TheWrongGuy's comments

That's all fine, and you're right: Sam Walton was talented and it was a smart investment. You've interpreted my "average hard-working chump" to mean "not a talented businessman" which is not what I meant. I just think that if you got a bunch of money from your father in law and were part of prestigious society that needs to be part of the story. If it's omitted, I have to think that the author is intentionally pushing an alternate but equally-inaccurate view of how success happens.

Maybe true, but the article is pretty much replacing what you'd call "career porn" with what I'd call "persistence porn." About the kid who walked in the snow wearing nothing but a t shirt every day to get his degree, yadda yadda.. ignore the fact that Sam Walton he had a rich stepdad who financed his businesses, that he was in a prestigious fraternity and secret society at UoM, and had a number of other benefits that are simply not available to your average hard-working chump.

Great point that these narratives are usually self-mythologizing and mostly untrue. Success is more than just a “eureka” moment where it all comes together. It is also more than the alternative that you present here, wherein the person succeeds purely by outworking the competition. A much more complete — and frankly, more interesting — picture of success would include the ideas, the hard work, and also explain how Walton’s early stores were financed by his father in law Leland Stanford Robson (who often paid his son-in-law’s bills, sometimes even without Walton’s knowledge), that he was active in Missouri’s fraternity communities, was a member of QEBH, the UoM secret society that also includes several past and current state governors as well as one of the founders of Kinder Morgan. If your aim is to demythologize success and present a more accurate view of the the path one must walk to become massively successful, isn’t it kind of misleading to omit Walton’s network of powerful family, friends, and benefactors?