Inequality and the Sergey Brin Effect | Hacker News Reader

Inequality and the Sergey Brin Effect

american.com

33 pointsprakash20 comments

Two generations ago, a couple married to share production. Today, they choose one another because they have similar tastes in consumption.

"There is also another factor at work. A trend is underway in America for marriage to be increasingly “assortative.” That means children of well-educated parents tend to marry one another and the children of less educated parents tend to marry one another. This was less the case a few generations ago. For example, sociologists Christine Schwartz of the University of Wisconsin and Robert Mare of UCLA found that beginning in the early 1970s there was a striking “decline in the odds that those with very low levels of education marry up."

I'd be curious to see if someone has connected this to the rise of the Neo-cons. They're all about classism.

This is interesting. From life experience (over-educated liberal parents, 4 years in Cambridge, MA, 1 year in Berkeley), the "left-wing" is as class oriented as the neo-cons (that is, if you can define "class" via degrees granted). I've been on the hook to marry someone with at least a master's degree since I turned 25.

A master's degree is slightly different from a master's degree from a "good school." I've also been pushed to associate with well-educated people, but not necessarily from schools with high tuitions.

I guess that is my experience, also. One of the reasons I left Cambridge was because I found the snobbery alien and slightly revolting. People who go to Philips Andover and then onto Harvard may be liberal in their politics but are very neo-con in their classism, even if they didn't start out that way. I don't remember what essay it was, but I vaguely remember PG writing about people in Boston trying to become "Thurston Howell III" and this unfortunately transfered over to much of Cambridge.

My dad got an engineering degree from UCD (the Dublin, Ireland working class alternative to the "elite" Trinity College). My degrees (3 of them and an ABD) are generally from working class type schools. I went to a private high school (almost entirely because the public school system failed me miserably) which was classed as a "hockey school" (Loyola High School, Montreal) and the neighborhood rival to a high school that educated Canadian prime ministers (Lower Canada College). Somehow I got a pretty good education - I think that it was at every stage, better than the elitist track. Like the old Hertz commercials - "we're second, so we try harder"

In Disciplined Minds (a book certainly worth reading, but take with a heavy grain of salt), Jeff Schmidt made an observation about highly educated people and their political tendencies that made me stop and rethink my own personal views.

He believes that while highly educated people are usually considered to be liberal, they are, in practice, a lot more conservative than they seem. Most are usually only liberal when it comes to personal viewpoints on social issues, viewpoints which have little social impact. Many professions which are usually seen as left-leaning, like university professors, are in fact very conservative when it comes to beliefs and values that they act upon in the workplace.

That sounds like an interesting book. Does he come at the problem from a left-wing or right-wing perspective?

In my experience, academic leftism is seen as more of a social obligation than a set of deeply-held beliefs. (There are, of course, many exceptions).

This, of course, is one of the reasons that I hate to socialise with my fellow academics.

I forget where I was reading an analysis of this kind of thing the other day, but it argued that there are really two middle classes: the commercial middle class and the academic middle class.

The academic middle class loves the lower classes (in theory) but can't stand the commercial middle classes, whom they see as ignorant boors with the temerity to earn more money than professors, while doing less work. This, I think, is what drives a lot of the contempt for things like SUVs, "McMansions", soccer moms, Sarah Palin, and all that other gunk that people in my circle seem to enjoy whining about nonstop.

OK, firstly, if this is what "neo-con" means to you then the word is sufficiently broad to have lost all meaning.

Secondly, I'm guessing this has more to do with broader demographic trends. Since the 1970s there's been a huge increase in the number of people who go to university, so a university-educated person has a broader pool of other university-educated people to choose from.

Even more importantly, while in the distant past there were significantly more men going to university than women (and as such there weren't enough educated women to go around), in recent decades the numbers have been more or less equal (though recently women have been overtaking men).

http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html

I have read most it, so I hope I'm accurate as to its meaning. But Sergey Brin is an outlier, because as an immigrant he started a tech company. The only other example of this I can think of, is Max Levchin of Paypal, etc. I don't see a guy with a lemonade truck as being as profitable as Sergey.

Another point is, those lemonade trucks will be expenses, and most of the lemonade profits will go to those loan costs. Sergey started off with a low-spend company.

Andy Grove

They picked Brin because he is famous, but he's meant to represent all winning "players" (those who play in economic tournaments with winner-take-most outcomes), not just those who become billionaires.

I'm actually another example of an immigrant founding a tech company (though I've moved and traveled so much I have a hard time thinking of myself as an immigrant as opposed to a "world citizen"). I'm an immigrant to Canada, and eventually (and temporarily) an immigrant to the US. My non-immigrant partners decided to push me out and have since demonstrated their complete lack of creativity and drive. Though they're great at manipulation.

I'd argue that you have a leg up being an immigrant. When American tech workers think of "immigrant" it is very probable they interpret that as "some guy who is better than me, works longer hours, requires less pay, and has no capacity for laziness or stupidity thanks to his brainy robot genes, who is going to steal my job". Americans, on average, are honestly probably lazier, less educated, and demand higher pay than their foreign-born counterparts, but I am pulling that out of my ass so feel free to cry foul on me.

I've mostly lived a first world life, so I think I'm just as susceptible to laziness and complacency. I think I do have some slight advantage just because I've seen the world (and not just as a tourist - I've lived for extended periods of time in Europe, Asia and North America).

Jerry Yang, Ruppert Murdoch, Shai Agassi, Miguel de Icaza, Loic Lemur, ... Paul Graham. :-)

...and that's just off the top of my head.

Also just noticed that Trevor from YC is an immigrant (though, admittedly, from Canada) -- so 50% of the YC co-founders immigrated to the US.

Sergey Brin and Britney Spierce are in the same category? I didn't know that.

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