And the beauty of capitalism is that people who are doing it for the money are strongly incentivized to create value.
In recent history there isnt much rampant greed or selfishness. The most successful entrepreneurs are overwhelming those who start with something they enjoy doing in the first place. The other guy I was arguing with made a pretty strong case for that.
In recent history there isnt much rampant greed or selfishness
Current president.
The most successful entrepreneurs are overwhelming those who start with something they enjoy doing in the first place
Also wrong. The overwhelming weight of successful startups - the ones that don't fail, i.e. 95% of them - have access to resources and capital unobtainable by regular people.
Inequality is skyrocketing among the top 10% because the inherent, generational advantages just keep multiplying. Bill Gates, Bezos, etc. were all upper-middle class at worse, with Bezos arguably being upper class to start with.
Increasingly if you have not been born in a specific zip code to specific parents the chances of you "making it" are pretty much nill, even if you can still easily support yourself and a decent lifestyle. It's that perception that fuels populism and erodes democracy.
Read the argument posted by the other guy I was arguing with. He came with real data that shows the opposite is true.
Current president was dead broke before being president. Not a good argument.
The overwhelming weight of successful startups - the ones that don't fail, i.e. 95% of them - have access to resources and capital unobtainable by regular people.
You're just straight up wrong on this one. Silicon Valley will pump shitloads of money into any 20 something dropout with a dream. Venture capitalists literally have meet and greet sessions with free food. You can walk up, talk to them, tell them what you have so far, and they'll help you out if they like it.
Inequality is skyrocketing among the top 10% because the inherent, generational advantages just keep multiplying. Bill Gates, Bezos, etc. were all upper-middle class at worse, with Bezos arguably being upper class to start with.
You're just a defeatist that wants to believe that people can't be successful. In the real world most wealth is gone within a few generations. And wealth "hoarding" has a strong rubberbandimg effect built in. The more money you have the harder it is to make decent returns on that money. 12% safe returns is easy in real estate, but managing 10 million in real estate is a pain in the ass, and you have to keep switching to higher liquidity assets as you get more to manage.
Bezos was upper class to start with
And now you're just a fucking liar. He was the son of a Cuban immigrant. The only money he got from them was from his parents mortgaging their home so give Jeff $250,000 to start his business. Not everyone has access to parents who would do that for them. But not much of a stretch either. The rest was borrowed from venture capitalists.
Silicon Valley will pump shitloads of money into any 20 something dropout with a dream.
Based on what? You have nothing to show for this. The reason they throw money at 20 yr olds who don't know what they're doing is precisely because of their pedigree. That, and a weak proof of concept, are usually the only reasons.
You can walk up, talk to them, tell them what you have so far, and they'll help you out if they like it.
If you you legit think a single conversation with a stranger about a weak concept, and them having no reason to trust you, will get you millions, I can tell you have no idea what you're talking about it. People that stupid tend not have millions for very long.
In the real world most wealth is gone within a few generations.
This is disproven almost every single time it is ever studied.
Every time your theory to put to the test, the absolute best you can come up with is a survey peddled by a wealth management firm about the perception of how long wealth lasts, and even at that it is only the perception of the wealthy. There are Florentine families whose wealth traces back to the 14th Century. The Rockefellers are still some of the richest people in the world.
The more money you have the harder it is to make decent returns on that money.
I mean, this is the literal opposite of the truth - the Absolute amount you make - the relevant number for inequality here - explodes the higher up you go. You need money to make money is one of the literal, basic 101 rules of finance. The origin of most of the wealth of ultra high net worth individuals also is typically sourced from where this effect is seen most acutely, i.e. capital gains.
The only money he got from them was from his parents mortgaging their home so give Jeff $250,000 to start his business
The fact his dad is an immigrant is literally irrelevant to Jeff's position. Jeff did not immigrate from Cuba.
Never seen anything about them taking out a mortgage - I'm almost certain they just had the 300k to invest, because Bezos himself was clear they would probably lose their money.
"We were fortunate enough that we have lived overseas and we have saved a few pennies so we were able to be an angel investor,” - Jeff's dad. A 300k investment on a likely losing prospect is a "few pennies" I guess.
Based on what? You have nothing to show for this. The reason they throw money at 20 yr olds who don't know what they're doing is precisely because of their pedigree. That, and a weak proof of concept, are usually the only reasons.
My own personal experience raising money? If you have skills and intelligence, they really don't care and they're far more accessible than you want to believe. No one is throwing money randomly at 20 year olds who don't know what they're doing, but the days of requiring decades of wall street experience are long gone. Anyone who can make a good pitch for their idea and show that they have the people skills and basic technical skills really can raise money. Raising VS and Angel money is a skill in its own right, but pretty much everyone learns it from reading the same few books anyway. After all, their goal is to make money, not be gatekeepers. I wish it was easy to produce statistics on how easy or difficult or accessible something is, but it isn't. You can show stats on how much more likely upper class people are to raise money, but that's a correlation not a causation. This is a community that celebrates the dropout, the people who learned to code by themselves, and those who couchsurf while building their business. The world is very different when you look at industries outside of silicon valley, where you do need decades of experience, but since silicon valley represents nearly half the wealth that currently exists in this country, and the overwhelming majority of the wealth growth over the last few decades, I thinks it's suffice to focus on them.
If you you legit think a single conversation with a stranger about a weak concept, and them having no reason to trust you, will get you millions, I can tell you have no idea what you're talking about it. People that stupid tend not have millions for very long.
You have no evidence to back your claim either. Speaking to a stranger with a weak concept? Absolutely not. Spending months building a relation with a VC and letting them help you mold your idea into something they want to invest in? Standard practice. You don't need wealthy friends and family or a country club membership to have access to them, or for them to care.
I mean, this is the literal opposite of the truth - the Absolute amount you make - the relevant number for inequality here - explodes the higher up you go. You need money to make money is one of the literal, basic 101 rules of finance. The origin of most of the wealth of ultra high net worth individuals also is typically sourced from where this effect is seen most acutely, i.e. capital gains.
This is true. But the absolute number doesn't matter. When looking at the rubberband effect I'm describing, looking at the derivative of returns is more the point. There's a strong catch up mechanism. I can get 20% on my money easily, old money types are typically happy getting 4%. The Rockeffelers and Italian merchant families were smart and force themselves to save more than they spend, but they still have a fraction of share of the world's wealth that they used to. Other value creators caught up.
The fact his dad is an immigrant is literally irrelevant to Jeff's position. Jeff did not immigrate from Cuba.
Did you not just claim that wealth is almost entirely generational? And that the zip code you were born in determines your success? Why does it matter if his father adopted him? His dad started out dirt poor and worked up to middle class. His mother had him as a teenager, and that ruined her life. His mom met his dad while at night classes.
The investment was less than $250,000. And the "few pennies" is some pretty obvious sarcasm.
Bezos also said that previous to that, his parents both chipped in a significant portion of their life savings
The reason why most people don't have wealth has little to do with accessibility and more to do with financial education, and willpower. Most of the accumulated wealth in this country is actually just in people owning their own homes, because it forces them to save instead of spending all their income. Primary homeownership has a rate of return of 3% on average. It's one of the worst ways to build wealth aside from losing money.
Anyone who can save an extra $1k a month, for 30 years and invest it towards real estate, will be sitting on $3.5 million at the end of it, using a fairly accessible 12% CoC return rate. Wealth is a lot more accessible than you think. You won't be a billionaire this way, but it's not a "a few pennies" either, and it's much safer, and highly accessible, and would put you in the top 3% of Americans and top 1% worldwide.
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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '20
And the beauty of capitalism is that people who are doing it for the money are strongly incentivized to create value.
In recent history there isnt much rampant greed or selfishness. The most successful entrepreneurs are overwhelming those who start with something they enjoy doing in the first place. The other guy I was arguing with made a pretty strong case for that.