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Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

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Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#171

Post by foldr »

darawk wrote: post #163
foldr wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does nothing to show that it's not down to luck. By your logic, anyone who wins the lottery can claim to be "self made" (since so few other ticket holders had anywhere near the same degree of success).

It is a necessary but not sufficient condition. In determining whether someone is self-made, you'd want to examine conditions like that. That being said, it is absolutely not the case that it "does nothing" to show it's not down to luck. Filtering by that criteria substantially increases the probability of someone being 'self-made'.

>Filtering by that criteria substantially increases the probability of someone being 'self-made'.

Of course it does, because non-successful people by definition can't be "self-made"! (In order to be a self-made millionaire, you have to at least be a millionaire.) What it doesn't do is tell us anything about how much of any given person's success is down to luck.

If you are just going to insist that a majority of successful people (as compared to their peers) are self-made, then you continue to beg the question at issue.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#172

Post by mindcrime »

honkycat wrote: post #108
darawk wrote: post #26

This is such nonsense. First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirt poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receive lots of help from their parents and amount to precisely nothing. IMO it's fair to refer to your success as "self made" if you exceed the median success level of your class peer group by a substantial margin. If you immigrate from Africa with nothing, and you…

> First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirty poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receive lots of help from their parents and amount to precisely nothing. There are way more people who are born wealthy and continue being wealthy. There are way more people who go from poor to poor. Social mobility is piss poor right now in the US. If "having a nice family and a wonde…

There are way more people who are born wealthy and continue being wealthy.

OK. But that still doesn't translate to the idea of being self-made being a "myth". There are existence proofs that it is possible to be a "self-made success" - depending on exactly how you define "success".

One thing that's important to keep in mind is that all these references to various billionaires, etc., are mostly irrelevant. For most of us, the benchmark of being "successful" is not becoming a billionaire. So the question of "can you become a self-made billionaire" is really a red-herring that contributes nothing useful to anything.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#173

Post by refurb »

EliRivers wrote: post #138
refurb wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The logic of this argument seems to be: luck is involved in being successful, therefore personal effort plays no role at all. It makes no sense. I like your measure relative to what you were born into. Didn’t get enough to eat when you were a child and are now a millionaire. Self-made! Born into a millionaire family and turned that into a billion? Self-made! I’m personally thankful the tall poppy syndrome is…

If I was born poor, and then someone gives me a bunch of money, by this argument I am self-made.

If someone gave you $1M and a decade later you had $1.5M, no you're not self made.

If someone gave you $1M and a decade later you had $100M, yes, you are self made.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#174

Post by fzeroracer »

darawk wrote: post #74
mountainofdeath wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, nobody is saying that it doesn't exist. What people are saying is that the majority of it is an illusion. It's easy to take risks when you have multiple levels to fallback to. I've worked with both backgrounds of people in the same group and there couldn't be a starker difference in attitudes.

Sure, but lots of people are born rich and don't go anywhere. Yes, it's helpful to have something to fall back on, and yes, successful people from well off backgrounds should acknowledge that fact. But it doesn't mean that their accomplishments aren't their own.

We have a metric for this. It's called socioeconomic mobility. In general your claim that people are born rich but don't go anywhere is only somewhat true.

People that are born rich and wealthy in the US generally do not fall to a lower socioeconomic class, and people in the lower classes tend to not rise. Assuming that skill levels are equal among both groups, can you explain why this is the case? If skill was so important, then we should see overall upward mobility be relatively similar.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#175

Post by refurb »

cableshaft wrote: post #111
latencyloser wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of when I was working at Microsoft and a colleague said to me: "I don't know how anyone raises a family off less than $130k/year." I laughed and asked him if he'd ever been anywhere in the US outside of Seattle before. Turns out, he hadn't and assumed the insane cost of living we're subject to in this area also exists in the rest of the country. My point of reference is my family's house in a rural ar…

Between the cost of daycare, health care/insurance, pet care, car payments and maintenance, student loan payments, and then a mortgage (even a cheap mortgage) on top of that, not to mention saving something for retirement, forget the 10x your salary by the time you retire or whatever, and once every 2-3 years go on a vacation at least to the next state over, I do sometimes wonder how households can make ends meet on…

Wedding costs are optional, you know that right?

My wife and I spent under $1,000 for a nice, family focused wedding.

Spending more than that if you don’t have the funds is nuts.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#176

Post by darawk »

foldr wrote: post #171
darawk wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a necessary but not sufficient condition. In determining whether someone is self-made, you'd want to examine conditions like that. That being said, it is absolutely not the case that it "does nothing" to show it's not down to luck. Filtering by that criteria substantially increases the probability of someone being 'self-made'.

>Filtering by that criteria substantially increases the probability of someone being 'self-made'. Of course it does, because non-successful people by definition can't be "self-made"! (In order to be a self-made millionaire, you have to at least be a millionaire.) What it doesn't do is tell us anything about how much of any given person's success is down to luck. If you are just going to insist that a majority of succ…

> Of course it does, because non-successful people by definition can't be "self-made"! (In order to be a self-made millionaire, you have to at least be a millionaire.) What it doesn't do is tell us anything about how much of any given person's success is down to luck.

Yes it does. There is a certain base rate of people lucking into vast fortunes. There is a certain base rate of people making those vast fortunes under conditions we would describe as being 'self made'. As you step further out onto the curve of wealth, it becomes more and more likely that that wealth is 'self-made', because it gets harder and harder to luck into that kind of money. Jeff Bezos, Gates, Buffet, all qualify for being "self made". As you step down the curve, the proportion of people who lucked into it increases.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#177

Post by Gpetrium »

There is a fundamental limitation in the human ability to assess success.

Humans inheritably live in different worlds therefore, their perception of key factors such as self-actualization, esteem, belonging, love, safety & physiological needs will be invariable different.

I would argue that if everyone started out with the same mindset and base opportunities, with time, the environment and its scarcities would cause some to deviate towards being 'richer' and others towards being 'poorer', partially by luck, and partially by other factors within and outside each person's control.

Someone that is self-made will mostly see itself's success as their personal actions and will mostly overestimate that side (E.g. I saved money while my peers were burning it on consumer goods) while others looking from outside will mostly push the (E.g. He was lucky or the environment he was in made him succeed) usually underestimating the person's personal actions.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#178

Post by heurist »

natalyarostova wrote: post #125
honkycat wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First of all, there are absolutely people who come from dirty poverty and become wildly successful. Second of all, plenty of people receive lots of help from their parents and amount to precisely nothing. There are way more people who are born wealthy and continue being wealthy. There are way more people who go from poor to poor. Social mobility is piss poor right now in the US. If "having a nice family and a wonde…

> First of all, Bill Gates had a TON of opportunity and privilege funneled to him from his parents. He absolutely did. And yet even conditional on that category, the probability of becoming a billionaire is extremely low. Therefore, according to the parent comment, that counts as self-made. > You cannot POSSIBLY believe that there is no wealth disparity in the US? That there is not a disparity in opportunity between…

You'd have to be precise in targeting the social network in which the subject individual wields influence. Networks are more important than money in many ways. An individual who is friends or whose family has friends in VC or PE has a better starting position in an entrepreneurial career than someone who has no connections, even if they have money.

You also need to consider the social implications of your category choice. Choosing a category of "US citizens" vs "millionaires" has vastly different implications. A millionaire in the set of US citizens can invest their wealth in mutual funds, do nothing for 10 years, and come out with vastly more wealth. Someone emerging from poverty who starts a small business and actively contributes economic value might take home $50k/year. The millionaire doubles their wealth by doing nothing and the small business owner fights tooth and nail to bring home a modest income. The millionaire also has the option of leveraging their wealth and time to make even more money, where the self-made individual doesn't. Capital is a gravity well.

You can limit your subject set to individuals with $1M-2M in no-strings-attached cash at the start of the study, but why would you? Gates has done a lot to build his wealth but there is no way to know how many individuals would have done better than Gates if they'd started in the same position. You can start to consider that when you expand the set of individuals in the study beyond the arbitrary wealth filter and account for social mobility. Then when you figure out how many people could have done better, you can come up with a "self-madeness" score. Though the whole thing is silly IMO. No one exists in a vacuum.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#179

Post by socrates1998 »

Not a great article, but it certainly does illustrate the idea that we are helped to a certain extent.

It's hard to measure one's success accurately.

A $15k loan paid back almost immediately is really nothing in the grand scheme of things, she probably could have gotten a regular loan or at least used some credit cards to float her for it.

A much bigger help was her parents paying for college. THAT's significant.

It meant she knew that starting a business was an option because she could live cheaply after she graduated instead of being forced to get a job.

For the most part, the most successful people in America have been helped significantly by their parents, in my opinion.

Whether it's through paying for an education or networking or outright buying them a business (like a franchise).

Growing up upper-middle class in America puts you way ahead of almost everyone else on the planet as far as advantages goes.

Re: Why the “Self-Made” Success Story Is a Myth

#180

Post by ForHackernews »

rchaud wrote: post #136
ForHackernews wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tens of thousands of kids have the same background that he did Or alternatively: statistics suggests that out of a big sample of people, a few of them are going to strike it really rich.

Or, many people with Gates' background (computer classes in high school in the 70s), did start tech companies, but failed. As the vast majority of new businesses do. The only way we'd ever hear those stories is if they made it rich later, at which point their failures become noteworthy as part of the narrative arc of their career.

Yeah, and? Most businesses fail. I'm not sure what you're disputing here?
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