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Comment by jimmydddd | Hacker News Reader

Unpopular take. While I agree with the sentiment, I still think it took some fortitude to walk away from the golden handcuffs of a successful finance career to do an Internet startup at that time. Bezos said he ran the idea past his boss at the time, and the boss said something like "that's a good idea, but not for someone who already has a great job like you." So I do applaud him for that. Bloomberg made a similar transition.

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Suppose Bezos burns 80% of his net worth playing with his willy in his garage and decides to wrap it up. He goes straight back to his cushy HF job, 3 years behind in his career if he can't manage to market his experience as some kind of lofty journey landing him a better role than when he left. Let's not pretend it was brave - he had the foundations to take the risks and still come out just fine.

Nonsense. He had comfort and security to fall back on. His family was also loaded.

He wasn't walking away from anything. He would have been fine if it didn't work.

The reality is he had a safety net to fall back on. 99% of people do not.

From the point of view of a good 50% or so of the world (if not more), pretty much every Westerner has comfort and safety to fall back on.

Except it is simply not true that every Westerner has safety to fall back on. There would be no homelessness crisis if this was true.

I said "pretty much". The homelessness crisis in, say, the US, affects a relatively small portion of the population; from quick looking up figures, it's less than 1% of the population.

I'm no expert on any of this, but as far as I understand it, homelessness is usually 1. transitory, and 2. usually tied to other serious issues like mental health issues, drug abuse etc. It's usually not a "lack of resources".

The homelessness goes up and down woth economy and housing availability. Sure, people worh mental health issues are first to loose ... and being homeless makes all the mental health issues worst.

Like, common. And beyond homeless, you have people one paycheck away from being homeless. And people unable to pay for drugs they need - like insuline.

Yes, if all you know about West is what you see in movies, then everyone is rich.

> 99% of people do not.

Which really reflects to how most people's parents/family/society is pathetic.

Now I'm not merely talking about a safely net after one burns up millions in a startup but I'm taking about say a safety net after loosing a job etc. I think most people (like me) would be just happy to have stability in life rather than yearn for being financially successful. The precarious existence is depressing.

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