Ibn Saud, founder of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabian, had 45 sons alone. Such large families continue in the House of Saud.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud
There's the oft-cited case of Ghengis Khan, who by DNA estimates may have as many as 16 million surviving progeny. Estimates of the numbers of his actual children are quite hard to come by, and range from low (he had only one official wife) to many thousands.
Gates, in particular, is aware of several modern challenges, including overpopulation. His "reproductive success" may well be a calculated strategy for long-term advantage. Or simply altrusitic motive.
By contrast current estimates are that about 0.5% of the world has a y-chromosome descended from a relatively close ancestor of Genghis Khan. (When his horde burst out, both he and his male relatives took advantage of "mating opportunities".)
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan#DNA_... for more.
A side note. His y-chromosome would have benefited more than his other chromosomes since many of his sons, grandsons and other direct male descendants also had good breeding opportunities. Those men had his y-chromosome, but not all of his other chromosomes.
It's a fact of life that you have to play to win. The richest in history took extraordinary risks to get there, and for every winning risktaker there were 10 losing risktakers.
This also goes hand in hand with why hard work and perseverance are virtues.
Not exactly accurate. Bill Gates may have dropped out of college to pursue Microsoft, but that was hardly an extraordinary risk. His parents were extremely well off, and had that adventure been a failure, he simply would've gone back to school and completed his degree. Same thing with Zuckerberg.
You are ignoring that Bill Gates had to come from an extraordinarily privileged position to even be able to incur such a large opportunity cost. Most people don't have the opportunity to not to finish a Harvard degree, because most people don't have the opportunity to go to Harvard to begin with.
You are also ignoring that even if Microsoft had failed after a 10 years, the act of founding and running it would likely have afforded him experience that would rival in value a Harvard degree. This makes it doubtful that the opportunity cost was actually very large.
Furthermore, when you talk about how large the risk was, you play fast and loose with relative and absolute sizes. It may be true that Bill Gates took a large risk in absolute terms, but because of his background, the risk was actually not that big in relative terms. Not any larger than the risk of someone else choosing one education instead of another, or one career over another.
We're not talking about whether he'd "get by," that's irrelevant. We're talking about relative risks assuming that Microsoft didn't succeed.
I think Bill Gates is a great businessman and he has worked for his wealth, but let us not be delusional. The son of a well-respected Seattle lawyer from a long-standing Seattle family that could afford to send their kid to the most prestigious school in Seattle was never going to have issues having a comfortable career by going with "Plan B".
The only delusion in this thread is the idea that Bill Gates took no risk when he decided to drop out of Harvard and start a company with the goal of ushering in the age of personal computing. I'm not comparing him to a starving African child, I'm just pointing out that he took a risk just like every entrepreneur on the planet.
So yes, technically you're right, but your argument is missing the vital essence of what people mean when they say, eg, "Bill Gates wasnt taking a risk".
But because of my skills I had no problem getting back into a normal development job afterward.
That means that my risk was a lot less than someone who would lose everything if their plan didn't work out; the same goes for him. His risk was negligible.
As for "bleeding money out of his trust fund" - you do realize, short of developing a 6-figure coke habit, he could've lived off the interest for the rest of his life QUITE comfortably, right?
His relative risk was nearly 0. He was going to live, at worst, an upper middle class lifestyle regardless of the success or failure of Microsoft.
Except this is not a black and white matter, nothing is stopping him from going back to college except time and money of which he already had enough. I'm pretty sure his parents had a contingency plan in case his company failed.
By contrast, not getting a Harvard degree and maybe having to spend an extra year or two for a degree from a lesser university, that's absolutely not a huge risk. It's like the ultimate non-huge risk.
First of all, in real terms, no they didn't. In monetary terms maybe, but poor people take bigger risks all the time.
It is true, though, that the richest of the rich take bigger risks than their peers, and bigger risks than are arguably sensible. This is the difference between the "nouveau riche" and old money.
In terms of securing the level of consumption they're used to, and usually in terms of happiness, rich people are better off playing it safe, and most do. But some rich people may just have borderline pathological need to prove themselves, and buy metaphorical "lottery tickets". It makes sense that the richest individuals of the rich come from the group of those who take "dumb" risks that happen to pay off (I'm thinking Steve Jobs, Elon Musk etc.)
This is a recent coincidence. Bill Gates could easily have 300,000 times the reproductive success he's expected to have. It's not a priority for him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion_(psychology)
There's a good reason for this: If you gamble on something that can hurt your livelihood, then if you win you only get marginally richer, but if you lose you might not be able to feed yourself or your family.
Or to put it in a cruder way, reproductive success has strongly decreasing return to scale as a function of economic success. Bill Gates has only 3 children, even though his income is around ~300,000x that of the average American.