Would they end up like Prince Charming in Shrek 2?
It depends on the person and how rich. I’ve known a number of people who were multi-millionaires because they were very smart, got jobs doing something they loved that most people couldn’t do well, got paid very well for it, but didn’t spend much money. After some decades of that, it piles up. Those type of people tend to be very down to earth, likable, focus on their families, etc. I can think of a few of those people who, if they woke up with nothing, would be taken care of by their friends and family.
But then there’s billionaire rich. That’s doesn’t come from just making good money and not spending much. It’s hard to believe there’s ever been a billionaire who didn’t get their money through some level of exploitation. So on the one hand, it’s hard to believe they’d have many people feeling sorry for them. On the other hand, ultra rich people tend to have ultra rich friends and family, so I doubt most would fall far.
There was actually a Millionaire named Mike Black that put it to the test. Gave away his company and all his wealth away to family members and chose not to lean on his business contacts or family and “Put it to the test” whether he could rebuild from scratch based entirely on drive and know-how. He quit trying after less than a year because the health consequences of trying nearly killed him.
See, the hard reality is even if you’re giving everything you’ve got to be successful, so are millions of others who are trying just as hard, and the thing that often makes the difference is dumb luck and/or the support of people most wealthy folk don’t even realize people are giving them (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for less good reasons).
So yes, if you don’t give everything your 110% you’re not going to get anywhere, but giving everything your 110% is probably not going to make you successful. 80% of people who do everything right, fail. Almost 20% just barely hang on, and only the smallest fraction of a percent actually “win”, usually based on factors they don’t even see or acknowledge, and it has nothing to do with talent, brains, or effort.
So if a rich person woke up tomorrow with actually Nothing, it’s possible lightning might strike twice, but more likely, they’d end up desperate, hungry, and homeless just like the rest of us.
Not exactly true, he was being successful, even starting a coffee brand, but he had an autoimmune disease so stopped to focus on that and that his father had cancer. Its not that he got poor health from the initial homelessness that he got him self out of by being a logistics middle man.
An autoimmune disorder he didn’t have the means to manage while also pursuing the effort of lifting himself out of poverty. You think normal people don’t have adverse life events that pile up and make things difficult? Nothing I said was wrong. Lots of people can get out of abject poverty, and I know plenty of small time startups that barely go anywhere selling branded merch. It helped him immensely that he did it while also getting YouTube revenue from “documenting” his experiment. Good luck trying that as Joe Sixpack who doesn’t already have name recognition.
It doesn’t change the fact that rich people generally got rich because of a lucky break. A lucky break they had the good fortune to recognize and put in plenty of work to make the most of, but a lucky break nonetheless. If they truly had nothing, no network of people to fall back on, no inside track on financing, etc. they’d fall apart like anyone else.
He did though. He was successful at reselling furniture and started a coffee business too.
By day 5 he had made enough to buy himself a computer. After 2weeks, he was able to secure his own office space and after just over one month, Black finally had his own place to rent.
That’s pretty amazing.
The articles say he quit for his dads stage 4 cancer also. Meaning wanting to be there during his dads ordeal. Not every country is like the US where you pay to healthcare either.
I do recognize being born into money gives you a huge advantage. You get the best schooling, best mental health therapy, access to opportunity.
I’m just saying he didn’t fail because you can’t start from scratch, he stopped because he was able to make that choice
It’s not that impressive. Lots of poor people have several “good runs” in a lifetime. Let’s see him pull it off with the tens to hundreds of thousands in debt that most people start life with these days. Friend, you’ve clearly already made up your mind, so I’m not sure that there’s a point in arguing. People who aren’t rich also have health problems, and families, and they don’t get to tap-out just because it got hard. As for it being better in other countries, yeah it is nice to have healthcare. I’m a Canadian, I should know. Unfortunately every culture on earth is infested with American money and American fanboys who are constantly undermining our public systems like rats in the pantry.
I stand by my statement, you can give all the feel-good self-talk in the world, but we suffer from a lot of survivorship bias in the popular myths of opportunity in the modern world. You have a better chance of winning the lottery than being one of the handful of “self-made” rags to riches stories in the world. The vast majority of us will just run ourselves ragged, have nothing to show for it in the end, and die. You can spend your whole life doing everything in your power to bend the odds in your favour, but so is everyone else, and none of us are welcome in the rooms where how the money gets divided are making decisions.
The debt thing is a good point, interest will keep you struggling. He was starting at zero as a homeles person, which is probably an advantage compared to many.
Also, the last part is quite the pep talk ;)
I believe it is better to start from the truth of where we are than to believe in some comfortable myth about opportunity. People who do that get hurt, and then they end up someone else’s problem. Being clear eyed about the problem is the first step in realizing a solution. If the system doesn’t change, 3/4 or better of the population is just a write off. They will not succeed. That’s the world we have built. Can we do better than that? Probably. If we sit down and discuss it like adults instead of throwing temper tantrums every time dogma gets challenged. That doesn’t sound like it’s going to happen any time soon though.
Call thier bank
Or theyd hatch a scheme to short orange juice futures and put other rich guys out to sail
TURN THE MACHINES BACK ON!!
Given the realism of the premise I’d assume they can just go back to sleep and wake up with it all back again.
