“Can you start a business without $10m of family capital” is a societal question.

“Can you start a business on an empty stomach without a roof over your head” is not the same debate. A roof over your head is a prerequisite to almost everything else in life - starting a business is WAY down the list. Better to have societies work to provide food and roofs - which they do, with varying degrees of success.

It is the exact same debate.

People without those things cannot play the lottery as many times as those who have them. They might not even get to play it once.

If everyone around you has all of those basic human needs met, you are the exception.

But of course people don't like to hear this, because their whole meritocracy myth (which has always been trash) comes falling down and they might be forced to admit that, please excuse me for making this outrageous statement, ... you're just an average person with slightly better luck than others.

(It is true, however, that "luck" compounds through your life and even more through generations, though. But that even detracts from the meritocracy myth even more, as the family you're born in greatly defines what you'll achieve.)

I don't think anyone believes the idea of meritocracy applies to starving homeless slaves.

Luck is often the deciding factor in meritocracy, but we also make our own luck. You can have all the privleges in the world and still end up as a failson, it happens all the time.

Becoming an entrepreneur happens most of the times merely for advancing one's personal financial success. But, another side of it, which doesn't usually get attention, is that you become a beneficial factor for the society at large, because you are assumed to be doing something good and appreciated by others to earn that money. (Otherwise, earning money without being willingly paid, would make you just a criminal). You are right, this "compounds through your life and even more through generations". Especially through generations. This is how the prosperous societies got here - people doing all sorts of things that led to prosperity. If you don't not live in a society like that, then your business should be building a society first. Put your brick in the wall.

It also means that, unless the state of the environment you're in has some "force majeure" as a cause, then the people that were before you haven't done that of a good job building one either. That's not an individual failure, that's generations of failure, don't you think?

And lastly, if the environment you described is the one you're residing in, that means you're far removed from that of the entrepreneur's (you're casting judgement on) and from his/her stance. How can that lead to a caracter judgement worth anything?

>If you don't not live in a society like that, then your business should be building a society first. Put your brick in the wall.

Totally agree.

What’s even funnier when I hear that my thought is “congratulations I guess??”. They are now making less than an average mid level developer doing CRUD enterprise dev 3 years out of school in any major metro area in the US.

That’s not even considering that the intern I mentored in 2021 is now making in the low $200s as an SA at BigTech at 25.

All of those things are great and should be afforded to every Person. In many places, they are.