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Comment by zoeysmithe | Hacker News Reader

The actual 'garage startup' is bit of a myth, played up as a rags to riches story. Most startups happen in personal spaces like bedrooms or home offices or rented offices and are often better funded than you might think. Or the 'garage' was just a very temporary thing and mostly for storage/laziness/clutter. Even Woz debunks this:

“The garage is a bit of a myth,” Wozniak told Businessweek. “We did no designs there, no breadboarding, no prototyping, no planning of products. We did no manufacturing there.”

Today a "garage startup" just really means they're just starting out, self-funding, or under-funded.

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Also, having a garage is to be in a privileged position, not exactly rags. It means you can afford a car (first barrier), you can afford a covered structure to park your car (second barrier), you can afford to use your garage as a hobby space (third barrier).

It's somewhat normal for the average American, but not anywhere else in the world.

The garage was a story of economic mobility for the middle class. It was never aimed at people in abject poverty. There were stories about going from troubled neighborhoods to college as well during the time when America still believed in class mobility.

The world of the 1800s was a world of hereditary title. There was never a promise of mobility and this is what made America and its legends different for all its failings. Going back to this world will not improve things for the better.

> The world of the 1800s was a world of hereditary title

what book did you read that in?

"titles" never existed in the US. And AFAIK, there weren't any "garage startups" in countries that still had them in the 1800s.

The US of the 1800s was a world in which you could legally own another human being, right up until December 6, 1865. Those born into bondage were condemned to live as such and had no legal way to change their personal status. This is kind of the ultimate form of a hereditary title.

Before the Civil War, slavery was only legal in the South. After it: nowhere.

Being a slave was not a "hereditary title" in any common sense of the word, which was "duke" or "earl" or "lord." As in Europe.

The US was one of the rare exceptions to the hereditary title thing. Most countries still had them in some form, though the big players today were throwing them off. (the English monarchs never used their power of veto, though they still have a lot of influence on the text of laws)

can you point to a garage startup NOT in the US?

Taken literally, in the US, it tends to imply a house in the suburbs in an environment where an uninsulated attached garage can more or less be used year-round. Which, as you say, is far more common in many areas of the US than elsewhere.

"privileged" -- you mean "middle class" right?

> having a garage is to be in a privileged position, not exactly rags. It means you can afford a car

I have lived in plenty of houses with garages or garage-like structures and I have never parked a car in there

Why waste all that beautiful storage space on something you can leave out on the street?

Garages are a weird extension of everyone in the USA trying to pretend they live in the Midwest, just like lawns.

In the Midwest the garage protects the car from ice and snow. In the south it’s not necessary as such, but still built.

Lawns are a Veblen good!

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