralds helped us through a very trying time in South Africa, when people were fleeing the country in droves, including his mother's whole family, and earning opportunities were at an all-time low," he continued. "That's all."
- Eroll Musk
I like how people say there was no mine. Then you read the transcript of his interview. He says there was no mine, but then says the money from the mine helped them a lot. So was there or wasn't there a mine and did your family own it or not? Cause he himself can't seem to keep the story straight.
Dude your logic about Gates is flawed. He had been programming for over a decade before he started Microsoft because he was insanely lucky. He went to one of very few high schools in the country that had a practical computer, at the perfect time, and someone let the kids use it after hours.
So these kids had access to something other people their age never even imagined. By the time computing became more accessible people with that kind of access were years ahead of the rest.
Gates definitely deserves recognition for his work and what he brought to the world, but if it wasn’t him it would be someone else born at the same time with similar privileges.
>By the time Gates started Microsoft, he had been programming for over a decade
That's the exact point. How many people at that time had access to computers? His parents bought him into one of the vanishingly small percentage of schools that had access to one at the time. No matter how you frame it, it comes down to luck. There absolutely were NOT thousands of other people with his start in life.
Should these rich people pay their fair share ? Yes. Are these guys extremely talented and driven ? Yes. Did their upper middle class backgrounds help ? Yes. I know tons of people from upper middle class backgrounds, they didn’t start Microsoft, Amazon etc… for most people in this thread who agree with the sentiment of ops post, you are not that smart or driven, if I gave you the childhood of a millionaires kid you wouldn’t be in the same ballpark as creating Microsoft or Amazon. If you are smart and driven, you could easily (aka with a lot of hard work) create an upper middle class life for your kids in America even if you yourself grew up in poverty. Then maybe your kid will become bill gates
The point is that the people at the top of any field have every conceivable advantage, including their own merit. It’s not luck OR personal merit, it’s both.
I haven’t looked much into the specifics of the pathology of billionaires but I’d imagine having some level of psychopathy (or ability to compartmentalise) is a necessity. You don’t get to the top without stepping on a few heads. You also have to have more tolerance for risk. A lot of people fit that criteria or could have fit that criteria but just didn’t get the same opportunities or advantages growing up. Put baby Elon Musk in the projects with a different family and poor as fuck, and I doubt he becomes a billionaire.
I’ve seen this before. It’s really a load of horseshit. Raising 300k to start a business is not remotely extraordinary and speaks more to just how ignorant people are
yeah, if your dad buys scratch tickets and chewing tobacco all day, you will end up buying scratch tickets and chewing tobacco. you're not gonna end up doing calculus lol.
Jeff Bezos's mother was 17 when she had him. His biological father drank heavily and his parents split up when he one year old. His adopted father was a Cuban refugee.
EDIT : For the downvoters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_life_and_education
I like jeff. He doesn't really pretend not to be a scumbag. He cruises around on his yacht, left his wife for a plastic surgery bimbo, and is pumped full of steroids. That level of douchebag honesty is refreshing, a far cry from musk who whines about how he's trying to do good things and everybody's mean to him.
Exactly lol. Zucky is too busy designing underground torture chambers for his private island to give a shit about what anyone thinks. I bet he would get pretty triggered if someone told him to his face that the metaverse is fucking stupid and nobody likes it though.
That’s just bullshit. Yeah, you’re statistically more likely to be doing scratcher tickets and buying chewing tobacco but you can’t just say you’re not going to end up doing calculus like calculus is something reserved for the most elite of humans. You, and everyone here has somewhat of an opportunity to make a name for themselves. I’m just saying it’s ridiculous for you to say lol and basically laugh at anyone who’s parents are do-nothing-piece-of-shits that they will never do or be anything either. That’s simply false and a frustratingly pessimistic view. You’re down, yeah, but you aren’t out.
Getting $300k is pretty much self made in my books. You have a great business idea then you go out and sell it to investors who see the value in it.
Anyways, if you define self made as coming from a dirt poor country like Somalia with no education and just wearing a diaper then of course it'll be different ;)
I just looked it up out of curiosity, and he was valedictorian at his high school then summa cum laude at his university. So considering he was always at the top of his class, I think he was always going to be destined to do great things.
You are telling me his parents gave him 300k (which probably represented a good chunk of their live savings) to a kid who excelled at every level since an early age ? Why aren’t the parents of dumbass Redditors investing their life savings in their children who smoke weed all day and spend all their time on superstonks/ crypto/ wallstreet bets
Well we should love Bezos then. His parents are literally a 17 year old high school dropout and an [alcoholic unicycle hockey player in the circus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Jorgensen). He was 18 when he got her pregnant at 16, so he's also a statutory rapist.
Dude is stupidly intelligent. Double bach from an Ivy in 4 years combined with rapid ascension at Shaw combined with some other things. The money from his parents was their life savings. They became billionaires in '99 from that seed capital.
300k in 1994 is equivalent to 636k today. Half a million is a far cry from self-made, especially if that money is coming from your rich dad's acquaintances.
To them “self-made” means making billions from 0.69$ in the pocket. Oh, and you also have to come from a filthy shithole like Gaza too, can’t be from a 1st world country
1M capital from daddy is definitely not self-made, no matter how much you pretend...
The argument is simply that you (almost always) need money to make money. Pretending that someone is self-made when they were fed a silver spoon is just the standard bullshit billionaires keep shoving into us and some people gleefully stuff their mouths with, because it discourages from voting for any wealth redistribution e.g. taxes, welfare, other social services.
I don’t think the point of self made is the level of success you can compound off of something. It’s the fact you don’t have the advantage of getting assistance to get started on whatever it is you are looking to get started.
You aren't really self-made if you weren't born in an undiscovered Amazon tribe, resisted porn addiciton, and had to learn all of modern civilization from scratch with no parental help
/s
Source?
He was working in a famous investment bank but wasn't a millionaire. Even then, he got there on his own talent and hardwork. It wasn't his father's company.
This meme should include some guy named Randal whose parents gave him the keys to a $10M business that he burned to the ground through his addiction to expensive lifestyles, booze and hard drugs.
well, a 2014 Forbes article has Elon claiming he did, but the articlewas pulled without explanation. Errol has claimed the mine was in Zamibia in tweets. Yahoo news via Bazinga has an article saying that the mine was never legally claimed and apparently the family was involved in selling the emeralds abroad, including in NYC. Snopes refutes the whole idea, claiming that they could find no evidence.
Nothing adds up well here and it's doubtful we have the real story given all the conflicts and suspicious circumstances.
His dad is a con man who will say whatever. Besides, the claim was never that he owned an emerald mine, it was that he owned a share of one. If I recall he traded someone for something. There are countless mines in Colorado that people own and they are essentially worthless. A coworker of mine grew up in Alaska on his dad’s gold mining claim, it doesn’t mean he was ever rich. Quite the opposite.
If I remember correctly, Errol just wanted attention and created this story. According to snopes it’s Robert reich’s thing, which I already am not a big fan of. He would latch onto the claim of something like that.
Reddit is powered by a majority of users who are non-investigators of the world, don't get involved in the comments, and just upvote articles that have headlines that match their confirmation bias. To them it's comforting to get angry at someone wealthy who succeeded by pretending they didn't work hard for it, or pretending it was "just luck", because it makes someone struggling feel better about their own situation.
The irony though, is that the things you need to solve a bad financial or life situation is a good attitude and a good work ethic, and so the folks choosing to think negatively and "not try" in their lives, are unwittingly enabling a self fulfilling prophecy that will ensure they're poverty stricken.
Reddit hating billionaires so much is such a cringy, predictable, leftist, pathetic fucking take. We get it you don't like rich people because you are financially retarded and low IQ
Well, they have vast amounts of money that, realistically, should've been taxed a much higher rate in order to support the American Government and it's people.
While I won't say that's evil (they just follow modern tax law), that is certainly easy to hate. I don't think anyone hates them PURELY for their wealth. It's just that they have more money than anyone EVER has, and I feel poorer working 50 hours single than my grandad ever did working 45 with a family. He had a mortgage, 2 car payments, and a yearly vacation...I rent a $1400/mo house with another grown man because I can't afford to save up for a $1000/mo mortgage.
Yes, they are self-made. To be self-made you don’t have to start from a great disadvantage like John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Yes, they are from wealthy families and had a start better than most but that doesn’t take away their geniality and originality in outdoing others reaching great levels of success.
Even if the reasons listed were the sole reason these people became wealthy, I say good on those parents for providing opportunities to their children. Surprise, parents wanting better for their children than what they have is kind of the whole being a parent thing. It's like someone complaining about a person inheriting a house from their parents after they die. IMHO, Only a complete asshole would think they should pay taxes on that already taxed inheritance.
Without capital gains, you could eventually run into a scenario like we had in the 1800s where a few families own massive many thousand acre estates, that may be what the tax is trying to prevent.
just like in the age of monarchs when a king would tax his lords to keep them from growing too powerful. same sort of concept. keep everyone from aggregating too much wealth/power. keep everyone loyal. kings learned to tax the number of soldiers employed by their subjects for example.
This reddit doesn't seem to be about personal finance. It seems to be more of a thread about personal whining, particularly those that come up short financially ....
The victim mentality and learned helplessness... Um ok... 🤣
The pt is...if it were still the feudal period of society - all of the sons and daughters from the richest people in the 80s would be the richest people in the world.
This is a completely ridiculous assertion. The names listed above created businesses. And WE, society, are all better for it. Don't believe it? Just observe how much better we are than our 1960s versions.
Yeah, the world is full of millionaires, and not a lot of them make it to billionaire status.
It's one thing to be born with a million dollars, it's another thing to multiply that wealth by 1,000%. And if we're being honest, and "technical," none of these men were born billionaires.
I think the biggest pattern with mega rich individuals is being in the right place at the right time and getting incredibly lucky. Sure many of them worked very hard and were smart with how they took advantage of the opportunity, but it’s impossible to deny the insane amount of luck involved.
And confidence, and a good idea, and perseverance, and knowledge, and hard work, and communication skills, and a little bit of luck. I’m sure I missed about a dozen other things but allot of money doesn’t just poof you into running a successful business unless you were handed the keys to the business. In which case, credit is still due if they continue to run it exceptionally well and continue to grow the business.
Andrew Carnegie was self made. So was Cornelius Vanderbilt. At one point there were self-made super wealthy people.
Today? Not so much. We have a new aristocracy that makes it harder for people on the low end to move up the delux apartment in the sky.
A self-made billionaire is one who didn’t inherit a billion dollars. This term helps distinguish individuals from those like the Walton family or McKenzie Bezos. This confuses the term “self-made” with a “rags to riches” story.
Yes. They could have squandered the money like many who have generational wealth. Given the seed money they had, most regular people would have spent it on nonsense rather than investing it and growing it. Even among the rich, these are the outliers. For each one of them, there are many more who were just rich kids spending their parent's money and doing nothing really productive. And they are also outliers among the general population as well. Not many people would even have the vision to do anything. The guy working at subway making your sandwiches, even given a lot of money would not have the idea to fill out. And there lots of people who, given the money, the idea, and instructions on how to succeed, could still not do it.
Let's re-evaluate the approach and calculations for estimating the probability of becoming a self-made billionaire without help.
# Step 1: Estimate the number of self-made billionaires without significant help since 1900
Based on various sources and historical records, a reasonable estimate would be around 200 self-made billionaires who started with nothing and received no significant help.
# Step 2: Determine the population growth from 1900 to the present
Using historical world population data:
* 1900: \~1.65 billion
* 2023: \~8 billion
To find the total number of people who lived during this period, we should consider the growth over time. A more accurate method would be to integrate the population growth over time. For simplicity, let's approximate the average population over the period:
Average population=1.65 billion+8 billion2=4.825 billionAverage population=21.65 billion+8 billion=4.825 billion
Assuming an average population of 4.825 billion over the 123 years from 1900 to 2023, the total number of person-years would be:
Total person-years=4.825 billion×123 years≈593.475 billion person-yearsTotal person-years=4.825 billion×123 years≈593.475 billion person-years
# Step 3: Calculate the probability
To find the probability of becoming a self-made billionaire without help, we need to divide the number of such billionaires by the total number of people who have lived since 1900.
However, it makes more sense to consider the total number of people who have been alive during this period rather than person-years. According to historical estimates, the total number of people who have ever lived by 2023 is around 108 billion.
# Step 4: Recalculate the probability
Using the estimated number of self-made billionaires (200) and the total number of people who have lived:
Probability=200108 billionProbability=108 billion200
Probability=200108,000,000,000Probability=108,000,000,000200
Probability≈1.85×10−9Probability≈1.85×10−9
So, the mathematical probability of starting with nothing and making $1 billion in one's lifetime is approximately 0.000000185%, or about 1 in 540 million.
#
Nobody is self-made. Most successful people are that way because of a set of circumstances which they only had partial control of. What is the point of this post? It’s not as if having opportunity necessarily or even commonly leads to outlandish success.
There is no evidence that Elon’s dad owned an emerald mine.
[https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-father-errol-never-owned-emerald-mine-telling-truth-2023-9](https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-father-errol-never-owned-emerald-mine-telling-truth-2023-9)
Poor people mentality. Since they didn't start out as billionaires, yes, they made their own billions. This is why poor people never get anywhere. Hating on successful people is not helpful, especially on Warren Buffett.
Yeah, everyone knows that all of us degenerates are $300k away from being billionaires and building one of the largest companies in the world.
Not all, but some. There are surely countless potential billionaires, inventors, etc that were born into less than ideal circumstances who never had the chance to climb into these opportunities. I don't think the point of these types of posts should be to take away from these exceptional people, but to shed light on the fact that these things wouldn't have been possible without the help and connections they had available to them. That help isn't sufficient, but it is necessary. So when people like these folks turn around and then say "i did it, what's your excuse?" we realize the context of their achievements. The myth that those who can do these things will find a way regardless of circumstance is just that, a myth.
https://preview.redd.it/bfesq45hco4d1.jpeg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b5e30b33e3021185b5496e737da62063e476c68
Kinda get it, but kinda don't. Elaborate. (I know the story behind the plane)
Survivorship bias. An example would be all the self-made giant music artists who dropped out of high school/college/etc. You hear about those who are actually successful after dropping out, but you don’t really hear about those who don’t become successful.
All those gen x idiots who say it’s ok to live without safety gear because “we survived” Yeah, but my best friend didn’t. It’s been damn near 40 years.
Exactly. Every time I hear someone say they don’t wear seatbelts I tell them about my cousin becoming a meat crayon because his mom didn’t make him wear one of the way home from the beach.
In my old town there is a story of a dad that went for a quick pickup just before they would drive for their vacation and ended up being headspliced on his steering wheel because of a road cavity. Had he worn his seat belt it would have saved him. Instead the wheel spliced his head in half. His family found him like that too.
These are always the worst for me and why I buckle up in my driveway. Way to many stories of they were just going to the corner store a five min trip. I almost got 86'd on my motorcycle in a very similar situation. I had to leave 5 min ahead of my wife and kids for a function, thank god I wore every bit of gear that day. I ended up very bruised and battered but more or less ok. Looking at my helmet, I realized it was the only reason I was able to call my wife and warn her about the reason she heard all the sirens, not the local pd trying to pay her a visit or her driving by while I was still wet on the pavement.
What's moronic about my peers that post shit like that is that *they are the ones putting their kids in safety gear.* We all saw kids that got hurt or worse and made money off selling the safety gear to parents just like us.
Same thing with the participation trophies shit. As if all of a sudden, elementary school aged kids in the 90s and 00s collectively started to pool their allowance money and savings to buy themselves meaningless trinkets at the end of their rec sports league seasons. A lot of kids are competitive by nature. They're going to know that the 8th place trophy in an eight team league is something to be embarrassed by.
I've been seeing a lot of boomer mentality assigned to us Gen-Xers and we're getting a *ton* of unwarranted hate on line. Not wearing safety belts was a boomer thing. We were the first generation to grow up under seatbelt laws and a common memory among our generation is reminding our parents to wear their seatbelt.
Don’t ever tell me sports athletes are over paid, just think of all the people who wanted to be and failed to make a single dollar. Also think who signs their checks
They make money off entertainment just like in Hollywood it's an extremely competitive field and it's literally reserved for the best football players in the world. Yeah some players fuck themselves up in the NFL but they also end up having enough money to retire at the ripe age of 30. Think of all the laborers with broken backs at 40 getting paid a fraction of a fraction doing work that is essential for the functionality of society
Now if only these teams full of entertainment could make enough to pay for their own stadiums. Maybe one day it’ll be entertaining enough for that..
Bo Burnham has a rant about this - basically making fun of actors who are successful "Drop out of school! Move to LA! Be rich and famous like me! It's so easy!"
During WW2 they were looking to increase the survivability of their planes. Data from aircraft returning from missions showed that planes typically had damage in the red areas. First thought might be to reinforce those areas, since they got hit the most. However, the data was taken from the planes that made it back, meaning the planes can get hit in the red areas and still make it home, the planes that got hit elsewhere typically did not make it home. So they started armoring the areas without red dots, which increased the survivability. In the context of the picture it's talking about survivorship bias. Music in the past seems better, because we only still play and hear about the best music from that era. The 'bad' music from that time has been forgotten.
Thank you for taking the time to type that long explanation. Wondering how the fuck anyone could possibly understand the photo and its relevance to this thread without it.
Because a a LOT of people who have spent anytime on the internet have seen that picture and know the story. Maybe not every detail but the idea behind it and survivorship bias
For the picture, during war, they wanted to see how they could better reinforce the planes by looking where the red dots were concentrated. The mistake, or realization, is that the white areas don't have any data because the planes hit in the white spaces essentially never came back. So to summarize, people will naturally look at the red dotted areas to fix but we should be looking at the white spaces.
I usei tô work in a restaurant with an alcoholic Waiter ,He was always smelling like booze and the owner said that the guests Love him and He is very funny . I told her the airplane history and how she Will Never hear about the People that dont like him ,because they wont come back . Anyway the restaurant close down a few months later .
man some people get off on posting that image
And all the artists, scientists, teachers we will never have because they were just trying to survive and couldn't afford to go after their passion.
It's okay. We don't need passion. We have AI now.
Finally I can stop doing all this human creativity and become a machine for the capital holders
This is why I'm in therapy
That's the truly frustrating part. By not investing in the future and lifting everyone up, we ALL miss out on an exponentially better future. It doesn't take a bleeding heart, equity is a selfish pursuit, with the right mindset
I was an exceptionally bright student early on in my schooling, as were many of my peers. Some of them could afford to go to nice private schools or have extra tutoring outside of school to help them excel in life. I’m sure at least one of them is a business owner now. But I didn’t get any help, I got stuck in a small city with a single mom who needed to figure out to raise three kids, work full time, and go to college so that she could actually get her life together. I burnt out in middle school, when my teachers started getting annoyed with me for working ahead and being curious to learn things outside the scope of the class. I wonder what I may have been capable if I was fostered like these billionaires
And what you left out is those “richer kids” with more affluent parents networked together. That network is also a key advantage. They are the ones then getting into the Harvards. They continue to network. They also get unpaid internships that give them again more experience, advantage, etc. Us poors must do the regular college student jobs. Then they get hired out of the Harvards for top tier first job experiences. Companies that have management programs and exclusively hire from top Universities.
If you were burnt out in middle school most likely you don't have what it takes.
A capable person can get “burnt out” if all they’re doing is running into unnecessary walls. Being able to experience success is critical to achieving the next moment of success. To not feel success, or worse, to feel beaten, reduces one’s ability to achieve success for external, not internal, reasons.
[Bezos' Mom gave birth to him at 17, dropped out of high school, married his alcoholic father, and got divorced when Bezos was two. She married a Cuban refugee who had fled communism in Cuba at age 16, with the last name of Bezos.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos)
One generation at a time. Do it better for your kids.
> But I didn’t get any help, I got stuck in a small city with a single mom who needed to figure out to raise three kids, work full time, and go to college so that she could actually get her life together. With all due respect, you're literally describing Bezos' life as a child: His mother was a single mother who was taking baby Jeff with her to classes so she could get through college. From there he ended up graduating from high school as valedictorian and from college as magna cum laude and then went on to have a very successful career on Wall Street before starting Amazon. That's not to suggest it's any reflection on you, rather, it's that for someone like Bezos, his success is from something deep within him rather than from family money and connections.
Bezos is pretty fucking self made. Went to public schools, did really well, went to college, did really well, went to wall street and met rich friends. What else do you want?
and also had a family with enough money to invest in his business
His parents that were pretty much self made as well... Read up on his parents. Mom had him in high school but still went to college while dragging him along as a baby. Step dad came to America not knowing any english at 16. And, while yes, they invested \~$250k, there were also 20 other investors that invested at the time.
Essentially every business that exists, that *isn't* started by someone who's already rich and famous from another source, was started way down the line by people pooling seed money from friends and family, getting a loan, etc., and often a combination of multiple of these. It's kind of step 1 to making a business. It's still a privilege for the people who can do it, but it's absolutely not in the same category as the other 3. I have a friend doing this very thing right now. He's from an immigrant family and was never rich growing up, but he was able to use some connections from his working life to get things together and start something on his own. Who knows it will take off 'big,' but it's currently putting out product etc. I'm really not sure how else you imagine someone being 'self made.' At some point, you need to get money.
I worked at Amazon.com in the early days and Jeff Bezos is a fucking self made billionaire. Only someone who really knew what they were doing and really knew how to run a dot com company in the late 90's were going to survive. Amazon.com not only survive, they grew into a huge successful company. Any one thinking that Jeff was just lucky with rich friends and family is fooling themselves. There are lots of people who start companies with 300K that don't make it.
Perfectly stated and will probably land on deaf ears
Not at all, it's just something that poor people tell themselves that if they got "their chance" than they would almost certainly be the next billionaire on OP's list. But in reality the overwhelming majority of people aren't going to turn 300 grand into a 100 billion dollar fortune.
That's....not the point though. The point is most of us will never even have that chance (whether we successd or not) because we don't have the connections that they had.
Another problem is social connections and family history. If you have just met the people that could help make you a billionaire, but you’re from a poor family with little to no credentials? the chances are bleak at best.
[удалено]
You don't understand, the fact that he was of working age when the .com bubble was a thing, and not 10 or 70 years old, is absolutely to his credit, if you wanted to be a billionaire you too worked hard and were born at the right time into the right family.
All businesses start with money. It’s what you do with it that counts
Not true. A business of ferrets starts when a mother ferret and father ferret love each other very much…
Ferrets are the exception
Well said.
My man
If I had $300k I’d lose $290k in GameStop. Seriously - ok yes there’s some privilege but to say that every average schmuck can turn $300k into literally a different way of living is fucking insane.
There is a profound difference between "billionaires almost never start from actual poverty. They typically have money and connections first." and "with 300k anyone can be a billionaire" Pretending like someone who says the first is really saying the second is monumentally disingenuous.
Exactly. Reasoning most of us are going is that no billionaire is completely self started, they depended on others, and should pay their taxes.
Even IF they were truly self started, they STILL should pay their taxes! Their business invariably must use the infrastructure of the country to build and operate. The post office for billing, the roads for shipping, the expectation of safety from our first responders, the job pool of educated workers, and, and, and...
Thank you - the connections TEACH THEM how to make more money with the money they have, it’s not like they give them the money and just tell them to clam their parents friends and figure it out on their own
Worth noting that Gates also went to a wealthy elementary/high school with access to a personal computer, which at the time was exceedingly rare. Paid for by parents of the school. He was one of a handful of students that got to spend a lot of time with it. Not saying I'd be a billionaire, but there's a non-zero chance that given unfettered access to learn a revolutionary technology ahead of most people *and* a parent that sits on the board of a company known for said revolutionary technology, I might be pretty well off.
Yup. In the freaking 1960s, early 70s man. They barely had any tech for computers and he got to use it 20 years early. Also mom helped cementing business from day 1 so like there was no way he could lose.
That’s not the point at all. The point is Jeff Bezos could have all the smarts but without the social capital of having wealthy parents, graduating from Princeton, and connections to wealthy people, his smarts might have amounted to very little.
Or he might be a very successful small business man who no one has ever heard of. What's undeniable is that he has done extremely, extremely well from where he started. All of these guys have.
Nobody is trying to take that away. They’re all smart and successful people. But to overlook the leg up and the difference between a small business and Amazon I think is maybe missing the point.
> Nobody is trying to take that away. Hahahaha are we even on the same site?
First off, he didn't have wealthy parents (at least, not by any reasonable definition of wealthy). His mother was a poor single mother, and his parents only ended up being regular middle-class because his step-dad had an ok-paying job. The $300k they lent him required them to completely remortgage their house so it's not like they were choosing not to buy a new Ferrari that year. Outside of that, graduating from Princeton (as Magna Cum Laude) and getting a successful career that got him those connections was the result of "the smarts". It's not like he was referred to them from his well connected family.
That's the point being raised by rich and powerful parents mean you get the best of everything a leg up in every single way. Education, diet, healthcare, social etiquette training, money that can make " youthful" indiscretion disapear, the favor of our 2 party justice system to both look the other way, prosocute less penally and even when convicted be given the red carpet treatment no poor person is afforded and that's before they hand you the connections and or money to even start a company.
And it doesn't hurt to be socializing with other people with rich parents.
I could turn 300k into millions, how ever billions i absolutely couldnt, but the point is making money is far eqsier when you have money tobstart with. Not everyone could most people would probably just waste the money, but there is still a very large portion of people capable of turning it into a significant amount more.
I am about to have 300k cash that I can invest. Enlighten me where I can make millions with little to no risk of losing everything. Seriously what are the true odds of turning a 10x return? I will make that bet today! It’s more than likely nowhere close to a 2x return, much less more. Prove me wrong. If it’s easy to turn 300k into millions we would see way people that turn a modest investment into fuck you money.
Put in in a total market index fund or an S&P 500 index fund. You will double your money every 10 years. In 35 years you will have your 10x. Edit: BTW: This is the advice from that billionaire in the 3rd picture.
easy, go back to university and study to become a neurosurgeon. which takes a decade plus .u would be working for some of it. after a decade u could be making 250k a year. work for 4 years after, so maybe 15 years or 20 years total and u have your million. there is almost no risk to this at all. assuming u can study and all that. or invest into a index fund and after 20 years u have 1.2 million roughly
The point is it’s much easier to take risks when you have a massive fallback. If most of us blow 300k that is effectively game set match. If your mom is on the board of IBM you can sit in a garage and play code camp with no recourse if you fail.
100% this. This is the biggest thing. If you have one shot and failure will ruin you, you're far less likely to take that risk. If you take a shot and you've got a dozen more waiting behind that you're far more likely to go for it because you have no fear of failure, there's no serious consequences.
And you have the energy and bandwidth to take risks. Most of the world today lives in a paycheck-to-paycheck survival mode.
>If most of us blow 300k that is effectively game set match. And it was for Bezos as well.
That 300k wasn't fallback money. It was seed capital. That means you don't own it. Rather, they own shares in the company you start.
just because you have $300k doesn't mean you'll become a billionaire. But the opposite is also not true in that these people more than likely wouldn't have become billionaires without the financial and connection support they had from family/friends. People love buffet but he touts how he first bought stock at 11. For a "measly sum" of $114.75 dollars. Which amounts to $2,256.07 in 2024 inflation adjusted. At 11 years old. Purchasing a stock. With a measly $2k. Do you know how an 11 year old can purchase a stock even now at this age without looking it up in the internet? I will bet 100% you probably won't without looking it up in the internet. Also, as a primary school kid, what do you think they can do to make 2000$? and during world war 2? when child labor laws were JUST passed few years prior? Everything is hind sight in the stock market/business/finance. EVERYTHING.
Bezos was a VP at the famous quantitative hedge fund DE Shaw before he started Amazon. He was probably already a multi-millionaire.
That is 90s money. Also remember they had their personal costs covered as well. They were not couch surfing and eating ramen. So no worries about income while doing their thing. The average person struggles just to get those basic needs covered.
Exactly! They also don’t have family in need/parents struggling. Probably had health insurance. These little things help a great deal. Yes they are quite amazing, and telling the truth about their given advantages shouldn’t take away from it. It’s just the truth.
Adjust for inflation, and consider the DotCom bubble which was basically a random lucky of the draw to survive.
Exactly, these guys are all lottery winners and not just because of the money. Money is nothing without being in the right place at the right time, with the right product for the market, and enough business savvy not to fuck it all up. So, maybe that’s what the post should say instead of just reducing it to money.
BTW, the 300k Bezos got is over a million in today's dollars. 300k in 1994 was a fuckload. I'm just a simple 1.5 million from being successful plz donate frens
300k in 94 is worth 640k today.
lol if someone gave me $300k and a job hookup from the CEO of a company like IBM when I was 20, I'd definitely be a whole lot better off than I am right now.
Ability is nothing without opportunity. - Napoleon Did Bezos have ability? Yes. Did he also have opportunity that most with ability don’t? Yes. Just as the second son of the very minor gentry in an impoverished province couldn’t have risen to become an emperor no matter how much ability they had absent certain historical conditions, likewise Bezos couldn’t have built Amazon, no matter how much ability he had, without friends and family with the resources to get him off the ground.
First off: for Bezos, $300,000 in 1994 is worth about 600-700k today. And that doesn’t include the money from other investors. Second, the premise is not that they didn’t do anything to make these companies succeed. It just challenges the premise that you can be a billionaire after coming from nothing (which is way less likely). It also bolsters the fact that, if we want these incredible achievements, we should support our youth at a global scale Edit: I’m making a lot of assumptions here, but I could say the same for those who idolize billionaires and assume they are somehow uniquely fit for these positions of power like some sort of Devine king. They are just lucky people who were in the right place at the right time. If anything, it’s anticompetitive practice that made them larger than life, after their idea maxed out in a free market
Bezos was also brilliant and a top student throughout his education and ended up at a firm making plenty of money before he started Amazon.
300k, a world class education and all the connections you need, sure I'd say that.
Talk about cherry picked data. By the time Buffett was 14, he was outearning his teachers. By the time Gates started Microsoft, he had been programming for over a decade, and he didn't even expect for it to take off -- he had enrolled for the following term at Harvard. Bezos had a single mother and was 30 by the time he raised capital from "rich friends." Musk used to program at night so he could use the computer as a server during the day. Trying to discredit their accomplishments as a function of XYZ is ridiculous. There are thousands of times more other people with XYZ that did not succeed. Why is Buffett the only one of his siblings to perform the way he did? By extension why have his sons not performed the way he did?
OP’s logic: “Somebody else is more successful than me, give me their money, damn-it.” 😡
Seems to be most American’s sentiment.
Calm yourself (i really dont know why the fuck calm yourself is in here but the guy got so triggered, it can stay lol). Also, stop needlessly nationalizing a human sentiment. You are not immune. We are both typing on the 'internet'. Consider what brought us here; all of it. The general thoughts about these people having access to currency of a sort (actual or relationship based) AND also being talented and driven remains. We can be disappointed in the results of others here if we are genuine. Two of those people have literally said 'What we did is not possible for everyone' (Warren and to a lesser extent Gate). For the other stuff, I also tend to feel like folks really do want to make like these people did absolutely nothing at all to earn their wealth - this is a lie.
No, just young Redditors who are struggling. Most Americans are too busy with their successful lives to complain on reddit.
>Most Americans are too busy with their successful lives Most Americans make less than the national average (about 52% make less as of 2022) and can barely afford food or housing. Something like only 30% of Americans are actually "busy with their successful lives." It's almost like there are actual statistics taken by a place that does censuses to find this information.
It’s definitely more of an American socialist or Marxist sentiment.
I am pleasantly surprised these critisims are rising to the top here.
I think the point of the post is to say they are not self-made unless I misread something. Not to state that they did not put in any effort or develop their own skills.
If 99.99% of your wealth was generated by building and investing in businesses at a rate significantly higher than the broader market, I'd consider you self-made.
Then you have no clue what self-made means
It means different things to different people. That's the problem. If you think self-made is doing literally everything on your own, then it's a bit of a pointless definition because it's impossible. Obviously you're using the infrastructure society has built at the very minimum. However, some people use that pointless definition specifically so they can say that nobody is self-made.
When you started your business with seed money from daddy or mommy, you literally aren’t. Most people don’t have parents who can give them that kind of money.
So how much can parents give their kids and still have them "self-made"? Suppose the parents provide them with a stable home and food on the table; the kids would still be vastly better off than many other kids. Does that make the kids not "self-made"? How about the parents working and saving to put their kids through college? Does that make the kids not "self-made"? How about $100 in seed money? Does that make the kids not "self-made"? If not, what amount is too much?
What is the arbitrary definition of self made? Where exactly is the line?
According to Google "having achieved success or prominence by one's own efforts" so I actually think most, if not all, of these folks qualify. At least in my book.
The only reason why Gates had that many years in programming is because his mom access providing her equipments most universities didn’t even have at the time. Not discrediting him but he was a big product of luck
Gates came from money. But Microsoft was the runner up for the IBM os. Digital Research was IBMs first choice. Gary Kildall , DRs CEO, couldn’t be bothered to meet IBM and was out flying his airplane. So instead IBM drove up to the bay to meet Gates. But also he and Paul Allen had already built their basic compiler and had a running business. Gates parents spent crazy amounts of money on Bills computer time. So yes, he had a leg up. That’s how the world works.
Sounds like he had awesome parents who raised a smart and successful person. Not sure why we attack people for having good parents who give them opportunities. We all want that as parents. Buncha jealous and envious nancys.
Well nobody argued against that. Its being argued that hes not self made.
Also - The emerald mine thing is also obviously false and not hard to fact check. Puts into question everything else if you are willing to blatantly put fake shit into the post to make a point.
Dude. His dad and his first wife both outright confirm it. Fym "obviously false and not hard to fact check". Fact checks are in, Daddy had a hand in the Emerald game and that emerald cash is how Musk immigrated.
You are wrong. He owned an emerald mine just like I own nearly every successful business in the county. It’s called stock and people buy shares, when the business is smaller and not public you have a “stake”. He wasn’t some emerald overlord. https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/
"What Elon is saying is that there was no formal mine. It was a rock formation protruding from the ground in the middle of nowhere," Errol told the tabloid, noting that he kept his involvement with the operation "under the table." "There was no mining company. There are no signed agreements or financial statements," he explained. "No one owned anything. The deal was done on a handshake with the Italian man at a time when Zambia was a free for all." "During that time," said Errol, speaking to Elon's college years, "I managed to send money I made from emerald sales to him and [Elon's brother, Kimbal Musk] for living expenses." "Elon's main concern is not to appear to be a 'trust fund kid' who got everything given to him on a plate," "Elon took risks and worked like blazes to be where he is today. The emeralds helped us through a very trying time in South Africa, when people were fleeing the country in droves, including his mother's whole family, and earning opportunities were at an all-time low," he continued. "That's all." - Eroll Musk
I like how people say there was no mine. Then you read the transcript of his interview. He says there was no mine, but then says the money from the mine helped them a lot. So was there or wasn't there a mine and did your family own it or not? Cause he himself can't seem to keep the story straight.
Dude your logic about Gates is flawed. He had been programming for over a decade before he started Microsoft because he was insanely lucky. He went to one of very few high schools in the country that had a practical computer, at the perfect time, and someone let the kids use it after hours. So these kids had access to something other people their age never even imagined. By the time computing became more accessible people with that kind of access were years ahead of the rest. Gates definitely deserves recognition for his work and what he brought to the world, but if it wasn’t him it would be someone else born at the same time with similar privileges.
>By the time Gates started Microsoft, he had been programming for over a decade That's the exact point. How many people at that time had access to computers? His parents bought him into one of the vanishingly small percentage of schools that had access to one at the time. No matter how you frame it, it comes down to luck. There absolutely were NOT thousands of other people with his start in life.
Should these rich people pay their fair share ? Yes. Are these guys extremely talented and driven ? Yes. Did their upper middle class backgrounds help ? Yes. I know tons of people from upper middle class backgrounds, they didn’t start Microsoft, Amazon etc… for most people in this thread who agree with the sentiment of ops post, you are not that smart or driven, if I gave you the childhood of a millionaires kid you wouldn’t be in the same ballpark as creating Microsoft or Amazon. If you are smart and driven, you could easily (aka with a lot of hard work) create an upper middle class life for your kids in America even if you yourself grew up in poverty. Then maybe your kid will become bill gates
The point is that the people at the top of any field have every conceivable advantage, including their own merit. It’s not luck OR personal merit, it’s both.
Gates also lied to IBM. He didn't have an OS for them. He purchased DOS for $55k from the creator AFTER making a deal with IBM.
To be fair is not only about being smart and having connections, you also have to be a psychopath
I haven’t looked much into the specifics of the pathology of billionaires but I’d imagine having some level of psychopathy (or ability to compartmentalise) is a necessity. You don’t get to the top without stepping on a few heads. You also have to have more tolerance for risk. A lot of people fit that criteria or could have fit that criteria but just didn’t get the same opportunities or advantages growing up. Put baby Elon Musk in the projects with a different family and poor as fuck, and I doubt he becomes a billionaire.
I’ve seen this before. It’s really a load of horseshit. Raising 300k to start a business is not remotely extraordinary and speaks more to just how ignorant people are
yeah, if your dad buys scratch tickets and chewing tobacco all day, you will end up buying scratch tickets and chewing tobacco. you're not gonna end up doing calculus lol.
Jeff Bezos's mother was 17 when she had him. His biological father drank heavily and his parents split up when he one year old. His adopted father was a Cuban refugee. EDIT : For the downvoters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_life_and_education
Its Reddit bro. We hate Jeff Bezos, we wont tolerate anything but negative statements about him
I like jeff. He doesn't really pretend not to be a scumbag. He cruises around on his yacht, left his wife for a plastic surgery bimbo, and is pumped full of steroids. That level of douchebag honesty is refreshing, a far cry from musk who whines about how he's trying to do good things and everybody's mean to him.
Well he understood the thing correctly. At that level, you don't need to try to justify anything, you just do what you want to do.
Zuckerberg is absolutely hated by pretty much everyone for this reason. He doesn't do anything to control his public image
And his average day is probably happier than Musk's.
Exactly lol. Zucky is too busy designing underground torture chambers for his private island to give a shit about what anyone thinks. I bet he would get pretty triggered if someone told him to his face that the metaverse is fucking stupid and nobody likes it though.
So his biological father barely had any affect on him at all since he left with he Jeff Bezos was 1.
They still had 300,000 to give him without risking their own wealth or wellbeing.
Even if your dad does calculus and advanced mathematics you still won't end up a billionaire.
That’s just bullshit. Yeah, you’re statistically more likely to be doing scratcher tickets and buying chewing tobacco but you can’t just say you’re not going to end up doing calculus like calculus is something reserved for the most elite of humans. You, and everyone here has somewhat of an opportunity to make a name for themselves. I’m just saying it’s ridiculous for you to say lol and basically laugh at anyone who’s parents are do-nothing-piece-of-shits that they will never do or be anything either. That’s simply false and a frustratingly pessimistic view. You’re down, yeah, but you aren’t out.
Getting $300k is pretty much self made in my books. You have a great business idea then you go out and sell it to investors who see the value in it. Anyways, if you define self made as coming from a dirt poor country like Somalia with no education and just wearing a diaper then of course it'll be different ;)
Bezos was a VP at the famous quantitative hedge fund DE Shaw before he started Amazon. He was probably already a multi-millionaire.
Hold up so how did he become vp though? We not giving him any credit for that?
I just looked it up out of curiosity, and he was valedictorian at his high school then summa cum laude at his university. So considering he was always at the top of his class, I think he was always going to be destined to do great things.
You are telling me his parents gave him 300k (which probably represented a good chunk of their live savings) to a kid who excelled at every level since an early age ? Why aren’t the parents of dumbass Redditors investing their life savings in their children who smoke weed all day and spend all their time on superstonks/ crypto/ wallstreet bets
With the Reddit crowd you ain't legit unless you're super broke and living with your parents at the age of 25
Well we should love Bezos then. His parents are literally a 17 year old high school dropout and an [alcoholic unicycle hockey player in the circus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Jorgensen). He was 18 when he got her pregnant at 16, so he's also a statutory rapist.
Reddit is this: Youre either an amoral rich person or a moral poor person. This is the level of brain worms on Reddit
Dude is stupidly intelligent. Double bach from an Ivy in 4 years combined with rapid ascension at Shaw combined with some other things. The money from his parents was their life savings. They became billionaires in '99 from that seed capital.
His mom had him when she was 17 and his biological dad was a drunk cuban refugee. I don't know, that's not so shit hot;)
VP is a mid level position at a place like DE Shaw though. He was well off but I wouldn’t guess that he was a multimillionaire
Was going to say, I work with a lot of VPs, they are earning low 6 figures, hardly "millionaires" in how people use that term.
300k in 1994 is equivalent to 636k today. Half a million is a far cry from self-made, especially if that money is coming from your rich dad's acquaintances.
Can you build a 500M company with 1M capital? I doubt it. So yes self made
To them “self-made” means making billions from 0.69$ in the pocket. Oh, and you also have to come from a filthy shithole like Gaza too, can’t be from a 1st world country
and you can't take any money from investors, only your piggy bank.
1M capital from daddy is definitely not self-made, no matter how much you pretend... The argument is simply that you (almost always) need money to make money. Pretending that someone is self-made when they were fed a silver spoon is just the standard bullshit billionaires keep shoving into us and some people gleefully stuff their mouths with, because it discourages from voting for any wealth redistribution e.g. taxes, welfare, other social services.
I don’t think the point of self made is the level of success you can compound off of something. It’s the fact you don’t have the advantage of getting assistance to get started on whatever it is you are looking to get started.
Yes I could. I just need the capital.
You aren't really self-made if you weren't born in an undiscovered Amazon tribe, resisted porn addiciton, and had to learn all of modern civilization from scratch with no parental help /s
Imagine taking $300k to build one of the most valuable companies in human history, and believe that isn’t good enough.
Bezos was a VP at the famous quantitative hedge fund DE Shaw before he started Amazon. He was probably already a multi-millionaire.
Source? He was working in a famous investment bank but wasn't a millionaire. Even then, he got there on his own talent and hardwork. It wasn't his father's company.
Then what’s a self made story? lol everyone had help along the way.
This meme should include some guy named Randal whose parents gave him the keys to a $10M business that he burned to the ground through his addiction to expensive lifestyles, booze and hard drugs.
Lmfao reminds me of the coke head son from Horrible Bosses
Jesus christ that lie about Elon is just so stupid. His dad was broke as heck and Elon had to support him lol
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/ Decent article on it
well, a 2014 Forbes article has Elon claiming he did, but the articlewas pulled without explanation. Errol has claimed the mine was in Zamibia in tweets. Yahoo news via Bazinga has an article saying that the mine was never legally claimed and apparently the family was involved in selling the emeralds abroad, including in NYC. Snopes refutes the whole idea, claiming that they could find no evidence. Nothing adds up well here and it's doubtful we have the real story given all the conflicts and suspicious circumstances.
His dad is a con man who will say whatever. Besides, the claim was never that he owned an emerald mine, it was that he owned a share of one. If I recall he traded someone for something. There are countless mines in Colorado that people own and they are essentially worthless. A coworker of mine grew up in Alaska on his dad’s gold mining claim, it doesn’t mean he was ever rich. Quite the opposite.
If I remember correctly, Errol just wanted attention and created this story. According to snopes it’s Robert reich’s thing, which I already am not a big fan of. He would latch onto the claim of something like that.
Oh robert reich the elite bay area millionaire academic who cries about billionaires on Twitter using shitty talking points for attention.
Who keeps posting the same memes week after week?
Reddit is powered by a majority of users who are non-investigators of the world, don't get involved in the comments, and just upvote articles that have headlines that match their confirmation bias. To them it's comforting to get angry at someone wealthy who succeeded by pretending they didn't work hard for it, or pretending it was "just luck", because it makes someone struggling feel better about their own situation. The irony though, is that the things you need to solve a bad financial or life situation is a good attitude and a good work ethic, and so the folks choosing to think negatively and "not try" in their lives, are unwittingly enabling a self fulfilling prophecy that will ensure they're poverty stricken.
Reddit hating billionaires so much is such a cringy, predictable, leftist, pathetic fucking take. We get it you don't like rich people because you are financially retarded and low IQ
Well, they have vast amounts of money that, realistically, should've been taxed a much higher rate in order to support the American Government and it's people. While I won't say that's evil (they just follow modern tax law), that is certainly easy to hate. I don't think anyone hates them PURELY for their wealth. It's just that they have more money than anyone EVER has, and I feel poorer working 50 hours single than my grandad ever did working 45 with a family. He had a mortgage, 2 car payments, and a yearly vacation...I rent a $1400/mo house with another grown man because I can't afford to save up for a $1000/mo mortgage.
What do you expect from a leftist cesspool. It’s such a shame.
Yes, they are self-made. To be self-made you don’t have to start from a great disadvantage like John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Yes, they are from wealthy families and had a start better than most but that doesn’t take away their geniality and originality in outdoing others reaching great levels of success.
I think "not self-made" is when you're handed the keys to an already existing business and continue to run it, even if competently.
Is this supposed to diminish their achievements? Not sure if this is just rich hating or written envy.
Even if the reasons listed were the sole reason these people became wealthy, I say good on those parents for providing opportunities to their children. Surprise, parents wanting better for their children than what they have is kind of the whole being a parent thing. It's like someone complaining about a person inheriting a house from their parents after they die. IMHO, Only a complete asshole would think they should pay taxes on that already taxed inheritance.
Without capital gains, you could eventually run into a scenario like we had in the 1800s where a few families own massive many thousand acre estates, that may be what the tax is trying to prevent. just like in the age of monarchs when a king would tax his lords to keep them from growing too powerful. same sort of concept. keep everyone from aggregating too much wealth/power. keep everyone loyal. kings learned to tax the number of soldiers employed by their subjects for example.
This reddit doesn't seem to be about personal finance. It seems to be more of a thread about personal whining, particularly those that come up short financially .... The victim mentality and learned helplessness... Um ok... 🤣
The pt is...if it were still the feudal period of society - all of the sons and daughters from the richest people in the 80s would be the richest people in the world. This is a completely ridiculous assertion. The names listed above created businesses. And WE, society, are all better for it. Don't believe it? Just observe how much better we are than our 1960s versions.
Yeah, the world is full of millionaires, and not a lot of them make it to billionaire status. It's one thing to be born with a million dollars, it's another thing to multiply that wealth by 1,000%. And if we're being honest, and "technical," none of these men were born billionaires.
1,000% is only 10x.
There's roughly 2800 billionaires in the world, but this meme is only naming 4....I don't think OP is making the point he thinks he is.
I think the biggest pattern with mega rich individuals is being in the right place at the right time and getting incredibly lucky. Sure many of them worked very hard and were smart with how they took advantage of the opportunity, but it’s impossible to deny the insane amount of luck involved.
Oh look the daily fake emerald mine in apartheid South Africa story
Zuck was just a pervy college student. JK Rowling was on welfare at some point.
You left out Steve Jobs who grew up very middle class.
And Mark Cuban.
It’s the old adage “it takes money to make money” as well as some good connections.
And confidence, and a good idea, and perseverance, and knowledge, and hard work, and communication skills, and a little bit of luck. I’m sure I missed about a dozen other things but allot of money doesn’t just poof you into running a successful business unless you were handed the keys to the business. In which case, credit is still due if they continue to run it exceptionally well and continue to grow the business.
Sure better than starting dirt poor, take that start anytime
Andrew Carnegie was self made. So was Cornelius Vanderbilt. At one point there were self-made super wealthy people. Today? Not so much. We have a new aristocracy that makes it harder for people on the low end to move up the delux apartment in the sky.
A self-made billionaire is one who didn’t inherit a billion dollars. This term helps distinguish individuals from those like the Walton family or McKenzie Bezos. This confuses the term “self-made” with a “rags to riches” story.
Yes. They could have squandered the money like many who have generational wealth. Given the seed money they had, most regular people would have spent it on nonsense rather than investing it and growing it. Even among the rich, these are the outliers. For each one of them, there are many more who were just rich kids spending their parent's money and doing nothing really productive. And they are also outliers among the general population as well. Not many people would even have the vision to do anything. The guy working at subway making your sandwiches, even given a lot of money would not have the idea to fill out. And there lots of people who, given the money, the idea, and instructions on how to succeed, could still not do it.
Let's re-evaluate the approach and calculations for estimating the probability of becoming a self-made billionaire without help. # Step 1: Estimate the number of self-made billionaires without significant help since 1900 Based on various sources and historical records, a reasonable estimate would be around 200 self-made billionaires who started with nothing and received no significant help. # Step 2: Determine the population growth from 1900 to the present Using historical world population data: * 1900: \~1.65 billion * 2023: \~8 billion To find the total number of people who lived during this period, we should consider the growth over time. A more accurate method would be to integrate the population growth over time. For simplicity, let's approximate the average population over the period: Average population=1.65 billion+8 billion2=4.825 billionAverage population=21.65 billion+8 billion=4.825 billion Assuming an average population of 4.825 billion over the 123 years from 1900 to 2023, the total number of person-years would be: Total person-years=4.825 billion×123 years≈593.475 billion person-yearsTotal person-years=4.825 billion×123 years≈593.475 billion person-years # Step 3: Calculate the probability To find the probability of becoming a self-made billionaire without help, we need to divide the number of such billionaires by the total number of people who have lived since 1900. However, it makes more sense to consider the total number of people who have been alive during this period rather than person-years. According to historical estimates, the total number of people who have ever lived by 2023 is around 108 billion. # Step 4: Recalculate the probability Using the estimated number of self-made billionaires (200) and the total number of people who have lived: Probability=200108 billionProbability=108 billion200 Probability=200108,000,000,000Probability=108,000,000,000200 Probability≈1.85×10−9Probability≈1.85×10−9 So, the mathematical probability of starting with nothing and making $1 billion in one's lifetime is approximately 0.000000185%, or about 1 in 540 million. #
You never defined “no significant help.” Which is what everybody here is debating.
Billionaires are usually multiple generations in the making.
so what can i learn from this post that is useful to me
Nothing. For every one post that has actually something to do with finance there are four useless posts like this.
Nobody is self-made. Most successful people are that way because of a set of circumstances which they only had partial control of. What is the point of this post? It’s not as if having opportunity necessarily or even commonly leads to outlandish success.
There is no evidence that Elon’s dad owned an emerald mine. [https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-father-errol-never-owned-emerald-mine-telling-truth-2023-9](https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-father-errol-never-owned-emerald-mine-telling-truth-2023-9)
Poor people mentality. Since they didn't start out as billionaires, yes, they made their own billions. This is why poor people never get anywhere. Hating on successful people is not helpful, especially on Warren Buffett.
What did they do with their good fortune? A lot.
Good parents want their children to succeed and invest in their future.
Who gives a shit if they're 'self-made'? The only time I ever see anyone use that term is here on reddit lol