Owning a computer, getting a college education, having a stable, supportive family are all privileges, and at least a couple of them require a good amount of money to spare. Not trying to play oppression olympics here, but I think we should try and recognize the privileges that many of us enjoy, and many others don't.
You could also argue that good health is a privilege. It is. But it isn't special. The late 70s were a time when computers were flooding the marketplace, and that could only happen if they were affordable for regular people.
I graduated in 1979 with a whole class of people who were quite capable of doing what Gates and Jobs did, and that's just from one university. But we didn't, and Gates/Jobs did. How do you explain that?
My father was career military. That isn't a recipe for wealth, and is an avenue available to millions of people.
You might be interested in the book "Masters of Doom" about John Carmack and John Romero. They had none of the privileges you assert, and yet vaulted to the top of the gaming industry.
>My father was career military. That isn't a recipe for wealth, and is an avenue available to millions of people.
I was actually going to ask this, but I didn't want to be presumptuous.
Your family, like mine, were probably recipients of GI Bill benefits. These benefits (like college grants and home loans) were systematically denied to black folks, disallowing them from participating in the post war economic boom.
There probably weren't a bunch of black students in your graduating class.
Bill Gates had a lot of guts and savvy on top of a great work ethic- and a lot of social advantages.
I guarantee you there's a billion dollar opportunity today right in front of my face that I do not see, but will find out about 5 years from now. It's in front of your face, too, and about every other HN reader.
Never in history has there been more opportunity than there is right now in software. Software is a completely unregulated free market, the barriers to entry are essentially zero, the market for a product is global, training materials are zero, and marketing costs can be zero.
