Meanwhile, George fucking Soros came from a family who'd been living off a single general store and moved into magazines. Elon Musk dropped out of Stanford to place his bets in the dotcom bubble with his own brother and made out like a bandit. Mark Zuckerberg's parents were a psychiatrist and a dentist. These aren't "The Rich People" situations, these are far closer to middle class than the sorts you're focusing on. And the churn of "mere" millionaires strongly subject to rags to riches to rags is even more prominent in this, given how it's mostly small business owners.
You need SOME money and SOME connections, but the line is in actuality extremely fine. Intergenerational wealth has fantastical sums, but recently there's not been much keeping some rando with $50,000 to burn, a good credit score, and not-abhorrent speaking skills from ending up at the heart of the next Great Wealth Accumulator.
Just look at Notch, who ended up a fucking billionaire over a block-game and is so utterly an outsider to the halls of wealth that he is visibly miserable about all the hangars-on because he's just not a big-money man.
Edit: Very important to note is that one very good substitute to having your own connections and giant bag of money is being able to bullshit venture capital firms into sharing theirs. A lot of the techbro field runs on that trick!
George Soros "rags to riches" story involved so much corruption its not even funny. He combined hedge fund scamming with political scamming. and connections.
Notch is a legit example of self made man...
who got rich by selling entertainment. He made minecraft.
And this was the classic "exit" rich. where someone lucks out into something of significance so the oligarchs buy him out, knowing his money will quickly evaporate and they will remain holding the power long term.
Please do note that nobody said "nobody ever became rich without X"
Someone said "most rich people are psychos because the quick and easy way to wealth is to exploit and scam others".
To which I replied that in terms of "quick and easy", that method is number 3, not number 1.
number 1 being born to it. number 2 being politics. number 3 being exploit and scam.
And 2 and 3 are interlinked because often it requires political friends to exploit and scam people for the most money.
That does not mean those 3 ways are the only ways to make money. Just that those are the easiest and quickest ways to make money.
So yea... if you manage to win the meme lottery and make the "next minecraft" (unlike the countless indie devs who live in poverty) then great for you. but this was not a quick and easy route to wealth.
