• @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    He’s a tech guy who got super lucky and became filthy rich.

    Not even that…

    He was (at best) an average coder decades ago who used family money to buy lots of startups and a few made a lot of money.

    He was a gambler, not a businessman. It’s just when you start out wealthy you can keep buying lottery tickets till you win. It doesn’t even mean he was good at picking lottery numbers, he could just afford to buy more tickets than other people.

    Musk builds and designs shit,

    And definitely not that

    • @ZagamTheVile@lemmy.world
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      2010 months ago

      Not mine but… Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.

      Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about “meritocracy” and the salutary effects of hard work.

      Poor kids aren’t visiting the carnival. They’re the ones working it.

    • @SkyeStarfall
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      10 months ago

      Also, we are all looking at this backwards. The very definition of survivorship bias.

      We always only see the luckiest people. All the richest people have been super lucky, because if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be the richest. And also the most ruthless for the same reasons.

      If you look at all the lottery winners, then by definition you will see people who gambled and won. Because someone has to win. That doesn’t mean the lottery winners have some better skillets or are smarter at picking numbers than those who didn’t win.