The people who have had more good things happen to them (money, smarts, education, favorable societal position, supportive family) than most other people. It is easier for these people to not get a regular job and try to build something on their own.
Personal availability of risk capital. I mean, if I make a mistake with my cashflow stream, I don't eat. It has happened three times in my life, and not in twelve years.
This means that I make decisions differently to somebody who has a buffer of parental emergency capital injection. For example, I would love passionately to quit my job right now. I would love to set up a consultancy specialising in data analysis for capital management for insurance companies, and have more than the required skill set, but if I take too much risk my family could be hungry. That would be decidedly uncool.
Start up businesses are a gamble. Most fail. If you're middle class. that's ok. You can crash at mom and dads, and fall back on that college degree you earned. But the poor can't afford to fail. Gotta make rent somehow. At least McDonalds is a sure bet.
For one thing, you need savings. If you absolutely need a paycheck this month to make it through to next month, you simply cannot afford the risks involved in doing the whole startup thing.
Another thing, you need skills. But it's very difficult to get a decent education (formal or otherwise) if your family isn't able to support you during your formative learning years. It's not easy to learn programming if your family can't afford a computer. It's not easy learning financial management when the largest amount of money you ever had is $500.
Basically, if you want to do a startup, you had better not be poor or uneducated.
> Basically, if you want to do a startup, you had better not be poor or uneducated.
Robert Herjavec would disagree with you, as would Sam Walton, Andrew Carnegie, Li Ka-shing, and dozens more who overcame poverty and a lack of education via hard work and common sense (and yes, a bit of luck in some cases) to become successful businessmen.
The single best advice I ever received is "Think probabilities, not possibilities."
I'm not denying that it is possible that an illiterate girl from a low-income family in Mali could overcome every obstacle and build a successful start-up. But how much would you bet on that happening? Do you also think that her success will negate the hardships that other folks in her position face?
I don't disagree with you, my issue was that yen223 was speaking in absolutes when there is no such thing, in the business world or life in general. Maybe I'm just being pedantic about yen223's wording, but it sounded to me like he was trying to say "You're poor? Don't bother breathing, prole". It was dismissive and classist. But then, I grew up poor, so I'm sure there's bias at work on my part.
I wouldn't go so far as the post you're replying too (I think you can do a startup without all the advantages named, but your risk looks different).
However, I think you are falling into the trap of identifying outliers and then trying to reason about the general case from it - it's pretty hard to use that to say anything more that "it's possible for X to happen, because it happened here, and here."
That's all I was saying, that it is possible to bootstrap yourself from poor conditions. I'm not saying everyone who is poor can do that; it takes hard work and, as I conceded initially, a bit of luck, but I'm simply saying it can be done. If I'm being downvoted for stating the obvious, so be it, but I have a feeling it's that I've hurt some privileged feelings here. If so, then good; everyone needs a dose of reality once in a while.
When did I say I was betting on anything? I was simply refuting the position that a poor person has never bootstrapped themselves into a successful entrepreneur, using a few well-known examples. Who knows what the statistics are on unknown success stories? As a poker player, you should know that even a bad hand can win a game if it's dealt to the right player.
He means those that belong to "privileged classes" usually don't have liabilities such as student loans to pay off and therefore have the freedom to pursue endeavors such as startups which don't pay the bills upfront. Furthermore, their support network is also a significant factor.
All it takes is a computer, hard work and dedication. The 'poor' manage to find the time to surf the net, why not spend the time learning how to build the net?
It's a simplistic idea, but it is definitely possible. I lived out of my car for months until I was able to turn it around by using my computer for something besides surfing MySpace.
I think the sad fact is that so many people are now in front of vast, utterly vast learning resources, and it just doesn't matter.
Rich or poor, there are numerous people sitting in front of extreme learning resources, and they'll never do anything with it unless there's this enormous infrastructure designed to remedy issues of motivation and planning. And that's where I think the difference is between rich and poor; yes, there are networking differences, yes, there are differences in local crime rate and other environmental stressors and so on, but the biggest factor is motivation.
I've seen a peer ditch school to go to the library to use public terminals, back at the time when computers still weren't that popular, and there was no Google or Wikipedia. But even then I could see that some people have a different heart -- starting from an early age, they had a yearning to learn that surpassed the praises of parents or the soothing structure of school.
The issue isn't access. The access is already intense for rich and poor alike. Most people don't possess the psychological traits to pursue their own intellectual growth. Almost everyone I've met, rich or poor, stop learning when society stops pressuring them. They may have high or low IQ, be rich or poor, but they are not interested in self-directed learning, at least not without strong external reasons like parents or social shame.
Access clearly isn't an issue for you, and that's good. Perhaps your peer didn't have access issues either and that's good too, but if you believe that access isn't an issue for some people, then you are inexperienced in dealing with some forms of poverty.
Perhaps in some places the library is the solution, but in Chicago, public access is limited to two hours a day. I don't know how much access you required when learning to program, but I needed more than two hours a day.
That is assuming that you can get a library card. For one, you need a verifiable address, which is easy to produce if you live in a home, but very difficult if you do not. Also, if you have violated your card in the past, perhaps due to a youthful indiscretion, you are shut out of the system unless you can monetarily recompense, which is also difficult to do when you are poor.
Not to mention that street gangs can make it challenging to leave your block to get the library in some cases.
So while access has improved, to deny that it is an issue for some people because public libraries exist is glossing over the problem.
As both a lazy and a poor person I think there's definitely a significant proportion who could work but can't be bothered to, who could get a better education but can't be bothered to.
I'm doing an online python course, but works busy at the moment and I missed my last deadline; I just can't be bothered, motivation is really hard to me (perhaps it is for everyone though).
That's not to say that there can't be many people, perhaps a majority, who are poor and disadvantaged by their poverty to an extent that locks them out of opportunities. I just think you have to be careful you're not saying "well sure he's lazy but looks he's poor so he can't help himself".
I can't afford that book could you say why you recommend it; our libraries here will order any book requested for a small charge.
I pointed out that both rich and poor people alike suffer grievously from issues of planning and motivation. The difference is that rich people get better access to the motivation and planning infrastructure.
I also imply that most people, when placed in front of vast access to knowledge, will do nothing with it.
It's also why great online education resources have failed to achieve revolution. Giving kids access to Khan Academy isn't enough; because too many people would rather visit another website.
don't think he said that... lack of motivation affects the non-poor too... A motivated person found ways to improve even when access was not as easy as it is today.
I would like to to know if clojure has big memory footprint. Since is doing dynamic class generation and so on. I did find something[1] on stackoverflow but i would like some more info from real production usage.
Any interesting and credible literature on the subject, you can suggest ?