[quote=davelj]What’s ironic is that Bill Gates and his father are interviewed extensively in the book “The Self-Made Myth”… and they both disagree with you. They find it existentially absurd the wealth that Bill Gates has been able to amass through Microsoft and see “collective fingerprints” and pure “good luck” everywhere in his success.

To be clear, I agree that all of your so-called “problem solvers” would be very successful in most different times and places… the issue is the absolute and relative DEGREE of their success. There are MANY hard-working, indefatigable, brilliant problem solvers out there… only a teeny tiny fraction of them become billionaires. What’s the difference between them? Randomness.[/quote]
Also to be clear, I agree with you that randomness and luck does have some play in it. What separate the billionaires and the millionaires entrepreneur is luck and being at the right place at the right time. My point is, if Bill Gates wasn’t bestowed with that luck, that luck might have been bestowed on someone else. The luck of being at the right place at the right time, the luck of being born super smart, the luck of being born with the gene that drive them to be entrepreneurs, etc. All of those are luck. I agree with you that a teeny tiny fraction of the hard-working, indefatigable, brilliant problem solvers out there are billionaires.

Again, back to your original question of where would I think these internet billionaires would be if there was no internet. Assume they have the same luck, just no internet, I think they would be exactly where they are. But obviously, this is all “what if”, so there’s really no right or wrong answer. If you want to take a step further back and say, what if Thomas Edison didn’t invent the first electric utility and the light bulb, would we have the ARPANET and what we know today as the internet or even the computer. Lets take a step further back than that and say, if that one caveman didn’t discover/invent fire, would we be where we are today?