Comment by fasterik
2 hours ago
I don't think history bears this out. If you look at the most successful entrepreneurs of the computer age, none of them started out as owners of capital. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs: yes, they had some level of privilege and opportunity, but they didn't start out as billionaires. Their success came from their ideas.
The fact that you had to separate them into an age should tell you something.
Something happened in the 80s, and it wasn't "the dawn of a new technology". It happened specifically in the US, and was done by their government.
Does it surprise you that wealth takes time to accumulate? None of those people had a get rich quick scheme that made them billionaires in their 20's.
Those were mostly the same billionaires 20 years ago.
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In the case of Gates at least, it definitely came in part from having access to the right people.
Even Bezos got hundreds of thousands of dollars in investments from direct family members. This is something that 99% of Americans would not be able to rely on if there were to launch a startup. Really only Jobs can claim a "bootstrap" success story.