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Oh lord, there's no such thing as a "self-made man" or "pulling oneself up by their bootstraps". It takes one or more rich investors or already having money, customers, employees, partners, vendors, and distributors taking chances on them. To deny this is to give oxygen to the mythologies of hyperindividualism is "good" and success is "achievable" in a vacuum of solitude. It's a lie that denies the credit to those who assisted in the amassing of wealth.

https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/pul...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Alger

https://ideas.time.com/2012/09/07/the-myth-of-bootstrapping/

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/3/29/alissa_quart_bootstra...




I mean it sounds like this guy kind of is? People do actually win the lottery.


That's a dumb argument with survivor's bias. The lottery is external to them and present vanishingly-small winnings to people at random without affirmative agency.

People who participate in lotteries are statistically poorer.

https://journalistsresource.org/economics/research-review-lo...

https://themillionairenextdoor.com/2011/09/any-economically-...


Are you an AI who can’t understand metaphors?


That's rude and unhelpful.

Read the linked material. The metaphor of bootstraps was an impossible and Quixotic feat like perpetual motion that became coopted as a celebrated mythology of "self-made". There is no such animal, friend.


It was in the 50's, not now. The world looked a bit fucking different than now.




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