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Comment by huxley | Hacker News Reader

"the most important message in the book is that business and entrepreneurship is the path to success"

No, it may be one of the best paths to wealth and independence --unless you're born into wealth already -- but it's not necessarily a path to success.

My parents worked themselves to the bone in business, were repeatedly screwed by business partners and banks. It didn't give them one bit of gratification.

My mother went back to university and got into not-for-profit microcredit and was reborn as a happy person.

My dad spent time with his kids and neighbours, when he passed away he had three times as many people come to the funeral as we had space for.

Entrepreneurship has a lot going for it, but it is very hard and given the barriers that can be thrown in your face, it can be just another rat-race for lots of people.

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I think history tends to be written by the winners when it comes to entrepreneurship. It's a lot harder- and a lot more luck involved- than many would admit.

I think the problem is not the failure to admit - most entrepreneurs would admit the struggle with honesty. It is more like an availability heuristic - success stories make the news, failures usually do not, and so many people have no idea what the success rate is.

Survivorship bias and narrative fallacy pervade almost everything, it seems.

Not necessarily. Only a very naive entrepreneur would fall for this and they would be sorted out rather quick. People fail or know/realize the huge amount of uncertainty and still choose to do startups. Different people have different levels of risk aversion and there is no common goal/value system.

in the long run, we're all dead - so better we go ahead and die now?

It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure all of his books point out that 9/10 attempts result in failure; the trick being to see the failure early enough to recover and move onto the next attempt before it is too late.

Exactly!

You need to fail fast and keep tweaking your idea until it becomes a success. You also can't be married to one single idea. Many people have a problem with this.

Yes, and he also said that people lose three businesses before they succeed. But people are afraid to fail even once because traditional education teaches students that it's bad, terrible, wrong, etc. to fail.

There's definitely a lot of examples of non-entrepreneurs being happy and content with life. The message from RDPD I've mentioned is not about success in personal life, but financial success. And yes, there's tons of examples of businesses failing, nobody said it was easy, etc.

Another of Kiyosaki's arguments that I agree with on this matter is that sure, you can become very rich and successful doctor/lawyer/athlete/movie star. But that path requires outstanding talent, athletic skills, intelligence, etc. For an "average" person that doesn't possess any of those, and is not born into wealth, business is the best way to financial success.

I find it also depends on what profession you're in. It's tough to be content if you're a programmer and a non-entrepreneur vs being a teacher/non-entrepreneur, or social network, or nurse.

Also, success is not necessarily correlated with happiness. Success is more about getting what you wanted, while happiness is more about wanting what you've got.

Your point is completely valid if it were a book about success. It is a personal finance book, and I assume most readers are trying to find out "how do I become rich?".

"but it's not necessarily a path to success."

Nothing is an absolute guarantee. No matter what the path.

"Were repeatedly screwed by business partners and banks"

If your parents were "repeatedly" screwed over, they really need to take a look at their own decisions. I was screwed over a few times when I was younger. I learned from my mistakes and don't allow people to screw me over.

Your parents might be too honest and nice, which leads to people taking advantage of them. This will happen anywhere, not just business.

"it can be just another rat-race for lots of people."

Some people just aren't cut out to own their own business. My parents, for example, could never own their own business. They are too nice and would get screwed over (my Dad has gotten screwed over more than once in his life in various business deals).

One thing is true: you will never be rich working for other people and this is really the point of the book. For me personally, I would rather make $50K working for myself than $100K working for a large company. It's mostly about the freedom than the money.

I really wish that there was a feature that required anyone that down voted a comment to give a reason.

"but it's not necessarily a path to success."

Nothing is an absolute guarantee. No matter what the path.

This is a ridiculous statement. You attempt to defend "business as success" by arguing success is never guaranteed. While being a silly argument, more importantly you seem to completely miss what your parent was talking about- he was not discussing how your business might not be successful, but that for many people, success in business != success in life. In the same way that money != happy.

"This is a ridiculous statement. You attempt to defend "business as success" by arguing success is never guaranteed."

I thought I was pointing out the obvious, but I guess not. Are you one of those people that believes that if you go to college you automatically get a job at the end? It's not guaranteed, but I would still recommend it because it will help you get a job. You are the one being ridiculous here.

The guy I was replying somehow thinks that the book is a guidebook and a guarantee at success. It's not. I was pointing that out.

"While being a silly argument, more importantly you seem to completely miss what your parent was talking about- he was not discussing how your business might not be successful, but that for many people, success in business != success in life. In the same way that money != happy."

Really? His parents were not successful at business so how can that even be used as an example?

If he was really trying to point something like this out, give me an example of someone that is successful at business but not at life.

From my personal experience, once you figure out what it takes to be successful at business, you will be successful at many other things in life.

You again seem to be conflating success in ventures with success in life. Let's take another look at the original quote:

No, it may be one of the best paths to wealth and independence ... but it's not necessarily a path to success.

Emphasis on "success", not on "necessarily".

I'm done here though, I really shouldn't have replied in the first place anyway.

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