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Comment by marincounty | Hacker News Reader

I can't even read another one of these. I've noticed one thing about these success stories; they always leave out the people, connections, and family money that made them successful. I've met very few Horatio Alger's. Old reference. 99% of the "Successful" kids I went to school with had rich parents. Gavin Newsom comes to mind. He was voted most fashionable at Redwood. He was an idiot. His parents paid for every business until one stuck. I know the current Gold Rush is different, but beware of the rich telling the poor how to succeed. Oh, and the books-- they never end. I guess the truth is hard to stomach for most successful people? I've always questioned what real success is anyways. Does it really matter if you have a billion dollars if you have a tumor in your pancreas? I certain parts of the world I hear integrity, honesty, and true altruism are what people call Successful--not here though. are

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I'm curious how you think this worked in the specific case here of Scott Adams. His Dilbert has been on a decline for ages, and it still manages to be one of the most consistently funny comic strips out there. In his heyday probably half of the tech guys in the US had one of his comics posted on the wall of their cubical.

How did his (alleged) people, connections, and family money make that happen? Have they been hiring funny people to ghostwrite the strip? Did they make sure funnier writers were blacklisted? Did they somehow send him to a mystical funny school? If people were being paid to hang up his strips on their wall, I never got my check...

> How did his (alleged) people, connections, and family money make that happen?

Did Scott Adams grow up in a slum and receive a US "inner city" education?

Alternatively, did he grow up on a farm with a family that expected him to work to help support it once he could drop-out of school without repercussion?

Are you starting to see where this is going?

You seem to be conflating "rich" with "not poor".

Who said anything about `rich'? Neither I nor the parent ever used the word.

The great grandparent who started off the line of reasoning was pretty explicit about it, saying things like the following:

> 99% of the "Successful" kids I went to school with had rich parents

In either case, you're referring to a poor minority of Americans. I don't think anyone else was arguing that average Americans are overprivileged compared to ... other average Americans.

(If I misinterpreted, please let me know: I've been on a roll today.)

It's all who you know? http://sivers.org/xn

"Luckily, who you know is up to you, not luck."

>>Does it really matter if you have a billion dollars if you have a tumor in your pancreas?

It does matters a lot if you don't have a billion dollars while you have a tumor in your pancreas.

At least Gavin Newsom doesn't blame the poor. I'm fairly certain (or at least hopeful) that he's aware of his own privileges in life.

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