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Comment by SolaceQuantum | Hacker News Reader

Under what circumstances do you need the latest smartphone to get a job?

Note that the article did not mention a smartphone. The article mentioned any phone, include pay-by-minute or similar.

You can't function without going out drinking several times per week? I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for that.

Unfortunately, the stress and pressure of poverty or borderline poverty is a wonderful bed for which addiction can take place. Especially given that the culture of america promotes drinking regularly as a past time.

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> Note that the article did not mention a smartphone. The article mentioned any phone, include pay-by-minute or similar.

If all you need is a commodity phone, that is quite cheap and isn't really going to impact your playing of the "long game".

> Unfortunately, the stress and pressure of poverty or borderline poverty is a wonderful bed for which addiction can take place. Especially given that the culture of america promotes drinking regularly as a past time.

So just don't engage in it? The point of this article is that through power of will you can achieve great things. You've got to actually exercise some will to do them, though.

What if they have no power of will? These things can be beat out of a person over their life experiences and genetic predispositions. If it's never been beat out of you it's easy to it on your high horse. As Werther argued in Goethe's, Sufferings of Young Werther, you wouldn't ask someone to get over cancer through power of will.

Yeah. If you are born in the slums. Your chances are ultra slim. You might as well be a chicken born in Human farms.

This is why we the lucky intellectuals who have time to discuss this over hacker news have a responsibility over those who are dealt with a really bad hand.

https://chomsky.info/19670223/

- The Responsibility of Intellectuals

- Noam Chomsky

- The New York Review of Books, February 23, 1967

A big part of whether or not people have the power of will is whether or not they grow up inculcated in the myth of will power. Asian cultures are very very good at this, for instance. The US used to be very good at it. Yes, sometimes circumstances make it difficult to develop will power. That doesn't mean those people get off the hook for trying.

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