There is also the item that **ianzin **is in England, that is one huge ball and chain less to deal with when starting a business, because there is no overwhelming health insurance costs for him and his family by going into business on his own, and then there is also the problem of attracting and keeping workers because usually, in the USA, even if the new entrepreneur manages to offer health care to his workers, it is usually not as good as the one a big corporation would offer.
Good point in general, but it doesn’t affect the incentive for the unemployed who have no health care anyhow. It helps a lot to be married to someone with insurance here.
It affects other things also. I might retire before 65, if it were not for waiting for Medicare. I can delay getting Social Security until 66 to get the full benefits, but medical care would be difficult or impossible for me to get, not to mention being expensive.
You’re also forgetting that “safety nets” take all sorts of different forms.
It can be as simple as having trustable, healthy and mobile grandparents to take care of your kids while you start your business. The “safety net” can also be getting an introduction to a good real estate agent, or understanding how to read a contract.
Nobody wants to take anything away from those that start their own business and succeed, but the sorts of support I am talking about here tend to have positive correlations to coming from families with more, rather than less money.
I have seen it too many times to count here. There are many self made successes. And they have achieved much. They have taken a great idea, worked hard and made it into a success.
When you look into it a little deeper you can see all the “hidden” support that they received. For some, it is as simple as living in a landed home, where they have space for a home office and afamily maid to take care of the cooking (thus can spend more energy on the business). For others, it was having a family with the means to send them overseas for education (here, even the qualified can’t always attend university due to limitation of places).
I know of one case, of a very successful young gentleman who has built a very very successful restaurant chain out of nothing. He is held up a business case study and deserves to be.
He slogged it out, had a great idea and better cooks and has really achieved huge amounts. When you look into the history of the business you see that he opened his first outlet in one of his grandfathers buildings at attractive rental.
The grandfather didn’t lose anything, and it was still a sound business decision on his part, however my argument is that somebody like myself, or any one of hundreds of others with talent and a great idea would never have been in a position to get that outlet in the first place. This is the sort of support tyhe “start a business” folk often don’t take full cognisance of.
If you define it that way, everyone has hidden, unquantified, and unexpected support. Even the immigrants that come to a new country with nothing but the clothes on their back has “hidden” help. The inner city ghetto kid with absent father also has them.
If the immigrant and ghetto kid later becomes successful, they can say with sincerity (from their viewpoint) that they started from “nothing.” But any outsider can cherry pick little events and twists of fate along the way that they took advantage of. So we dissect the business owner’s timeline until we find that one thing he had that we don’t have. Isn’t it too convenient to create that explanation to make us feel better?
But that’s noticing that one factor. There are also positive factors unique to your situation that your restaurant friend cannot take advantage of. You may not be aware of them but they exist. I’m confident they exist simply because you exist. You’re typing a post into SDMB so I assume you’re not a quadriplegic isolated in a tent in Tibet.
That’s probably true you couldn’t get that specific advantage of family rental rates but you’re a different person so you’d naturally have to seize different advantages. Perhaps if you tried the restaurant business, you could convince 2 pretty waitresses to work for free because you have the cutest smile and can charm them into believing the business will work. Your ugly friend gets a discount on rent, but you get a discount on labor. Or your unique personality wouldn’t bother pursuing restaurant opportunities at all and do something unrelated to the food hospitality business. You just said yourself that you’ve “got talent.” Look at all the successful business owners that love to brag that got “zero talent” and had to make up for it.
I can’t say in the grand scheme of things if pursuing a business is the right activity for you or if it’s valid universal advice for everyone. What I am saying is the particular reason you’ve given (winner’s hidden safety net) is not convincing and is just the standard defeatist type of talk.
Spectrum/attribution fallacy. Yes, we can cherry-pick any number of “things we don’t have” that could be viewed as advantages, but some advantages are certainly going to be much more beneficial than others.
I do think this is a valid point. Success is a combination of many factors, and so if you lack in one, you have to make it up elsewhere. Again, though, not all factors are weighted equally, and my gripe is that successful business owners tend to vastly undervalue external advantages and overvalue personal strengths.
In the end, it’s like asking why other top Poker players don’t have as many WSOP bracelets as Phil Hellmuth. Phil’s a fantastic player, but not the best. He’s been around for years and has achieved many bracelets during eras where Poker was not nearly as hypercompetitive and overanalyzed like it is today. That doesn’t mean he’s not a good player – it just means that we shouldn’t view achievements without taking them into reasonable context.
Similarly, I have nothing against successful business owners who worked their asses off – more power to them. But I think it’s bad for one to accuse someone of being lazy or something because they aren’t working for themselves. I’d love to work for myself but I can’t risk not being able to pay bills. Risk, as we’ve learned recently, requires safe capital to undercut it. Just because someone is smart and hardworking doesn’t mean all their success is purely BECAUSE they are smart and hardworking.
You shouldn’t risk what you can’t afford to lose, which is why I think it’s awful to wrap up this risk-taking mantra with some sort of moral high ground.
Only a morally-wrong person would say that.
I did start my own business. And it was a (minor league) success when I sold my share share of it. And yes, I have also benefitted from some of the things that I mentioned.
But again, actual cash sponsorship aside - I’d be willing to bet that if a credible study was undertaken into the success of “new start-ups” you would find a very strong positive correlation between success and the “good” family situation of the business founder.
Why? Success breeds success. It’s just that simple. When you have seen it happen first hand, you have a much better understanding of what it takes. All the way down the line to the already mentioned “on hand care”.
It can even be as simple as being comfortable in a business environment, having the clothes to attend a business meeting (eg A suit).
That’s not to say that we can (or should) do anything about it - we can still recognise though that there are different opportunities and pressures for different groups of people.
Its necessary but not sufficient. If that werent the case you wouldn’t see people coming to America to start businesses.
I don’t know about England but a lot of countries don’t have the “fresh start” form of bankruptcy that we have here in the USA. This changes the population of folks who start small businesses here versus other countries.
I have heard it argued (fairly convincingly) that after you account for all sorts of differences, the “entrepreneurial spirit” of a nation correlates fairly well with their bankruptcy laws.
Another point. We ALL can’t be business owners. Just like we ALL can’t be lawyers or doctors or astronauts. Therefore this whole “looking down” attitude some people have towards people who don’t start or own their own businesses is IMO just plain stupid.
The poor people express the same high moral ground and contempt against the wealthy business folks. The whole “meek shall inherit the earth” and “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” etc.
It doesn’t matter what group people find themselves in. They will find ways to cut others down. The movie stars look down on television actors but the Broadway theater professionals look down on Hollywood. In turn, I’m sure there are several groups that dismiss live stage actors so now we can create a paper rock scissors fight out of it all. Basically this entire planet is big clusterfuck of hate and contempt. 
That’s not true. That’s just the narrative that you have made to fit the success timeline you see.
Another narrative says that John with $1 million start capital from his parents is actually worse than the kid that starts with $0 and must build credit through friends and networks. The weighting can be different.
See the book “Halo Effect” …
If everyone could be successful, we wouldn’t look down on the ones who aren’t!
If only being looked down on paid better – I’m tired of doing it for free.