Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, except I'm mostly talking about Harvard grads, so everyone is smart with a good work ethic.
"Everyone"? Isn't that the community college that Jared Kushner went to?
Yeah, he sure sounds like a low achiever.
Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
281–290 of 291 posts
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the discussion here, I am assuming innovation refers specifically to innovative products and business ideas, not stuff that remains confined to your close family.
Well yeah, you probably aren't going to get a lot of business innovation from the poor, but because they are resource constrained, you'll see innovation in other forms - such as how they adapt to broken cars, appliances, shortage of food, clothing, etc. The rich have no need to come up with novel ways to mend shoes - they just buy a new pair.
Well, this whole thread started from your claim here:
> From what I understand EU has way better social safety nets, yet much smaller entrepreneurship rates compared to USA.
> Counter-intuitively, limitations drive innovations.
It seemed like you were claiming that people with fewer resources may counter-intuitively do more innovative businesses, so providing people with UBI or similar resources could reduce innovation in entrepreneurship.
The inventiveness you need to thrive as a poor person is very different from that, and I don't think losing that kind of inventiveness would be a real loss in our world.
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exploited working class people who have no other choices I think you mean
Uber loses money on every ride because it subsidizes ride fare - not sure it makes sense to call them exploited even in a marxist sense
Well fake "self employed" status might count
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Counter-intuitively, limitations drive innovations. When your resources are limited, you are forced to innovate. If this was true you'd see people from poor families being more entrepreneurial than those from rich.
What you actually see in America is that most millionaires come from humble beginnings. That doesn’t mean most people from humble beginnings become millionaires. A->B does not equal B->A. Basic logic. Go talk to the owners of the five nearest local small businesses, ask them how they started, and see how it goes. Speaking from experience, btw.
That doesn't mean anything though: vastly more millionaires are from usa than from Dubai, it doesn't say anything about any place, you can replace "millionaires" with any category and likely end up with a true statment, USA just has way more people. Those with humble beginnings are most of us, off course* there are going to be more humble-born than privileged-born , that's just how populations work.
*: in fact, merely being "humble" is still relatively privileged, a vast sea of humans exists where internet and food and clean water are fleeting dreams
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#285I've heard a great deal about Bill Gates in my lifetime, but it wasn't until I read Paul Allen's 2011 autobiography that I learned that Bill's mother (a director at a bank) introduced him to IBM chairman John Opel in 1980. They both sat on the board for United Way[0]. It really struck me how these kinds of connections are less of a twist of fate, and more about environment and proximity. Even now it feels remarkable…
> rich district school computers (in the '70s) Gates went to Lakeside, often considered the top private school in Washington state.
How many other people went to this private school, and didn't turn out as rich? Or turned out poorer than they started with?
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're talking about networking for money, and that's a thing. But there are also ideas. Even in fields where there's basically no money, half the world's innovation happening within a circle of a few miles is routine. For instance this happens in music, repeatedly.
Have you heard of this thing called "the internet"?
And do you know where the web got invented? At one of the biggest cathedrals ever built to the idea that bringing lots of scientists into close proximity to work on hard problems tends to produce neat stuff.
Sure, on some level he could have done the same work in his garage, in some quiet seaside town full of retired people. But he didn't.
Reducing the friction in long-range interactions obviously has its upsides. But these hairless primates still pick up lots of stuff from being around each other.
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Everyone"? Isn't that the community college that Jared Kushner went to?
Yeah, he sure sounds like a low achiever.
This, but unironically.
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-ku...
Society will be far better off once Harvard's endowment is taxed and redistributed to oblivion.
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#288Link to the study?
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Simply holding land is not a service to anyone, no. Land is also literally not capital.
A 100% occupancy rate naturally doesn't happen as people move from neighborhood to neighborhood and from city to city. You don't need to squeeze poor people until they have no choice but to sever their safety nets and move out to have a few percent of slack.
Re: Parents' income, not smarts, key to entrepreneurship
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, he sure sounds like a low achiever.
This, but unironically. https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-jared-ku... Society will be far better off once Harvard's endowment is taxed and redistributed to oblivion.
You wouldn't say this if you got into Harvard. You've admitted as much in your other comments.