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“It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

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Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#271

Post by CPLX »

bko wrote: post #160
cbanek wrote: post #108

Pretty disappointed in PG's response: "I would ordinarily just let your bullshit go, but this myth that you have to be a rich kid to start a startup is terribly dangerous, because it discourages people who aren't from trying it. Brian Chesky's parents were social workers. That is not a rich kid." As if having two parents with stable jobs isn't considered a safety net. I agree, you don't need to be rich, but I also ag…

This is a kind of No True Scotsman fallacy. Anyone that is successful was 'advantaged' because her family was rich, or she had two parents, or she had a parent, or she was born in America, or she was born with the right number of chromosomes... The whole conversation strikes me as just snarky and reductive. I don't see the point. Why not try to promote a conversation to lift people up and empower them rather than wri…

I mean if the person is living in Scotland and has a Scottish accent and is wearing a kilt they might be Scottish.

Or, more relevant, if someone is in the dominant social and ethnic group in the richest country in the world and raised in a dual-income white collar family with a degree from an absolutely top-flight internationally recognized college where they met their co-founder, they probably don't fit any reasonable definition of poor.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#272

Post by vonmoltke »

idlewords wrote: post #217
jasonkester wrote: post #213

Silly Twitter fight aside, the key piece of advice that us regular non-rich folk should take away is this: "Your first goal after university should be to build yourself a safety net." Once you have $10k in the bank, you can start taking risks just like those privileged kids that are starting all the startups with their unfair advantages. Best of all for us, we work in software, where socking away your first ten thous…

In the United States, people who don't have significant financial support from their parents graduate from university with a great deal of debt.

That is an absurdly broad statement, and incorrect as stated. This is the case for many, but it is far from a guarantee.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#273

Post by bumby »

tluyben2 wrote: post #164

Everyone from my country (NL) has a safety net to start with (you can screw up but still) and that goes for many EU countries anyway and yet all the entrepreneurs I know from NL are extremely risk averse compared to the US ones. Most of my NL friends are entrepreneurs but more of the lifestyle kind than even wanting to become the #1 in their field with the monetary status that comes with it. I dare to say that I only…

I've often wondered about this. I wonder how much is a cultural mindset. In other words, is the U.S.'s relatively risk tolerant stance an artifact that many U.S. citizens are the progeny of people willing to take risks to start out as an immigrant in an unknown land and has that artifact become part of the collective mindset? Or possibly does the slow morphine drip of a safety net make one perceive all risks as something to avoid as opposed to a calculated risk? Or is all this based on a nonsense notion of American exceptionalism?

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#275

Post by vonmoltke »

KaiserPro wrote: post #103
ekianjo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suggesting one variable explains such differences is incredibly reductive. Plus, The US is not a single country, there is federalism and you should treat all states differently since setting up a business in NY is supposedly a lot harder than in other states.

Indeed, and lots of companies have shells in Delaware. Because its lower taxes & "better" company law.

> Because its lower taxes

Lower taxes is irrelevant unless all your operations are in Delaware. It's a great trick for IP holding "companies" that are just a couple lawyers in Wilmington, but otherwise you are paying taxes to whatever states you actually generate revenue in anyway.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#276

Post by dagw »

dagw wrote: post #212
michaelmcmillan wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "what I think", it's what we know. One of the most well established facts in sociology is that IQ is the best predictor for life success: Firkowska-Mankiewicz, Anna, and Jerzyna Słomczyńska. Intelligence (IQ) as a Predictor of Life Success. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20628656 You reiterate my question in the second sentence: How do we weight these different privileges?

is that IQ is the best predictor for life success Perhaps, but the paper also concludes "that the importance of the role of IQ in predicting life success should not be overestimated". Furthermore while IQ did to some degree predict objective life success it does not seem to predict subjective life success, ie how happy you are with how your life turned out.

Also, they only compared those who scored very low to those that scored very high. The study says nothing about the predictive power of IQ for those who are within 'normal' ranges. All you can really conclude is that 13-year-olds with a WISC score above 130 tend to do better in life than kids with a WISC score below 85. It says nothing about if we can extrapolate that to conclude the kids scoring 115 do better than kids scoring 95.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#277

Post by Reedx »

brianwawok wrote: post #148
rahimnathwani wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Registering a company in the UK, and keeping it running, is both simpler and cheaper than in the US. Registering a company takes a few minutes and costs less than $30. Compulsory annual filing costs less than $20. If your company's revenue is below some threshold, you don't need to register for VAT (similar to sales tax). And there's another (even higher) threshold below which you can file very simple annual accounts…

Eh, in my state in the US it is like $85 every 2 years for a LLC and essentially no paperwork if a simple pass-thru. Not everyone needs a Delaware C-Corp from day 1.

Nice. That's a lot simpler than CA. Here there's paperwork, more complicated taxes and $800/yr for a single-member LLC.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#279

Post by Consultant32452 »

zepto wrote: post #215
Consultant32452 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it matters what we're defining as rich. We can be honest without being destructive. I feel like our culture is constantly telling people they can't do anything with their life if they don't have every box of privilege checked. It's terribly psychologically destructive. Life is a constant struggle,a real river of shit sometimes, but it's one in which our own actions are still the biggest determining fact…

Except not. Life is obviously not an equally constant struggle for everyone. Social mobility has been declining for years. For any individual you can create a counterfactual to suggest that their choices are what created their outcome. However it’s also unarguable that we are not all facing the same risk/reward choices. And of course people who take on more risk are going to fail more often. And those without a safet…

Yep, some things are a little bit harder than they might have been in the very recent past for some people, but overall life is better than it has ever been in the history of the world. Telling kids to stay in their lane because it's hard to do otherwise it's terrible leadership in my opinion.

Re: “It’s hard to take risks if you don’t have a safety net”

#280

Post by hef19898 »

bluGill wrote: post #220
short_sells_poo wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Health care is not needed. Undergrads are mostly young, and without kids. It is unusual for them to visit a doctor. Jesus Christ. Please don't take this as a personal attack but it boggles my mind that in 2019 this is a situation accepted as perfectly normal by a large number of people. In many countries in the west, this is not even a question that arises. I assume you are based in the US? That someone has to make…

Last I checked, in the US you remained on your parent's heath insurance while in college (or until 25?). Its been that way for years. It doesn't matter what country you live in, if you are between 15 and 30, and don't have kids: you are extremely unlikely to need a doctor at all. These are the healthiest years of your life.

That would be what I call a bet, a very risky one at that. Especially if you are not filthy rich already.
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