anemoiac

I don’t think the experience you describe is universal. Plenty of developers have both reasonable work-life balance and fair compensation (I think?).

You could make the same argument about sharecropping in the Jim Crow South.

For the gig economy to actually "fight inequality," it would have to ultimately lead to reduced inequality. I've heard plenty of arguments that gig work is low-paying and enables employers to subvert traditional worker protections, but nothing suggesting that it's closing the gap between the rich and poor.

> Oh lord, being “forced” to provide work in order to receive the work of others

I didn't write the comment you responded to, but I don't think its author was advocating for the mythical "free lunch." I read their comment as a statement decrying the seemingly artificial constraints built into modern (American, I presume) society that force workers to make an essentially binary choice between a stable, secure life and one of, potentially, poverty and marginalization.

To be more explicit - most people can't simply provide (even valuable, in-demand) work on their own terms, so they're forced (by various intentional and unintentional social/economic/legal/etc. barriers) to work according to terms that may not make sense to a rational third-party. This is (probably) why the commenter you responded to mentions the binary distinction between financial stability and physical insecurity - there's hardly any middle ground between the two categories when it comes to most fields of employment. Although "tech" is probably the most flexible industry in this regard, it's still difficult to find positions that allow part-time employment with health insurance benefits (even at lower-than-average pay rates), for example.

In most industries, the prospect of being able to work to provide only enough "value" to comfortably sustain oneself, as opposed to "being forced" to fully commit to the lifestyle (i.e. 40+ hours/week, car for commuting, lodging within commuting distance, childcare, general cost of paying for convenience in food/housework/etc. due to having less free time, etc.) is laughable. I believe this is what the commenter you reference was referring to - having the freedom to live cheaply without becoming financially insecure or socially marginalized, not some desire to have others pay for their lives.

Thought this was satire until I kept reading and realized you were serious...

Meanwhile, Americans are apparently happier than ever!

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27949658

This is my go-to pair as well.

Why people “decide” to do this sort of work? Oh, I don’t know, probably the same reasons people “decide” to be poor.

Do you really think that the reason we don't have 13 hour workweeks is that "people choose not to structure their lives that way?"

This little write-up says next to nothing. If you want to engage with a critique of David Graeber's work on 'Bullshit Jobs,' you might as well skip to the paper linked at the bottom of this column - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09500170211015....

Do you think shameless self-promotion has always been as culturally acceptable as it seems to be today (in American culture, let’s say)?

To be fair, there are just as many books and “investment gurus” out there trying to convince you that you can beat the market if you follow their advice. Your “rule” might seem obvious for those who already implement it, but it’s actually difficult for many people to follow because it requires having a certain level of both self-awareness and knowledge of investing.

And, while most of the consequences of poor investment strategies do fall on individuals - at least superficially, both the hyper-social nature of our species and the political/economic structure of our societies ensure that those consequences frequently extend far beyond them.

Maybe we should think about building a society that’s less financially cutthroat. I’m not in the financial position of the potential restaurant workers discussed in the article, but I can’t imagine wanting to work in a typical chain restaurant if I was. Not because of the work itself, and I’m not trying to downplay the value provided by restaurant workers either, but because I would feel that it was limiting my potential future earnings. Most chain restaurant jobs just don’t seem to offer real opportunities for upward mobility and their unpredictable shift scheduling can make it difficult to work or study outside of them.

Obviously, I’m coming from a position of privilege here, but putting myself in the shoes of a potential restaurant worker, assuming I wanted to put myself in a better long-term financial position, I would simply choose to not be a restaurant worker and study/apprentice for something else instead. I’d imagine that actually working in a restaurant teaches plenty of useful life skills, but unfortunately I’m not sure that experience really translates into a marketable resume. Unfortunately, in a competitive job market, there’s an opportunity cost associated with time spent in jobs that don’t enhance one’s desirability to potential employers.

Now obviously not everyone has the option to simply forego low-paying work and become a student/apprentice, and I’m sure some people really like working in restaurants (even fast-food chains), so I’m not arguing that restaurants should simply disappear. Instead, I think we should work to reduce the competitive nature of our economy so that cheap, convenient food (or similar services) isn’t effectively being subsidized by the existence of a permanent economic underclass with no career options beyond low-paying, so-called “low-skill” work. Fast-food workers should be there because they want to be there, not because it’s their only option.

American society is built around work and constant competition for better-paying work - that’s certainly not unique to the US, but the high-levels of income inequality and winner-take-all job market dynamics sort of are (at least among countries with similar social + economic profiles). We should try to create a job market where people can choose full-time jobs they enjoy and excel at without worrying about whether they can afford to have children, maintain stable housing, or be able to retire some day. To do that, I’d expect that we need to reduce the power differential between the restaurant/business owners complaining about a lack of people willing to help them make money for low wages and the potential employees they’re complaining about.

What makes antifa fascist?

Is anyone born into this position happier than 99% of everyone who’s ever lived?

This is what we used for reading & translating long passages in my American high school’s Spanish 5/AP Spanish course. I don’t have much to compare it to, but it seemed like a good choice at the time.

I’m not sure this is true. New ideas/movements/inventions frequently come from people working together.

This assumes all factors relevant to success can be observed and measured, at least to the extent that they might be deemed reasonably equivalent between two people. That doesn’t seem possible in the real world, whose complexity can hardly be accounted for by the broad sort of categories you mention.

Plenty of discussion here about the consequences of shrinking populations (given contemporary societal paradigms), but I don’t see any discussion regarding the consequences of growing (or even static) populations amidst increasing global development (I.e. resource use). Changing tax policies, benefits, and social norms seems more feasible than conjuring resources out of thin air, no?

At “Western” levels of consumption, what percentage of the current global population is sustainable?

My point wasn't that we should gather all of the world's poor and disenfranchised together and hold a giant pity party, it was that being honest with people about the reality of the (unfair) status quo is better than trying to manipulate them with the sort of self-help mumbo-jumbo you might find at a multi-level marketing conference.

In both the contemporary understanding of learned helplessness and its predecessor, that is to say, whether helplessness is the default state of human existence or a conditioned response, what's being considered is a person's view towards their ability to reach a desired outcome through their actions.

Decontextualizing the actions of those who face increased environmental challenges is likely to provide discouragement, not encouragement, as the actions of those facing greater challenges will seem less impactful in comparison to the more fortunate. In more practical terms, this means that the relative under-performance of the disadvantaged may be interpreted as some form of personal inadequacy rather than an expected response to greater-than-average challenges. This relates to something you said, quoted below:

> Poor people already know how hard their life is, they don't need other people to reinforce this.

This actually isn't true, at least in many important ways, and that's a major part of the problem. While poor Americans may realize that their house/neighborhood/car/etc. isn't as nice as those they see on TV, they can't understand what they haven't experienced - for example: the impact of stable finances, well-educated parents, or a high-performing school district on academic performance. This phenomenon also holds true for other segments of society - those more fortunate generally can't fully understand the disadvantages faced by those less fortunate than them.

This is why it's important to have honest discussions about the differing realities faced by those across society. If we don't understand the context of our actions, we can't understand the impacts of our policies, nor can individuals make realistic choices that optimize for their specific environment.

> discussion systemic problems is almost never accompanied by a quantification of the relative impact of hard work vs social policy

I don't think this is at all feasible. The lived experience of every individual is too unique, with an almost infinite array of immeasurable factors contributing to visible outcomes.

>A poor child cant wait 30 years for political solutions to improve social mobility by a few percentage points...Pursuing an education and clean record has vastly greater impact on outcomes today

I don't want to sound overly blunt here, but the entire point of my previous comment was that we can encourage disadvantaged young people to take the actions most likely to lead to success while acknowledging that 'the system' is broken and trying to fix it. Where did you get the impression that we can't tell children to study and avoid crime while also telling them that they should be aware of unique challenges they could face?

And, again, I'm not trying to sound blunt, but what poor child doesn't want to be successful? What poor child wouldn't want "an education and a clean record?" I think it's important to consider why many of them won't achieve those goals. To me, ignoring the disadvantages some children face and simply telling them to work hard seems both naive and insensitive, but, most importantly, unlikely to lead to a satisfactory outcome.

> tell someone that if they work hard, they have a chance is less likely to induce despair in my opinion and experience than telling them that their efforts are meaningless because every part of society is arrayed against them, the odds are laughable, and their failure is all but guaranteed. How could that not make someone feel hopeless?

I must not have done a very good job communicating my thoughts, because this is explicitly not what I was advocating for. The post I responded to claimed that both "A) The cards are stacked against you, but your best chance is to work hard..." and "B) You are the victim of a broken system and this system needs to be fixed", then suggested leaving B out of the discussion - even while acknowledging that both 'A' and 'B' were true.

My suggestion was simply to not leave out true, relevant information for the sake of provoking some desired behavioral response from the target audience. That just seems manipulative and paternalistic to me.

This isn't a revelation, however. It's certainly not uncommon for members of marginalized groups to tell their children that they'll have to work twice as hard as other children to end up in the same place.

I don't understand why you can't tell the hypothetical young, poor student both 'A' and 'B.' In fact, not doing so seems a bit manipulative (regardless of your intentions).

A potential consequence of perpetually leaving 'B' out of the discussion is that, while some of these young, poor students will escape poverty and others will not, neither group may realize that the status quo reflects decisions made by human beings, not some invisible law of nature.

Telling poor and disenfranchised people that hard work is the solution to all of their problems sounds just like a recipe for inducing learned helplessness [1] to me. Sure, some hard-working poor people will escape poverty, but plenty won't. The difference between the two groups often lies in factors outside of their control.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

I think it may be helpful to invert the framing of your question - you allude to spending economic resources to protect biodiversity, but aren't we actually talking about spending biodiversity (and other natural resources) to gain economic resources?

Your framing takes acquiring economic resources (a.k.a. the destruction of natural resources) for granted, assuming that we're losing, or giving up, something by opting to not destroy some portion of the natural environment for economic gain. Aren't we losing, or giving up, something every time we choose to gain economic resources by destroying part of the natural environment?

Logically, both framings are valid, but they don't appear wholly equivalent to me. Perhaps I'm missing something, but economic resources seem far more fungible than natural resources, which seems to imply that the latter framing may be more appropriate.

This difference, highlighted here, in this essentially ephemeral internet-space, may seem to occupy the border between semantic and pedantic, but I think it will take on a fundamental role in determining humanity's future prospects. How we define our relationship to the earth determines how we live. Your framing of the economic/environmental calculus seems to represent the status quo, but I don't think it represents a sustainable future for humanity. If/how/when the status quo shifts, I have no idea, but it does seem (from my limited vantage point, anyway) that more and more people are developing sympathy for the notion that modern society doesn't optimize for human well-being.

Part of this problem, as I (a non-expert) see it, is that so-called mainstream economists tend to operate within a specific paradigm that imbues a certain perspective toward the subjects of their analysis. Accompanying that perspective are the same sort of limitations you allude to when you point to ecologist as a domain expert (tangent: economists are also domain experts, with all of the limitations that implies, even if some economists seem to imply that virtually everything is economics...). This remains true even among environmental economists, who largely share the approach of their peers in the world of mainstream economics. While the questions you provide are examples of relevant and necessary concerns, and might be easily addressed (at least superficially) in an undergraduate environmental econ. textbook, they also reflect the limitations of the field.

In my opinion, when it comes to ecological concerns, effectively aligning private incentives with the public good is a question for ecological economists * , not just (plain old) economists or ecologists. Ecological economists, though fewer in number and typically relegated to more liminal realms of the field than mainstream economists, utilize a relatively more wholistic approach that carries with it a different set of limitations. If humanity is going to successfully address the monstrous environmental challenges it faces in the 21st century, I suspect it will be accomplished by asking different questions than those (mainstream) environmental economists are prepared to answer.

* as well as other scientists and social scientists (e.g. environmental sociologists)

It’s based on some estimate of sustainable consumption, i.e. the earth can sustainably support everyone if their average footprint is “1 earth.” Any higher level of consumption is unsustainable. I’ve seen multiple variations on this concept, so you’d likely have to consult their specific methodologies to figure out how they determine what is sustainable.

Can you offer any reading on the subject of Greenwald’s credibility?

Perhaps this may come off sounding a little too “no true Scotsman”-y for HN, but I have to shake my head and chuckle quietly to myself whenever I hear about a “left wing” multi billion dollar corporation.

Additionally, divisiveness is not inherently bad - or, at least, it’s often better than the alternative. The American Civil Rights Movement was extremely divisive, for example.

Thanks for this! While the provided clip offers some widely applicable advice which transcends music, it’s also a nice gateway to a pleasant 45 minute documentary.

How do you know the OP’s situation has nothing to do with their dad’s predicament? Do you realize that social mobility differs tremendously across nations? In many societies, it is not nearly as easy to escape poverty as you seem to imply. Your “baseline” might be making coffee at McDonald’s, and presumably not homeless , but not everyone is as fortunate as you. For all you know, the OP has been living their life in exact accordance with your instructions up to this point.

The US, where many visiting the site will undoubtedly be living already, has a questionable human rights record.

With regard to those questioning the general integrity of such a large, heterogeneous system as the US electoral process, I don’t think the relevant question is “Is there any reason to believe that some amount of voter fraud may have occurred.” Instead, we should be asking, “If voter fraud did occur, is there any reason to believe that it would disproportionately favor one party over the other?” It’s a big leap from “the system’s latent vulnerabilities likely resulted in at least some failure” to “the system’s vulnerabilities were systematically exploited to the benefit of one party.” I haven’t encountered any convincing evidence in support of the latter conclusion.