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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>Gotta disagree with this. As someone who grew up middle class, I was fortunate, in a lot of ways, to also learn to be prudent with money. I started bootstrapping microbusinesses with almost no monetary investment. This eventually allowed me to support myself (on a very low budget), and then, later, on a slightly larger budget. Eventually, one of these businesses became successful enough to support a family comfortably with an "upper" middle class income.

That's still a random individual outcome. What matters is aggregate outcomes, what happens to most middle class kids who want to be enterpreneurs for example, and how many chances they get.

There's also the matter of the quality of those chances (what kind of changes you get with $300K in the bank and dad's rich people connections vs $0 in the bank and middle class connections).

That's even before considering the chances afforded to middle class kids now versus then.

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The whole point of the post you're responding to is that it's not a random outcome; it's an outcome driven by a strategy that is specifically useful for people with $0 in the bank and middle class connections. You're talking about $300k in the bank, but the quote you included literally says "almost no monetary investment."

It's still a random personal anecdote. And the "strategy" is an empty trivial advice.

Do you think other poor people trying to start businesses don't try to do it with "almost no monetary investment"? Not only they try that, that's the only way they can afford to try anyway.

Still no match for a big monetary investment, and still much much harder for them to get the same outcomes as an enterpreneur coming from privilege. Notice also how the claim isn't that it's impossible (or inversely, that the rich always succeed to build a succesful business), but that it is much much harder, and the upper middle class/rich/connections people have it much easier.

Chiming in with my random personal anecdote: I worked a very low-paying job, started with zero dollars, saved my money, and took a shot on a business with less than 5-figures.

This system is very repeatable. I'm 13 years in.

I did something similar, so there you go... now you have three "random" anecdotes.

1000 similar random anecdotes would still be random anecdotes.

No ones anecdotes in this thread are random. The majority of failures are not reading this.

This is cynicism disguising itself as wisdom.

Of course people with privilege have it easier. The whole world runs on the Matthew Effect because it's too lazy to do anything else. It isn't just or fair. Until you can fully accept that truth and do things despite that, you're stuck.

Me? As someone who rarely is fully confident about things, I'm fully confident I'll achieve some moderate success in bootstrapping if only because I have internalized the meta-belief that I can learn, adapt, persevere, and work toward the future I want, regardless of how long it takes, how successful I am, or any other external indicators. Agency is a powerful meta-belief. In that sense, I've already won, I'm just enjoying the journey and what I'm learning. And, one day I'll start cutting the strings of trading time for money.

Cynicism, and its brother pessimism, are absolutely necessary to survive and thrive in business. Unbridled optimism is generally for future failures.

Cynicism that keeps you out of the game is maladaptive...if you want to be playing that game.

Nobody is arguing for unbridled optimism.

>This is cynicism disguising itself as wisdom

Nope, just reality described as is.

>Of course people with privilege have it easier. (...) Until you can fully accept that truth and do things despite that, you're stuck.

That, on the other hand, is fatalism described as realism.

Nothing ever changed without outrage about how things are.

And even less by people accepting them and trying to get by "despite that".

"Every pessimist thinks themself a realist."

Realists also think of themselves as realists, so there's that.

Plus, every starry-eyed, la-la land, Polyanna thinks themselves not naive!

Agreed. Very nearly 100% of people think their point of view is correct and reasonable and everyone who doesn't share their point of view is wrong. The point of the quote, to me, is to remind us of that.

It goes along with another of my favorite quotes: everyone seems crazy when you don't understand their point of view.

There's an interesting tension in between aggregate problems and what's possible for you as an individual.

As an example, in the aggregate people with non-CS or math backgrounds are very unlikely to make $400k+ a year as a software developer. On an individual level, I have repeatedly been able to get others to that level inside 5 years if those people are willing to do straightforward but difficult work. However, this is only possible because so many people won't do the work, if everyone was aware of the opportunity and had the gumption to pursue it diligently the opportunity would quickly be exhausted.

This same pattern of "plenty of opportunity for individuals, but not enough for the group" seems common in many other ventures. Talking to very successful people it seems to be one of the reasons so many people who make it view lack of success as a failing, they've acquired the skillset to see these opportunities and wonder why no one is taking them (but often fail to notice there aren't enough for everyone).

And what strategy was that, exactly?

The larger red flag is the language typical of marketers combined with zero specificity. "Bootstrap microbusinesses, no monetary investment" followed by "success". All very unlikely, especially in plural. If true, he wouldn't have to reveal an exact business model. But detailing the type of business (ie: service or product) and / or sector would have lent credibility.

I can't think of a truly successful business, for an adult, that didn't require money to start. Money being a bare minimum.

Note, I said "almost no monetary investment."

I did things like buy a domain name, pay for cheap web hosting, etc. I was already knew the basics of coding, and some understanding of marketing. My biggest investment was a $97 eBook about marketing. I found one idea in that book that I used to do some successful SEO. This was circa 2003, when SEO was pretty much as easy as picking fruit from a tree, if you knew the right things. Anyways, that's how I got things launched. I also bought and read quite a few business books, which certainly weren't free.

This type of investment was very do-able for most middle class kids. Many of whom, at the time, could afford their own home built computers.

Also -- what I started with is very much not where I ended up, though there is certainly some relationship to it. For example, SEO is still an important part of the business, but the SEO strategy is much more about human relationships and service, than it was about "gaming the system," which was my perspective as a 21 year old.

> What matters is aggregate outcomes

In the aggregate, nobody starts a business. It's hard work with lots of risks. Most everyone prefers to exchange their time and labor for a stable income.

The aggregate is the number of attempts at "Entrepreneurship" across class boundaries. The thesis is that Middle class kids get far fewer attempts vs richer kids.

In that context, counting where the number of attempts is 0 doesn't add anything to the thesis.

... aggregate outcomes will be the sum of random individual outcomes?

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