Well I'm glad the last 100 years of business history can be summed up with a single strawman. It's such a relief that there was no nuance or complexity in history, now I won't have to do any of that nasty "thinking".<p>Sarcasm aside, you present an entirely simplistic view of history perfectly tailored to the point you're trying to make. The only people who are going to believe anything you're saying are the people who already agree with you, because people tend to be less than critical when it comes to their pet theories.<p>As a counter-point, here are some of those grey-suited company-men from the post-Teddy Roosevelt era:<p>Henry Ford<p>Alfred Sloan<p>Thomas Watson<p>Walt Disney<p>Will Kellogg<p>Warren Buffett<p>William Boeing<p>Gordon Moore<p>Henry Kaiser<p>There are more. So what exactly is your point? There were clearly self-made men after Roosevelt. Are you arguing that there were more self-made men before Roosevelt? I'd like to see some evidence to that. Or maybe you're arguing that the general "sentiment" was against self-made men. Again, I'd like to see evidence of that, and good luck finding it. First you'll have to define just what the national "sentiment" is, then find scientific studies of people both before and after Roosevelt that tried to discern it.
> America became the first large-scale experiment of a society that could be called a meritocracy<p>Bit of a fail here. The word meritocracy comes from a book of the same title written in 1958 by Michael Young (interesting fella, wrote the UK Labour Party's manifesto in 1945, founded the Open University).<p>The point about meritocracy is that it is a satirical term. (The beauty of it being that in any society the wealthy and powerful can claim they rose on merit. In the time of the Divine Right Of Kings, merit was being chosen by God.)<p>But don't take my word for it, read Michael Young on the subject in 2001.<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment" rel="nofollow">http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment</a>
<i>Prior to the industrial revolution, status in most societies was based on one thing only: heredity. No matter how much you accomplished - or didn’t - you stayed in the same station of life.</i><p>Ye, this isn't really true. Lets take, for example, 18th century Naval officers from the UK:<p>* Captain Cook - discovered Australia, mapped the Pacific etc. Father was a farmer<p>* Horatio Nelson - Defeated the French, considered greatest Naval commander of all time. Father was a minister<p>* Arthur Philip - Commander during American Revolution, lead colonization of Australia. Father was a teacher.<p>It is a very common misconception that in old society it was impossible to move from the lower classes into the upper classes. The British Empire, the prototypical aristocracy, was largely shaped and developed by people who were raised in the lower classes. This is because the military, navy, their universities (eg. Isaac Newton), and many other parts of government and private societies were strict meritocracies.<p>The upper classes actually produced a very small number of notable people, outside of royalty (Charles Darwin, Churchill, Brunel (although his grandfather was a French farmer)<p>(Edit: <i>"America became the first large-scale experiment of a society that could be called a meritocracy."</i> - Citation needed. See above.)
As I tend to point out any time someone goes on a masturbatory flight of fancy like this: there ain't no such thing as a "self-made man". There are only people who are too short-sighted or too narcissistic to acknowledge the others who helped them get to where they are.
I'm from Pittsburgh. Once, on a business trip, I met an old woman. Over the course of our conversation, our common origins became apparent. She asked me, "Do the men still have to change their shirts after lunchtime?"[1] I said, "no, not anymore." "Well, maybe I will go back there again one day."<p>Carnegie stepped on a lot of heads on his way up. [2]<p>1: There was so much soot in the air, your shirt would be dirty by midday, so blue-collar workers brought spares and changed.<p>2: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Strike</a>
The "status" of olden days, by the by, did not just happen. It was created at some earlier point in time by "self-made men": warlords, robbers and so on and then maintained by force or coercion.
One improvement about most technology entrepreneurs compared to the old self-made men - they're not crushing strikes or hiring Pinkertons to assassinate workers.
This is a great example of what separates entrepreneurs from other people: the ambition and belief that precedes any action at all. Given the list of people identified as self-made men, I would hazard a guess that there is a long way to go.
I think he is right on the major premise, but wrong on fashion -- a lot of the most revolutionary and iconoclastic people I've met dress well, in suits when appropriate.
"Prior to the industrial revolution, status in most societies was based on one thing only: heredity. No matter how much you accomplished - or didn’t - you stayed in the same station of life."<p>Status has always been based on power. Plenty of poor men grew up to be powerful men in the pre-industrial world. In this corner of the world (West) the routes open to the "self-made" man were the military and the clerical orders.<p>(It is of course true that the nobility had de facto access to the same spheres.)
Great post, and I wish more entrepreneurs were this reflective.<p>It would have been nice if he at least paid homage to Ayn Rand, who he has clearly read and was influenced by (along with millions of other people.) I know it's fashionable these days to read Ayn Rand, and then discard her by the time you're 18, but she was a pretty important figure in helping turn the tide he's talking about.