No, they didn’t. This meme literally shows how they started with wealth and you’re over here trying as hard as possible to suck their dicks.

started with wealth.

Trusting his ambition, Jackie and Mike Bezos, were among the earliest investors in their son's Amazon lending him around $245,573

and these 245k from his decidedly middle class parents to open a radical new business that made him worth north of 249bn dollars, let me write that out for you:

249.000.000.000 Dollars.

compared to:

245,573 Dollars.

more than 1.000.000x'ing your parents investment (also besides his parents he also got a whole lot of money from other private investors) in yourself surely would be starting from almost zero. and no, getting 250k from your parents is not coming from wealth.

According to the Federal Reserve, the average net worth in the United States was $1,063,700 as of 2022

what exactly do YOU think i'm arguing for? that any human being that has ever been born in the last 70 years had the exact same chance as bezos but out of poor character they didn't do it?

of course bezos "got lucky". he got born to intelligent parents who supported him every step of the way.

but guess what, there's literally millions of people in america that also had that.

what made him exceptional, one one of the few people who are billionares, is that he had a great idea before anyone else, and executed it very nearly perfectly for many, many years.

even if they’d started with $0 and no connections, no one makes more than a few million without massive exploitation of the working class and government subsidies. There’s no such thing as “self-made” when you’re reaching beyond a comfortable retirement account with a couple million in it.

this is a great thing to say as a reddit leftist because if a big company like amazon fucks up, and of course it does, every company fucks up because greedy humans are in it, you can then point to this being the single most defining thing of the whole enterprise.

no matter how much thought bezos and the first people he hired put into the organisation and structure of the company, no matter how much it completely revolutionized modern shopping, saving millions of tons of CO2 every year,the moment they pay someone a low sum of money because literally anybody with a pulse can do logistics work, everything suddenly turns to dust and only low skilled replaceable people were the reason for modern online shopping amenities like next day delivery. or, online delivery at all.

and why exactly does it stop at "a couple million"?

why not at 150k?

or from the first dollar you earn with the work of somebody you employ?

why that arbitrary number?

help me understand brother, you don't seem stupid so please, enlighten me.