• Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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    19 hours ago

    I don’t know exactly how much his parents were worth, but his net worth has increased by many thousands of times. That’s not “third base”, saying he got where he is by luck and nepotism is just wilfully ignorant.

    Trump, on the other hand, would have done better if he just left his money in a savings account.

    • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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      18 hours ago

      I dunno, man, we could probably get into an entire dissertation about this, but I’m not totally convinced that most of these fabulously wealthy people didn’t just fail upwards by throwing the spaghetti plate at the wall; the only difference between them and us is that, often, they start with a lot more spaghetti to throw

      • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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        18 hours ago

        Pretty much all of the three digit billions crowd are in tech of some description. There’s definitely an element of being in the right place at the right time, but there’s also a lot of business skills as well.

        A lot of their success seems to be recognising an opportunity before anyone else, whether that’s luck or skill is difficult to know.

        • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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          17 hours ago

          A lot of their success seems to be recognising an opportunity before anyone else

          Pretty much everyone in the world has at some point in their lives had some idea or spotted some gap in the market that could be a successful product, but 99% of us don’t get to act on that because the rent is due and will be due again next month.

          • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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            8 minutes ago

            I largely agree with what you’re saying, but he’s been in the right place at the right time 3 times, and made good on the potential. Maybe he was just really lucky, maybe he had dozens of things going and those 3 are the ones that panned out, maybe he was a genius that destroyed his talents with hubris and drugs. Certainly, having the financial security to take those chances was a big factor in his success, as much as apparently believing that success was all due to his inborn talent was a big factor on his continuing fall from grace.