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Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

nytimes.com

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Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#111

Post by IndianAstronaut »

hguant wrote: post #80
analog31 wrote: post #68

Many of the posts have to do with the expectations of business, society, etc. Maybe we parents have something to do with it too. I should be happy. I'm educated, have interesting and rewarding work to do, have a roof over my head, and get to play music on the side. I've got two great kids, who are both smarter than me. What's wrong with that? Why should I be neurotic about success? Why should push myself and my kids…

I nearly failed out of high school and college because I spent my time on things I found more interesting that classes - computers and journalism for the most part. The skills I learned outside of my studies have been more useful by far than anything I learned in a classroom. I feel like we've pushed people away from the kinds of self directed learning that really stick with a student towards the easily quantifiable…

I very clearly see this with 2 nephews of mine, both 14. One is in a highly competitive school district in the bay area, the other in a relaxed Texan school. One has no free time and is pushed into this or that class or activity all the time. The other has quite a bit of free time. The second nephew is very creative, street smart and communicative. He also managed to teach himself how to program and make games. The first nephew simply lacks that creativity.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#112

Post by beccasanchez »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #91
fiatmoney wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were explicit, it wouldn't be "sub" text. You really do need to know a bit of context about the state of high school & higher ed admissions before the phenomenon they talk about makes sense. The NYT is kind of notorious for running editorials that only make sense as far as why they would be running, and at this particular time, if you have these pieces of information. Stanford is 1/4 Asian, plus another 9% "int…

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply, speaking of subtext. Are you saying that Asians ("certain subpopulations") actually are helping each other cheat? Or just that the elites think Asians are cheating? And, in either case, the elites want to address the problem of Asian working harder than their kids by encouraging all kids, presumably including their own, to work less? Either way, I don't see an argument agains…

the answer to your questions:

yes, yes, and yes.

but there is one more factor:

Asians have way higher IQs than whites.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#113

Post by antimagic »

branchless wrote: post #76
ryandrake wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could just raise your rent tomorrow, why don't you? Will the market bear the new price or won't it? Taxes should have no effect on what renters will bear.

You know it. This man knows how things are priced. Isn't it amazing, all these capitalist landlords who could be taking a greater cut of their tenant's labour but somehow are not.

Rental demand is fairly inelastic though - everyone needs a roof over their head. The main force keeping prices down is competition, not the fact that landlords are being kind. If land taxes are increased, then all landlords will raise their prices, and the market will bear it - the other choice is to end up living in the street.

The advantage of the LVT is that in theory the market could bear the price increase because there will be a corresponding drop in the salary tax that most renters are paying. The idea is that the government effectively takes a large slice of the profit from rent, instead of it all going to landlords. The problem of course is that this creates a disincentive for landlords to invest in property, reducing supply, and now we go back to high prices because of market forces.

There is no simple solution to the high price of land, except by increasing supply or reducing demand. In other words, building more housing (which requires us to encourage landlords, not discourage them), or reduce the population. Just think, in a world with half the population of today, we would drastically reduce the percentage of salary devoted to housing. Not bad really.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#114

Post by logicchains »

jsprogrammer wrote: post #92
littletimmy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you in not expecting stuff from people, but surely as a human you have a right on earth. Who gave the ones before you the right to own the planet and the right to make you work if you want to live on it?

No one has the right to make you work. However, enough work must be done to allow you to exist.

>No one has the right to make you work. However, enough work must be done to allow you to exist.

These two sentences are logically inconsistent; if enough work must be done to allow you to exist, then that means someone must be made to work.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#115

Post by logicchains »

danharaj wrote: post #31
logicchains wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What part of "sit in this room for 8 hours a day until we cut the umbilical cord, then get a job and contribute to society so that you can afford to live and maybe retire one day. because otherwise you are human garbage." I think the expectation that "people should be good to me just because I was born" lies at the root of much distress. Reality can be harsh: if you don't have anything to offer them, most people don…

> I think the expectation that "people should be good to me just because I was born" lies at the root of much distress. Reality can be harsh: if you don't have anything to offer them, most people don't care much about you. I think your first sentence is either logically vacuous or a sneaky way to disregard someone's emotions: Either you are stating that "feeling mistreated is the same as existing and feeling mistreat…

>Like, your ideas are logically consistent: If you don't feel mistreated then you don't feel mistreated. If you can just stop feeling mistreated then you will be liberated from feeling mistreated. It completely sidesteps the issue: People feel mistreated for a reason.

Feeling mistreated isn't a feeling; feeling bad is a feeling. We feel bad when we perceive something we interpret as bad happening to us. If we didn't perceive that action as bad, as "mistreating", then we wouldn't feel bad about it.

This is hardly a new idea; philosophical traditions like Buddhism and Stoicism are bad around the idea what what causes suffering is our perceptions of the world, and by changing how we perceive things (making fewer value judgements) we can increase our happiness with the world.

>You call it reality, but it is not indifferent and impersonal like disease or a storm that sweeps one's home away: We are talking about people. People are intelligible to people. People are answerable people. People interacting with people changes the way people interact with people.

It doesn't matter whether it's a natural disaster or people causing the issue: the point is that if it's not something that can easily be changed, getting emotional about changing it won't lead to a happy state of mind.

>Why not apply this logic to everything? "Just because I was born, people shouldn't saw off my leg at the knee". The gall of such entitlement.

If someone saws your leg off at the knee and there's nothing you can do about it, you'll have a less miserable time if you just accept it and move on than if you remain bitter about it.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#117

Post by ec109685 »

narrator wrote: post #65
branchless wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason the system wants you to work hard is because they get a share of your labour for every part you are successful above subsistence. They get this through debt issuance, primarily via land prices. Fiat money costs absolutely zero to produce, they give it out freely and in return you pledge to give part of your labour for 30 years. If land prices were far lower we'd all be working 3 or 4 days a week. Employers…

The land thing is crazy. Buying at the right time means you get paid to live in your house. Then when you sell, they charge you capital gains so you can't buy the same house back with the money you just got. The other thing that's crazy is how ridiculously cheap the same stuff is in countries with lower land prices, like South East Asia. A nice apartment with a pool on the beach is 1/10 the price of San Francisco. Th…

You don't get charged capital gains on real estate unless your single and the gain is more than 250k or married and the gain is more than 500k.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#118

Post by TeMPOraL »

chillwaves wrote: post #70
icanhackit wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dominant culture says you are a loser. Paradoxically I'm doing OK by society's standards. By valuing personal space and control over it I decided to get into the property game with my partner earlier in life, enabling us to purchase an inner city property before their prices exploded. Now I'm watching my friends work their arses off to live further away in the 'burbs. Often success comes down to timing...and an a…

>No rent, but you point remains: gotta work to live. The irony is coupled with your statement about buying property. You don't pay rent, we pay you.

I think 'icanhackit meant they bought a house they live in, not one to rent out.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#119

Post by Sacho »

ryandrake wrote: post #64
saint_fiasco wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your sad thought is interesting because it suggests that children are being overworked in zero-sum games, ultimately gaining nothing, because all the other children are overworked too.

Similar to Prisoner's dilemma. We each can either over-work our kids or not. If nobody over-works their kids, everyone wins (nobody has an advantage, we create a better, less competitive society). If you over-work your kid and I don't, then my kid loses and your kid wins. If I over-work my kid and you don't, then my kid wins and your kid loses. Therefore, everyone chooses to over-work their kids, and everyone loses (…

Except this is not a zero-sum game. Some of the waste created by this machine of competitiveness is our constantly improving standard of living. In fact, I'd say that this sentiment(that all your hard work and stress leads to nothing) pretty much exemplifies the middle class. The kids from poor families don't want to stay at the same relative advantage, they want to do better than you so they can lift themselves out of poverty. Perhaps what you're sensing is the pressure from a large poor class trying to improve their living conditions by competing with the middle class. C'est la vie.

Re: Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?

#120

Post by saint_fiasco »

logicchains wrote: post #114
jsprogrammer wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has the right to make you work. However, enough work must be done to allow you to exist.

>No one has the right to make you work. However, enough work must be done to allow you to exist. These two sentences are logically inconsistent; if enough work must be done to allow you to exist, then that means someone must be made to work.

Or maybe no one does the work and he is not allowed to exist. Lots of poor people just die from treatable diseases for example, and no one is forced to take care of them.
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