@LMAY75 said:
There is a vast difference between being upper-middle class and a mutli-billionaire. Bill Gates is one of the most intelligent people on the planet, and in reality just saw an opportunity and acted upon it. I will point out that an inheritance also requires his parents to have been dead, which I do not believe they were when Microsoft was founded.
Totally agree. But this is an argument based on a pedantic use of the language.
The reality is Bill Gates is intelligent but without the privilege of the lucky situation he was born into, he’d be significantly poorer today.
This is not a criticism of Gates. Its a fact that no amount of him being born intelligent would have led to him being a billionaire if he had been born in a fishing village on the Amazon.
That was not racism, but I’ll change it because I can see how it comes off that way and I apologize to anyone who took it to mean I was demeaning those of Indian descent. For the record if he was from a poor village in Scotland I would have said the guy was poor and from the middle of nowhere in Scotland. I cannot comment on the town where he grew up, but from his story assumed it was a smaller-town/village.
I never thought the racism was intentional. “Poor village in Scotland” is different from “Poverty stricken village in India” and when you actually mean a major city its a significant difference.
The reality is the city he is from is twice the size of Denver. India is a heavily populated country so the descriptions of “large” vs “small” can have different meanings.
But it also points to another issue, one you alluded to earlier. This is all heavily politicised. The “poor kid from rural backwater made it to be CEO of the mighty google” is an awesome origin story that makes it feel like there is a lot more opportunity available.
But lets be honest - he is literally a 1 in a million.
As to what I really meant, Pichai is one of my role models because he embodies the epitome of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. He is in fact quoted saying he grew up sleeping on the floor, the guy was not well off and in terms of the “privilege” that others had, he had none.
This is a politicised origin story, be careful how much value you ascribe to each element.
You say he had no privilege but that is literally not true. There are lots of things, completely outside his sphere of control which allowed him to get where is today.
This is not meant to diminish his achievements - he truly did the work and seized the opportunities, but, as the saying goes, no man is an island. There are a massive list of things which he had no control over but acted in his favour.
The probability of him growing up to be the man he is today was incredibly unlikely. He is an incredibly smart man and a hard worker, and that is how he made it.
I agree. But those two things alone are not sufficient. Without them he would have got nowhere. I think we can agree on that.
Luck and the environment you are born into are very, very important.
But there are thousands of incredibly clever, incredibly smart people. The institute he graduated from pushes thousands out into the world each year.
Was he simply the cleverest and hardest working person in India? Because if that is true, then he isn’t really a role model - because being the cleverest/hardest working person in a population of over 1.2 Billion is not something that people can realistically aspire to.
Just to reiterate, none of this is a criticism of Pichai. I actually think he is pretty awesome as CEO’s go.
I can only speak from a US view as I in fact live in the US. You can likewise only do the same for those in the UK and others can do this for their countries as well. In the initial reply I did include “at least for the US” because I can only speak on the US. Are things drastically different in North Korea? Absolutely. I cannot speak on the situations there because it is not my experience.
I feel you’ve taken offence where none is intended. The US centric view is valid, and as you say natural. The point is about finding out more about the world. That’s a fundamental aspect of learning.
The issue here though is that you have formed apparently strongly held beliefs without the experience of anywhere else in the world. Speaking as someone who has lived in the US, and lots of other countries, I strongly recommend being less certain until you’ve experienced more.
This is where i am strongly going to disagree and I apologize in advance for being a little pissed off at this.
You dont need to apologise.
They had no government safety nets and no help. As I can only speak on my experiences, this is where I am going to very strongly disagree.
Except you aren’t disagreeing. You are giving examples of how people in extreme poverty can, through hard work and effort, improve their lives. If you turn round and tell me that your grandfather turned his situation into being a multimillionaire CEO of Fortune 50 company then it is a stronger counter-argument.
But it is still survivor bias. If your grandfather had died of starvation waiting to join the Army you wouldn’t be here to talk about it today. Imagine if your Grandfather had lost a foot before he joined the Army. Would you be here today or would he have been a sad statistic?
You’ve taken this personally but I don’t know why. Nothing anyone has said diminishes the effort of our fore-fathers trying to make our lives better. But we need to appreciate the broader context.
Let me give you a similar - personal - example and then I can explain why I truly believe privilege exists.
I come from a background of working-poverty. I was born in a city in the UK at a time of massive unemployment, riots and social challenges. I left school at 15 with no qualifications and skills. I was broadly unemployable at a time when jobs were scarce and pay was close to non-existent. By the time I was 18, out of a class of 30 kids I’d been in school with close to 20 were dead or in jail.
I escaped this. I joined the Army. I excelled at that and I was able to turn things around so that when I left, I was able to set up my own company and quickly establish enough clients that now, I am more than comfortable and probably in the top 6% of UK incomes.
Why is this relevant?
Because only a portion of it is down to my own intelligence and hard work. If I had not been white, the role I did in the Army wouldn’t have been open to me. If I’d been gay, unhealthy, injured or female, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. If my parents or grandparents hadn’t been born in the UK, or had criminal records, or had links to Irish Terrorism (common where I grew up), I wouldn’t have been able to do it. If I’d been a year younger or older, my lack of educational qualifications would have prevented me from doing it. If I had been intelligent enough to appreciate danger, I might not have been as keen a soldier or progressed as well as I did.
None of this diminishes the fact I used my intelligence and hard work to improve the situation I was born into but without the luck of being born a healthy, straight, white, male in the year I was born, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to excel. A lot of things totally out of my control conspired to give me a chance, which I was able to seize.
Of course, it is possible that I’d have done well with other situations but it is a gamble I never had to take. A good friend of mine - who was orders of magnitude more intelligent than I am and much harder working in general, also tried to enlist. He had a heart murmur and was rejected. He is currently working (harder than I am) in a job earning less than half of what I pay in tax.
I will never accept the fact that it just because I am cleverer or harder working than he is.
If we are going to be throwing accusations of narrow viewpoints, that would be a UK-centric viewpoint, one that I cannot comment on or compare to the US. From a basic understanding however it would make more sense that the UK sees a greater amount of old money as it was an old world empire.
That is a valid point. But it was mostly around the issue of how storing money in banks isn’t really what the super rich do.
Also, its worth noting about 30% of UK Billionaires are actually Russians who’ve become British since the fall of the USSR because its a good way for them to use their wealth to buy stuff like property that they can leave to their kids.
The US in comparison is a relatively new country and our wealthiest tend to be entrepreneurs. Even US figures such as Carnegie were incredibly poor before becoming wealthy.
I totally agree with this. I would say, however, that the “incredibly poor” to “Incredibly rich” is still rarer than you might want to admit.
Most of the time it is “comfortably wealthy” to “very rich.”
The American Dream is a wonderful thing but it isn’t as egalitarian as it could be (maybe even should be).
As an example, if I want to follow in the footsteps of Andrew Carnegie, I need to have around US$500,000 that I can invest, over and above what I need to live and feed my family until I can turn a profit. There isn’t a path for a poor Scottish crofter to decide to get on a boat, sail to the US and start selling stuff to earn money.
Sure it helps to be born into money but it certainly isn’t a requirement to be rich,
No, it isn’t a requirement. You don’t have to be over 6 feet tall to be a basketball player either, but most of them are and if you are taller, you have an easier path.
and being born poor isn’t an excuse to blame your problems on those who have more than you.
On the whole, I agree. I haven’t seen anyone really do that here though.
A vast majority of rich people are in fact just hard workers and smart people.
The same is true about hotel maids, nurses, teachers and thousands of others who are clever and work very hard - but will never be rich.
That was the initial point of my post. Sorry if that comes off insensitive but its the truth as seen from my experiences
I don’t think it is insensitive, but it does depend on how open you are to change as you get more experience.
This isn’t meant as insensitive, but at 17, your experience of the world is pretty close to zero and almost entirely formed on the immediate community you have grown up in.
and the data I’ve seen. I cannot speak from any other perspective.
That’s fine. But everyone else is speaking from their perspectives. If you dismiss their views because they are different from your experience, then everyone else should dismiss your views.
Alternatively, you can look to see the world from other people’s perspectives. That’s kind of the point of discussion and debate. It feels like you are digging your heels in here.
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