Land of opportunity

Is there still a country, anywhere in the world, where a hard-working, ambitious person with a “million-dollar idea” who wasn’t born into wealth can become successful?

All of them.

I would think there are lots of countries where that can happen.

Maybe it’s how you define “successful”. I was born to relatively poor parents (white, rural poor rather than black, urban poor, but it sure still felt like poor) and I’ve become an upper-middle class (*) grandpa with two wonderful kids and three even more wonderful grandkids. You just don’t get more successful than that.

…and I don’t think of myself as particularly hard-working or ambitious.

(*) technically, we’re probably better off than that financially, but nobody who’s ever met me would mistake me for upper class.

If you’re genuinely hard-working and ambitious, then you don’t even need the idea.

And I don’t think this really belongs in GQ.

Million-dollar ideas are a dime a dozen.

Are there any countries in which its impossible for a poor person to become a successful entrepreneur without being born to wealth? Probably not. There may be countries that make it much more difficult. North Korea, perhaps. But there’s no inherent bar anywhere. It’s a matter of finding capital and a network of support. That’s true in the U.S., too.

Why do you ask? Do you think there are such countries? If so, why?

Moved to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

Maybe the OP has been lurking in GD for several years. :wink:

I haven’t, so I don’t get this.

Every country in the world has their self-made men and women.

I think the OP has a very lofty definition of “land of opportunity”. The US is a one of many “lands of opportunities”, not because it’s theoretically possible to have a rags-to-riches story, but because there really are lots of opportunities here to wear a different hat than the one you wore yesterday. You might still be poor, but instead of being a poor man flipping burgers, you can be a poor man who works in housekeeping or who washes cars. And maybe if you bide your time and work hard enough, you can be less poorer. I don’t think rags-to-riches is realistic for most people, but rags-to-adequate is, if you play your hand right.

A follow-up question. If somebody was not born great, and is a little apathetic, is there still a country anywhere in the world where they can have greatness thrust upon them?

Asking for a friend.

“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.” – Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Stranger

In North Korea, it would be easier than in most other countries. All you need to do there to succeed is to have no ideas at all except mindless dedication to the ruling party and work your to the top within the system. Everyone is free to join the ruling party.

If your ultimate zealous patriotic ambition is to get Gloriously Purged, then North Korea is just the place to do this!

I’m asking for a more specific reason: I’ve developed a revolutionary

technology, and a product based on it which renders everything else in a

$220 million a year field obsolete. I’ve created others in the past: I did

a lot of work in complex robotics (now called “swarm robotics”) in the

80’s, and built what might have been the first machine comprised entirely

of smaller, identical, interchangeable (cellular) machines. I also tried

bringing what I’m pretty sure was the first remotely-operated hull-

cleaning robot to market in the 90’s.
I’ve lost any IP rights I could have laid claim to when the patent laws

changed a few years ago. I have very limited funds, and patents cost more

than the average person can afford nowadays. I understand that the

conditions for inventors has changed drastically; which is why my current

plan involves using crowdfunding.
It seems to me that if it’s so difficult for someone with a profitable

idea and drive to rise from poverty, it must be nearly impossible for the

average person, with the average skill set. I see so many others who work

overtime every week, yet still need public assistance to survive, and who

will most likely never be able to own a home. As far as I’ve heard, not

too long ago all you had to do was work hard, and you could buy a house &

a new car every few years, if that’s what you wanted to do. The landscape

has changed, and even a little bad luck could put considerable obstacles in one’s path.
Anyway, the original question I posted in GQ remains - if there’s still

a place where someone like me can be successful enough to buy land, build

a house on it, and maybe even have a bit extra for a small luxury or two,

I’d like to know. I haven’t given up hope on the “American Dream”

completely, but I figure a group like this, with such a mass of

knowledgeable individuals, might be able to name other countries where

opportunity is still abundant, or even common.

Million dollar ideas are a dime a dozen.

I’m sure your idea is great. Not being sarcastic. You probably have a great idea for a product. The problem comes in turning that idea into a profitable businesses.

And that is really really hard. You can find millions of people with ideas for a business that would be successful. So why aren’t those people running successful businesses? Because running a successful business takes a lot more than a good idea.

If your idea is revolutionary, but you can’t even scrape together $10,000 to get your process patented, then there’s no way you can turn your idea into a successful business. Maybe somebody else could, but you can’t. Not because your idea is crap, but because you don’t know how to run a business. You don’t know how to convince people to lend you money. How much money have you saved from your regular work over they years to plow into your new business? None?

Getting your process patented is easy. I used to work for a guy who would literally come up with 2 or 3 patentable ideas every day. And he only bothered seeking patents for 1% of those ideas, and he only bothered developing maybe 5% of those patents into business ideas. Because even though he had plenty of ideas, he could only run one business at a time, and he was a mortal man, his last business failed because he died before it could become profitable. Now I’m occasionally seeing the type of technology he was working on in actual use. Maybe the patents he held were sold to some other companies, maybe not.

But the point is, having an idea is one thing. Making a working product is another. And turning that product into a profitable business is still another.

Lots of people own profitable restaurants that make a lot of money. A lot more people own struggling restaurants that barely break even. If your idea is “open a restaurant”, you’re very likely to fail, even though some people take that idea and make it profitable. So what makes your idea so valuable, compared to the millions of other ideas out there?

…and when they’re not, when they are posted publicly (like Here), they get ‘slightly modified’ and stolen quickly.

Nobody is lurking on message boards hoping someone will accidentally reveal a great business idea that they can rip off.

Nobody is ripping off “ideas”. Doesn’t happen. If your business becomes successful THEN they’ll rip you off, after you’ve proven your idea can be profitable. But nobody is ripping off “ideas”. You can’t patent an idea.

Ideas are nothing. Successful execution of the idea is everything.

Because “ideas” are usually not as profitable as person who has them thinks they are.

Yes, because the “average person” is dumb as shit and their ideas are stupid.

What “ideas”? The only think I’ve seen are some vague badly written ravings that read like a cross between a Nigerian scam and a multi-tier marketing pitch.

Or to be more specific, “ideas” aren’t profitable; excecutable concepts (potentially) are. Submitting and having a patent application accepted is just the first step in developing, manufacturing, and marketing such a concept, and most of the failures occur in those areas as a ‘great idea’ ends up being something that is unworkable, not fiscally produceable, or something that nobody actually wants.

And if you’ve been through the development/patent process, you should be well aware that while a patent gives you certain rights to intellectual property, it in no way prevents a company from taking the concept and executing it with their own branding, either by making enough of a functional tweak to argue that a pending or present patent is not applicable or just ignoring the patent entirely and collecting profit until someone sues, at which time they just pay a court-indicated amount of royalites and punitive costs for patent infringment which may or may not be the amount you would have gotten by just licensing the technology to begin with.

It is not especially difficult for “someone with profitable idea and drive to rise from poverty”, provided they actually have some marketable skills and aptitude. Of course, it may be that they need to work another job while working on their “profitable idea” on the side…just like the rest of us do with our respective passions, hobbies, and side jobs. Your idea of the “land of opportunity” seems to be some hypothetical patron who ensures your livelihood while you work at your “profitable idea” at leisure. You can, of course, do this, provided you are willing to sell your body for various and sundry purposes (prostitute, illegal medical experimentation, drug mule), all of which are still more noble than moaning about how no one appreciates your special genius and showers your idea with free cash.

Stranger

You can’t be old enough to remember the 80s if you believe this. Half of new businesses fail within 18 months; only 4% last more than 10 years. Working as an employee is no guarantee either; more households require both spouses to earn good incomes to afford a home. That was as true in the 80s as it is today.

There was a very short period of time in the 50s when houses were incredibly cheap. That was due to the tremendous backup of buyers who didn’t buy houses during the Depression and the war years. The new houses for sale then were small and often shoddy but they seemed good compared to living in smaller and more crowded apartments in aging infrastructure.

People who look back at that anomaly and consider it a Golden Age are talking through their hats. Ask them if they want another Depression and World War to stifle homebuilding for 20 years. The real world economy has been with us for decades.

In all times, the same truth holds: a comparative handful of people become successful because of an idea. Everyone else has to work for years and save their money.