Comment by granzymes 3 days ago
Bezos’ mom had him at 17, his biological father owned a bike shop, and his mother remarried when Bezos was 4 to a Cuban immigrant who came to the country at 16 and ended up working as a petroleum engineer.
They wound up middle class after all that, but I certainly wouldn’t say Bezos came from a “wealthy family”.
okay but $250k is still $250k right? Most people in the world, for most parts of the world, don't see that kind of money in an entire lifetime of work. Most people think privilege means a trust fund, but a $250k loan of US dollars (life-savings or not) is also a privilege that most people don't have.
i think in this thread the goalposts were slowly moved. people were initially talking about success being predicted by having the excess necessary to comfortably take many shots on goal. it seems like we've granted that this $250k shot was a one-time thing.
it is true but irrelevant to the original topic that this is more money than the global poor ever see, and that this is more money that most people get to have. i don't think anyone was arguing that this represents zero privilege
Do you have a source for that being their life savings?
Most of your points have nothing to do with their wealth. Why would it suggest they’re poor if his mom had him at 17 and was taking night classes while raising him? She wasn’t employed, that just sounds like she herself was still able to take risks beyond her means probably because her father was wealthy.
Do you have a source for that not being their life savings? It sounds like you're just making assumptions and guesses as well; if you're going to assert Bezos came from wealth in the first place, you have to back that up. Perusing the "early life" section of Bezos' Wikipedia page doesn't suggest to me that he came from money, at least. But I don't see anyone on either side of the argument presenting anything beyond that.
isn't this an argument against the original post: that the more dice rolls the greater likelihood of success?
Yep, my father, with no business training or college was funded by my grandfather and was in business for years, decades. He ultimately failed without any savings and died in poverty. Being a small business owner was the only job he ever had.
My grandfather was similar--he was the first one to leave the farm life and tried several different careers and businesses. He worked for a railroad, was a realtor, owned a lumber yard, and lastly owned a delicatessen. The lumber yard nearly destroyed the entire family because he would sell on credit and then contractors failed to pay up on time. It was a huge disaster and the the thing is, this was way before the Home Depot national type chains or the "84 Lumber" regional type chains and if he had had any business acumen at all, he could have been the franchise. People don't know what they don't know. Anyways, my dad worked for my grandfather for free for several years and screwed up his life quite a bit doing so in order to "save the family" and I think my dad has told me this damn story every single time I have called him on the telephone for at least the past 30 years. His complex over the whole situation must be enormous!
This is why I never started a business myself. I figured it was a family curse to fail at business.
Bezos' parents lent him $250k to start Amazon. The point is that by the time Bezos started Amazon they were wealthy and could provide him this safety net. Not many middle class families would be able to loan their kid that much money.