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Comment by brndnmtthws | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off topic, but I don't have a lot of sympathy. If you want health care, vote for it or move to a country that has it. If you want a job that provides insurance, acquire the skills you need to get the job.

People need to stop blaming externalities for what is entirely the realm of their own personal sphere of influence.

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Most of your comments recently have been violating the guidelines, and we'll ban this account if you don't fix this. Please post civilly and substantively or not at all. This comment does not reach that bar.

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Excuse me for not confirming your biases. I will, however, continue to think freely as I choose. I don't care much for echo chambers. If that does not work for you, please do ban me.

Using HN as intended doesn't require that you change your views. It requires that you post civilly and substantively, not feed flamewars, and not use the site primarily for political battle.

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Moving to another country is not always possible. And it's never easy.

Edit: I mean this literally, sometimes it can't be done. Not every country is going to want to take you, and if you have a criminal record or something you might not find anyone willing to let you immigrate. Plus it costs money and if you haven't got money, then you're just stuck.

It's not easy but it can be done. The US is a nation of immigrants. Unless you're native American, you either emigrated here or descended from someone who did.

It turns out hard things are hard. There's no free lunch or get rich easy schemes.

I'm an immigrant (I was completely broke when I moved to the US) and my parents were immigrants and their parents were immigrants.

> There's no free lunch

In the United States of 2018, that's a matter of explicit political choice, rather than harsh base reality.

> or get rich easy schemes

Gig workers aren't asking to get rich, they're asking to literally not starve to death.

>> There's no free lunch

>In the United States of 2018, that's a matter of explicit political choice, rather than harsh base reality.

The point of the saying "there's no free lunch" is that even if it's free to you, /someone/ is paying for it - lunches do not simply materialize without effort. This principle will hold up as long as the laws of thermodynamics do - even in the United States of 2018.

The point is that you can't give a lunch to one person without taking it away from someone else. But there are enough resources in America that we could reallocate them to give everyone "lunch" without anyone going hungry.

Resources are scarce, and until we live in Star Trek where we can magically replicate anything, there will be no free lunches.

You're thinking that someone will get paid proportionally to how much value they produce. But productivity is up +100% and wages are flat. The "economy" is doing fine so there's no reason people can't get paid a decent wage. Employers are keeping the value of their employees' work.

Some resources are scarce, but food in the U.S. is not. We have allocation and distribution issues, with political choices as a major factor, not supply constraints.

We threw away a full platter of sushi at work last week, because we ordered too much and didn't feel like finishing it.

Food isn't fucking scarce.

> get rich easy schemes.

Inheriting money work well for several friends of mine.

I rather enjoyed my free college experience w/ free lunch plan not to mention a healthy mind and body.

I'll just pop over to the skill fountain and scoop some up. Can I get you anything while I'm out?

Skills aren't handed out, you acquire them by learning which is something you can only do for yourself.

Which entirely ignores all the systemic issues that make it easy for, say, a boy growing up in a middle class household to learn programming but make it very difficult for the boy in a poor household. Or how it's not just skills that are important to getting 'above' gig work but credentials as well. We are not free agents, wading through a thin meritocracy, we are agents anchored by our circumstances, trying to swim through mud.

I'm not even thinking about poor vs. rich kids, or kids living in a ghetto vs. kids living in the suburbs. What about the man who gets laid off from work and has a family to support? When exactly is he supposed to pick up new skills, if nobody's hiring for his current ones in the area?

I got laid off last week, and I've been thanking my lucky stars that I'm a software engineer; I'm actively talking to three friends about going to work for their current employers, and I've got recruiters rattling off lists of companies looking to hire me - plus I get a severance, and my wife makes enough money that we have some bit of runway before I start having to sell clothes to feed our child.

If I were, I don't know, working at a coal mine that closed down? Or at a Toys'R'Us that got shuttered? Can't exactly hop back into a college curriculum for three years, kids don't eat lectures.

Yes, all that as well. Good luck in your search.

Thanks. If you're looking for a software engineer in NYC, ping me :P

Software engineers have it pretty easy in terms of low costs for skill acquisition, but in many other areas it's just not going to be something you can do yourself. If you want to become a machinist, you're going to have to have access to a machine shop. Not impossible, but a higher bar than acquiring a computer to learn how to program. So society has to end up participating in mapping together skills acquisition and the various resources needed to actually acquire the skill.

> Skills aren't handed out

But you made it sound so easy!

Are you suggesting that if someone votes for health care, they’ll get it?

Uh...hm. Y'know, since you put it that way, I have saved a decent amount of money working and am thinking of starting a new business, but I'm concerned about the myriad layers of risk.

I could just move to a country that has health care and invest there, though. Great idea!

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