> Steve Jobs' family had a nice middle-class life

According to the original argument, that directly contradicts the assertion that only highly priviledged people linked to the elite are able to succeed.

Unless the goalpost is moved further away to the point that middle class is now part of the elite, it's quite clear the original argument doesn't hold water.

Exactly. There is a jealous undercurrent on HN about success. Usually it is around so and so started rich and/or was just lucky.

Is some luck involved? Sure. It also helps greatly to not have to worry where their next meal is coming from, but that is very different than having to start in the elite.

There is a severe discount of what can be best coined “courage” by Aristotle, the balance between brashness and fear, when it comes to startups from people who don’t exercise it. Everything looks so predictable in hindsight that the virtuous quality of taking a chance is voided because someone started life eating better baby food. It’s plain ignorant.

Saw this on the Jackie Chan thread yesterday: "It's surprising how much luckier people who prepare are."

Jobs had no money, no connections, no "pedigree", and was a college dropout. Jobs' parents were blue collar, his dad was a repo man, and their background was poor.

Jobs grew up in San Francisco. His father supported an interest in electronics, and he got an in at HP by being mentored by a neighbour who worked there.

He joined the HP Explorer's Club and got to see world-leading new products ahead of release at a time when HP were creating incredibly impressive calculators and personal computers.

He also attended lectures on the HP campus - which wasn't just educational, but also contributed to his relatively fearless approach to networking.

The family may not have been rich, but it's just plain wrong to say he had no connections and no advantages.

Anybody in that area at the time could have done it. And SV was hardly the only place where adults worked on electronics. HP wasn't the only computer company. DEC was in Massachusetts, for example. Texas Instruments was in, well, Texas. Tektronix was in Oregon. Universities all had electronics schools. Radio Shack and HeathKit made electronics learning kits for kids. Los Angeles had a thriving microcomputer industry at the time.

The notion that Jobs was in some unique position is not correct.

Poor people aren't able to move just to switch school districts for their child's benefit...

Also, they had a nice single-family home with a yard in a suburban area.

Poor people migrate thousands of miles on foot to enter the US and then somehow reach every corner of it.

Land in the U.S. isn't available, however, to just "migrate on foot" with your family a few miles into the better school district. We have laws and property has to be bought. As a child who grew up in one of the not-good areas, I can tell you it's a lot harder than you think. :)