It's not a straw man if the first commenter was intending to use "self-made" to actually mean something to a reader anywhere close to an average reader. To an average reader, even on this website which probably skews American and wealthy, it's just not reasonable to refer to someone as a "self-made billionaire" when they received a loan from their parents that's well over 3 times the median household income in the United States.
Self-made just means that you made the money with your own effort as opposed to inherited it. There's nothing in that comment that attempts to paint them as relatable. If they wanted to do that, they would talk about Bezo's teenage mother and adoptive Cuban-immigrant father. For all we know, that $250,000 could have been money gifted to Bezo's parents while he was employed at DE Shaw.
> Self-made just means that you made the money with your own effort as opposed to inherited it. There's nothing in that comment that attempts to paint them as relatable.
I disagree. The point of the term is not to describe a financial technicality. If someone inherited $900m and worked really hard to earn another $100m, I think most people would be confused to hear them described as a self-made billionaire. On the other hand, of course, people wouldn't tend to be confused if you described some billionaire as self-made if they grew up lower-middle-class and their parents gave them $100 when they turned 18.
So, yes, it's not an "all or nothing" thing, but it is absolutely about conveying relatability to a certain audience. We can reasonably disagree about whether describing Bezos as self-made is appropriate for the HN audience, but I tend to think the $250k "business loan" from his parents should at the bare minimum accompany the inspiring anecdotes about making a desk from a door (which, from what I have read, was literally done to symbolize the imaginary need for extreme frugality).
