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Comment by fredsir | Hacker News Reader

> Elon

Obviously, it's also a good advice to be born with wealth from the blood of an emerald empire. Hyper-rational, being born wealthy. Great advice!

Kidding aside. I'm just sick of people putting people like Elon up on a pedestal. Look at all the rich, successful people out there. How many come from wealth, and how many come from dirt poor conditions and just worked themself up? Working hard is good advice, but it doesn't guarantee success, quite the contrary. A lot of successful people never worked hard a single day in their life, and billions of people work hard their whole life and never come close to the kind of success the former enjoys.

Hell, I guarantee that Elon is not even the hardest worker at his companies, even though he enjoys most of the fruit of the labour.

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Being born into wealth helps, but it also hurts. If you have something to lose, its harder to take risks. Elon put all of his wealth on the line for SpaceX and almost lost it. Anyone, from him down to the person who scrapes together pennies to start a risky business to make a better life for themselves, deserves respect for taking risks to achieve their dreams.

Elon knows that money is something he can always get, because he has gotten them before. Also his family is rich. He knows that worst case is he goes to them and get some millions and back to work again.

Rich people aren’t taking any real risks by using their money. The people taking the real risks are those putting their lives and livelihood on the line every day, doing the dangerous, back breaking, mind numbing work for the rich people with the money, while the rich just look on from a far while their workers are doing the actual work for them using their resources and making them even more rich while the workers doing the actual job have nothing to gain in comparison themselves, often being far closer to personal and financial ruin everyday than the rich ever are.

Elon isn’t risking shit.

That those with money that invest them is taking the risks and thus also deserves the rewards is a myth, is a ruse, but it’s not hard to figure out who would stand to gain from such a myth.

Yes, I’m aware of this meme, which echoes loudly on twitter, yet it’s still wrong.

How so?

Your post started with "Elon knows", which implies you can read minds, so as long as your arguments stem from knowing the inner thoughts and assumptions of someone else, it's a rickety foundation to say the least.

As somebody who grew up poor, but has many friends who did not, being born to wealth hurts far less often than being born poor.

Where did I claim the opposite? What you state is so beyond obvious I'm not sure the point.

Would you deny Elon has a knack for finding great opportunities and executing? He's at the head of two of the most innovative companies, you make it seem like hes totally lucky and there's nothing to his approach.

Indeed. He has some great ideals, I think. And he is great at finding brilliant people to work for him, it seems. But is he anymore brilliant than what thousands or millions of other people would be were they giving his shoes? I don’t think so.

Most great chefs would be nothing without access to a grocery store, but that doesn't mean I can't learn more from that great chef than the 99% of the other people going to that grocery store who never learn to make amazing things.

I'm not saying everyone is the same as Elon, except for the money. I'm saying his inherited wealth, and being at the right place at the right time, and so on, has probably more to do with Elons success than anything else, so let's stop worshipping the guy, and everyone else like him. Our society favours the few, and that's not something we should celebrate.

> "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

– Stephen Jay Gould

I guess it's depends on the goal. If you're looking for people to celebrate, I agree with you.

If you're looking for people to learn from, then I think there's a case to look at people who achieved more than others who started with similar circumstances.

> If you're looking for people to learn from, then I think there's a case to look at people who achieved more than others who started with similar circumstances.

Very good point! Which just illustrates why those people like Elon, Bill Gates, and whoever else celebrity there is, is not someone to look up to, except if you were born rich, which most people aren't. Also the worshipping, like what we do with celebs, is just never a good thing. One can try to learn from someone without worshipping them.

The history books about Elon, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and so on, all demonstrates how they are sociopathic scum, that also achieved great things. The big question is if they achieved it because of being those things or despite of it, and I'm inclined to think it's despite of it. And maybe it's because we learn our "idols" are ruthless sociopaths, that we then go on and tolerate our bosses being it, which just enables others to be sociopaths, which is just a fucking vicious cycle. Instead, if we as a society didn't tolerate such a behaviour, Bill, Steve, Elon, you name it, wouldn't have achieved shit, because they did it using other people, and if no one tolerated such behaviour, they would just be twiddling their thumbs, and someone else with more empathy and solidarity would have gone ahead and done what they did, and we would all be better off.

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