>I view the assertion that being a risk-taker in the startup world is synonymous with being privileged as absurd and adolescent.
http://www.andrewoswald.com/docs/entrepre.pdf
"The factors that affect the supply of entrepreneurs are important but poorly understood. We study a sample of individuals who choose either to be employees or to run their own businesses. Four conclusions emerge. First, consistent with the existence of borrowing constraints on potential entrepreneurs, we find that the probability of self-employment depends markedly upon
whether the individual ever received an inheritance or gift.
Second, when directly questioned in interview surveys, potential entrepreneurs say that raising capital is their principal problem. Third, consistent with our theoretical framework's predictions, the self-employed have higher levels of job and life satisfaction than employees. Fourth, childhood personality measurements
and psychological test scores are of almost no help in predicting who runs their own business later in life. It is access to start-up capital that matters."
Further into the study:
"Attitude to risk is not the central characteristic that determines who becomes an entrepreneur"
tl;dr "adolescent" study demonstrates risk is a convenient narrative that justifies why some people can have nice things and others can't. Access to capital is what counts.