
Self-made men, debunked  - aarghh
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/30/self_made_men_debunked_salpart/
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yummyfajitas
This article (and presumably the underlying book) seems to be defining "self-
made" in an odd way - anyone who purchased services is not self-made.

I.e., if a person bought and paid for an education, roads or IP protection,
they are not self made. Similarly, I suppose (the article doesn't follow it's
own logic), if a person buys AWS services they aren't self-made.

I wouldn't describe the article so much as a "debunking" as a "redefinition".
If you adopt an extremely restrictive definition of a term, then no real world
objects may meet the definition of the term. So what?

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ZeroGravitas
Personally I'd agree with your definition, that anyone who participates in an
economy cannot, by definition, be self-made, but the article seems to be
taking a slightly different tack. It is arguing that everyone benefits from
government intervention. Some of these are arguable (e.g. would totally
private education system be worse or better than what we have? If you believe
it would be better then can someone therefore be described as being helped by
the current education system, rather than harmed?) but I think the basic point
that some government is better than no government is fairly incontrovertible.

