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Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

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Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#261

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Axsuul wrote: post #178
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

I've known this for decades. When Bill Gates started publishing Smart Basic (or whatever) in magazines, I got a copy and saw what crap it was. I could do better. Why didn't I? That was my very first thought. The reason was, I had to work halftime to pay tuition and buy food. I was mired in working to live. Ol Bill had a family to support him as he bought resources (ads in magazines etc), recruited staff, took meeting…

Why are we using Bill Gates as an example here? He is an extreme outlier that is far beyond the goal post of what most entrepreneurs would see success as. It doesn't require the seminal upbringing and kismet growth environment of Bill Gates just to get into entrepreneurship.

He's the guy I compared myself to, at the time.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#262

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Vaslo wrote: post #105
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

I've known this for decades. When Bill Gates started publishing Smart Basic (or whatever) in magazines, I got a copy and saw what crap it was. I could do better. Why didn't I? That was my very first thought. The reason was, I had to work halftime to pay tuition and buy food. I was mired in working to live. Ol Bill had a family to support him as he bought resources (ads in magazines etc), recruited staff, took meeting…

While there will be a few folks that will prosper from basic income, I can’t say I’m interested in paying people to pursue things that are more like hobbies. For every entrepreneur or community volunteer that makes a difference, I fear 9 others will set their sights on being gaming streamers or will just sit around writing blogposts. If you aren’t adding value somewhere and are able minded and able bodied, I don’t wa…

Another scarecrow. You are not 'paying someone' at all. It's not your money. The basic income is paid to all, similar to roads and police and fire.

The additional goods and services it buys, come from advances in automation, which are consuming jobs at a geometric rate. Nobody is enslaved to make these things for us (already true for most things).

This attitude is simply the old Protestant Work Ethic writ large - folks that cannot stand to think anybody might not have to slave away at a job.

To draw it clear: is it actually necessary to have an underpaid below-poverty class of workers to make our society function? It cannot exist without them? Was Marx right all along? Is that what is being argued?

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#263

Post by JoeAltmaier »

snarf21 wrote: post #158
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

I've known this for decades. When Bill Gates started publishing Smart Basic (or whatever) in magazines, I got a copy and saw what crap it was. I could do better. Why didn't I? That was my very first thought. The reason was, I had to work halftime to pay tuition and buy food. I was mired in working to live. Ol Bill had a family to support him as he bought resources (ads in magazines etc), recruited staff, took meeting…

This is all very true but UBI isn't the solution. The middle class can win this game with a perspective change. Instead of saddling their kids with school loans and pressuring them to "get a job" right out of school, they should give them 5 years where they "angel" them in their own houses for a stake in the company. Get four young sharp kids a couple of years with no bills to pay and I bet they could create somethin…

Making the rich, richer and the poor just stay where they are.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#264

Post by cloudier »

dbingham wrote: post #159
umvi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Healthcare and Basic Income would do a lot to encourage entrepreneurship Would it though? From what I understand EU has way better social safety nets, yet much smaller entrepreneurship rates compared to USA. Counter-intuitively, limitations drive innovations. When your resources are limited, you are forced to innovate. When you have infinite resources, you tend to waste it. Ever notice that when you have infinite t…

1. Europe has healthcare but not basic income. 2. Innovation and entrepreneurship are not the same thing. Innovation is coming up with something new, entrepreneurship is starting a new business to make money. The former does not always lead to the latter, and the latter does not always require the former (in fact, it rarely does). 3. What the research in this study shows is that limitations of the financial and survi…

The book "The Trap: selling out to stay afloat in winner-take-all America" discusses the effect of healthcare on entrepreneurship:[1]

> It's a truism that American culture celebrates entrepreneurs. The opinion polls show exactly what you expect: Americans are incredibly entrepreneurship-minded. A 2005 survey showed that 28 percent of Americans have considered setting up their own businesses, compared to only 15 percent of Europeans. Yet the employment statistics reveal that Americans are far less likely to actually do it — 14.7 percent of the European workforce is self-employed, compared with only 7.3 percent of Americans. American entrepreneurs are clearly being held back from pursuing their dreams. > ... > What explains the paradox? In Europe working for yourself doesn't affect your health-care coverage...In America, the ambitious many are held back.

[1] https://archive.org/details/trapsellingoutto00broo/page/108/...

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#265

Post by xapata »

sudosysgen wrote: post #238
xapata wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not completely orthogonal. Perhaps they should be, but the intersection of the two sets (advocates for rent restrictions and advocates of zoning restrictions) appears to be a large portion of the total, as far as I can tell. > enough to fix the problem I think we need to define the problem before we start arguing solutions. In my view "can't afford the rent" is a poverty problem, not a rent prices problem. So, I want…

There is a very simple definition for things that absolutely aren't productive. Things that produce nothing are not productive. Owning land is not productive, and should not be profitable at all. It is settled economics that the profitability of non-productive actions (often called rent -seeking) is bad. It doesn't matter what your threshold for affordability is. Rent is increasing faster than economic growth, on ave…

> owning land is not productive

On the contrary, it's providing the valuable service of holding property that I don't want to hold. I'd rather put my capital to some other use. You seem to dislike arguments of "pure ideology" but the assertion that real estate ownership doesn't deserve return on capital seems like it's singling out just one form of capital. Or do you dislike profits drawn from other kinds of property as well?

You say it's settled economics, but you've misstated. Monopolistic excess returns are "rents." Competitive market returns are to be encouraged.

> until people move out

That's actually exactly what I want to happen. 100% occupancy rate is a signal that something is wrong with the market, just as 100% employment would be.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#266

Post by nomay »

birdsbirdsbirds wrote: post #150
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

I've known this for decades. When Bill Gates started publishing Smart Basic (or whatever) in magazines, I got a copy and saw what crap it was. I could do better. Why didn't I? That was my very first thought. The reason was, I had to work halftime to pay tuition and buy food. I was mired in working to live. Ol Bill had a family to support him as he bought resources (ads in magazines etc), recruited staff, took meeting…

As a programmer, it's possible to do the same, just one decade later. Jack Ma argues in some talk that people should gain experience before starting a company. This mirrors the numbers that show that older founders have a much higher success rate. After having worked for a decade, there can be enough money to handle some years without income. Bill Gates was not successful because he started young, but because his mot…

What Jack Ma didn't tell you is that those things don't matter that much, it's more of a lip service to burnish his image, a victory lap. His father is well-connected both in business and politics and provided him access and opportunities plebs counld dream of. Hell he didn't even have any tech experience, he was a english teacher.

And Alipay would have been killed a million times as it infringes the state monopoly on finance, had him not been shielded by the quagmire of local and central politics.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#267

Post by pipipzz »

danenania wrote: post #173
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

I've known this for decades. When Bill Gates started publishing Smart Basic (or whatever) in magazines, I got a copy and saw what crap it was. I could do better. Why didn't I? That was my very first thought. The reason was, I had to work halftime to pay tuition and buy food. I was mired in working to live. Ol Bill had a family to support him as he bought resources (ads in magazines etc), recruited staff, took meeting…

It definitely makes a huge difference to have savings if you want to be an entrepreneur. But these days, a decent programmer can save up a year or more of runway and build industry connections just by working for a few years and not spending outlandishly. If the startup doesn't work out, a new cushy job is waiting for you. So yeah, startups are risky and favor the wealthy, but let's not overstate the case. I'm in fav…

Also, getting a job after a startup failure might be easy in the US or other developed countries, but this will not be the situation in a country like India, where the supply of cheap labor far exceeds the demand and only people from elite university titles will be able to get back to a job better than their last one.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#268

Post by wegs »

germinalphrase wrote: post #31
wegs wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience as well, until the first time I got funded. After a success under your belt, it's easy to keep going and get more funding. There's no shortage of capital looking for people to fund right now (it goes through spells). The first time I got funded, it was through a rich elite idiot's social connections (CEO). CEO was a sleazeball, and got all the financial and most of the branding benefit of the venture, d…

How are defining ‘financial stability’ here?

From my perspective, financial stability is when, if you lose a job in an economic downturn, you don't automatically lose your house. You have enough savings for 1-10 years (yes, that's a big range).

But yeah, it's a fair point. For some people, it's not living hand-to-mouth. For others, it's being able to have a mortgage rather than rent. [insert-my-definition]. For others, it's being able to live without working indefinitely. For others, it's being able to launch businesses from a personal bank account. I was vague.

In my area: The rent / mortgage eats the lion's share of your runway. If you're paying rent / mortgage, your savings don't go very far. If you've paid off your home, it's easy to stash enough away to live like a graduate student for a few years. If you own your home, you can also always scrunch together, and rent out a room.

The generational flip side is:

- Your kids inherit your house and your savings some day. That should be enough to cover much debt, or if you have many kids, at least down payments.

- Your kids can move in with you anytime, if they're laid off, launching a startup, going through a tough time, or just want to save some money. It's a safety net.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#269

Post by ilaksh »

snarf21 wrote: post #158
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

I've known this for decades. When Bill Gates started publishing Smart Basic (or whatever) in magazines, I got a copy and saw what crap it was. I could do better. Why didn't I? That was my very first thought. The reason was, I had to work halftime to pay tuition and buy food. I was mired in working to live. Ol Bill had a family to support him as he bought resources (ads in magazines etc), recruited staff, took meeting…

This is all very true but UBI isn't the solution. The middle class can win this game with a perspective change. Instead of saddling their kids with school loans and pressuring them to "get a job" right out of school, they should give them 5 years where they "angel" them in their own houses for a stake in the company. Get four young sharp kids a couple of years with no bills to pay and I bet they could create somethin…

That's the point though. You do need money for a startup and rich kid's parents give it to them.

Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship

#270

Post by ilaksh »

complexmango wrote: post #253
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #4

I've known this for decades. When Bill Gates started publishing Smart Basic (or whatever) in magazines, I got a copy and saw what crap it was. I could do better. Why didn't I? That was my very first thought. The reason was, I had to work halftime to pay tuition and buy food. I was mired in working to live. Ol Bill had a family to support him as he bought resources (ads in magazines etc), recruited staff, took meeting…

This is amazing - just ignore Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Andrew Carnegie and several other of the richest people of all time who came from humble beginnings, just because they don’t fit your narrative. For the past 15 years I have worked with wealthy people for a living, hundreds of them. Two things stand out: 1. Most of them came from humble beginnings, typically as immigrants 2. Most of them stress their kids won’t…

Well, forgive me for giving more credence to a scientific study than to your impressions of self-reported humble beginning from wealthy clients.
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