Every American knows the story. A guy starts building something in his garage. Maybe it’s a computer, a delivery service, or some kind of better, faster software. He has no investors or even anyone who believes in his idea. Twenty years later, he’s on the cover of a magazine, and the journalist writing the profile calls him “self-made” as if the concept were novel instead of foundational to the entire national mythology.
We love this guy. We put him on motivational posters. We name business schools after him. We tell our kids about the young man who walked into a CEO’s office with nothing but a pressed suit and a firm handshake and walked out with a career. We treat self-reliance like a sacred American value, right up there with free speech and the Second Amendment, and we should, because it is.
So why does everybody act so confused when seventy million Americans actually go out and do it?
The American Ronin
In feudal Japan, a ronin was a samurai without a master. He carried the same swor…