Starting a venture

It certainly helps to be rich. It gives you so many advantages in life. But I've known several entrepreneurs who did not have any wealth in their backgrounds. They did not become billionaires, but they provided good lives for themselves and their families. One guy had a job running a street sweeping machine for a city. He thought he could do a better job than the city. He mortgaged everything he had, bought a street sweeping machine, and began selling his services. He was able to save cities money. He bought more machines and hired workers and did very well for himself.

What I had noticed is that they have a basis of legitimacy under them, that many of us have never had. They can risk money, because they have grown up with their legitimacy untarnished. Many of us have had to grow up with our legitimacy under attack. So we are already in a state of risk.

Definitely there are social reasons why some can take risks and some best not.

The greatest example of this for me were the founders of Hewlett Packard.

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Didn't work that way with me. The only help I received from my father was his signature on a loan guarantee for a water truck when I was starting out back in 1965. Even though I paid off the loan on my own the old man got 1/3 of my company for that signature. When I sold the seismic part of my company Pop got a hefty 7-figure cheque for his 1/3 share.

What I'm saying is not necessarily that these entrepreneurs are getting financial help from their parents. Money only looks primary. Actually it is always secondary. I am saying that there is a basis of legitimacy which they often have, which many others don't.

Capitalism works on illegitimacy, like Original Sin. It uses this to make people submit to its rules. Without this illegitimacy, our society would not go along with Capitalism because it makes some people rich and some people poor. Unless their is some widely held belief that this is justice, then it would be gone.

But I have noticed that with many entrepreneurs there is no illegitimacy, there is guaranteed legitimacy. Again I am thinking of Hewlett and Packard. I don't think they got financial help. But there was no disgrace which they were trying to work off. They were even friends with the son of Herbert Hoover. And also with Frederick Terman, and Hoover had been Stanford's first admitted student.

No on the other hand we have people like Oracle's Larry Ellison, a nut case. He is trying to work off a life of shame and denigration perpetrated by a step father. This is why Ellison always needs to wow people with his expensive floating and flying toys.

SJG

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Many people grow up in situations that they are barely able to escape from with their lives. They not only have no financial backing, they have zero basis of legitimacy either. This effects what they can do.

People talk like it is always just money which determines the possibilities. In my observation it is never really this way.

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