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Comment by jcchen | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, I couldn't disagree more. While Jeff Bezos' upbringing isn't exact destitute, his rise from a modest background[1] to extreme riches is evidence to me that the American system still works to some degree. No offense but I think going all the way to conflating this with feudalism slightly discredits and damages efforts to fix real problems in our society such as increasing wealth gap.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_life_and_educ...

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Owning a 25,000-acre farm is a modest background and his rise therefore evidence that the American system still works? Rather sounds like he was born into a sufficiently privileged environment and all the benefits that come with it (Mainly an educated background and discipline to work hard). A Jeff Bezos from a "lesser" background might have strayed from this path earlier due to the circumstances of his upbringing.

Of course the status quo is hardly comparable with a feudalist system, but the stark inequality you are born into is very much - and even more so the difference in wealth and power between "regular people" and the super-rich.

Examples of something isn't proof of a system working. I'm more inclined to say that the low number of examples is proof that the system ISN'T working.

There should always be motivators (like money) for people to work harder, take risks, invent things, and fill a spectrum. I'm not sure if that spectrum needs to be in factors of millions though, instead of say, 100-1000s.

And I'm not saying anything about Bezos in particular. He really is self-made, but for everyone of him there are 100s of (patently less rich) inherited top 0.1%:ers.

But did he work millions of times harder than someone else? Did he risk that much?

I'll gladly work TWICE as much/hard for 5-10 times the reward. A lot of people do, for diminishing returns.

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