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Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

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Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#41

Post by roel_v »

dbshapco wrote: post #8
forrestthewoods wrote: post #2

"I couldn't mess up even once". Except he did. And yet it worked out. So clearly the headline is an exaggeration.

I think it is the feeling that you can't mess up that this references and which persists. My past was a single mother, deadbeat dad, welfare and food banks. Now I have a comfortable six-figure income and have been employed for over two decades. I still feel like I'm one bad break away from being on the streets.

I grew up in a stable working class family where I was encouraged to study, and feel the same way. Why do all articles like this assume it's related to an upbringing in poverty?

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#42

Post by brianlweiner »

While it's clearly true that more privileged kids have opportunities to recover from mistakes, there is also a worrying trend where even those kids seem to think they can't possibly make a mistake (get a C, do poorly on a standardized test)

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-sili...

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#43

Post by cbhl »

ajkjk wrote: post #22

For a year or so I've been keeping an ad hoc record (a text file!), to the best of my ability, of all my financial losses due to personal mistakes - so, moving out of my old apartment a month late was a 1200$ mistake, and dropping and breaking my phone was a 200$ one. I'm also trying to keep track of very risky behavior that didn't become an actual financial loss: driving in NYC during the blizzard last year didn't a…

When I took a problem-solving class in college, they broadly categorized problems into three types (allegedly in increasing order of difficulty to solve): problems that can be solved with money, problems with processes, and problems with people.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#44

Post by hosh »

This is an interesting article to read and think alongside:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160928-how-anxiety-warps-y... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12603748

The poignant comment for me: "You don’t take it for granted because you understand you’re playing by someone else’s rules. Even today, Ricky and I often feel like that. Given the long odds we beat to get here, sometimes in our heads, our world feels very fragile; at any moment, the clock could strike midnight."

Very much like an underlying anxiety and background survival-threat.

I never went to Stanford or to an elite school. I don't feel that I grew up excessively poor, but I was fortunate that I grew up in a household where we didn't excessively bought All The Things. (That came later in a period in my life when I made enough to indulge in consumer goods for a few years).

What I'm most grateful for was a period in my life where I was working deep with meditation and shamanic practices to address very intense emotions -- including that feeling of "our world fees very fragile". I don't know where that came from, and yet it would pop in from time to time. There is also a path out of that where the world opens up and you realize this inner freedom -- to play, to laugh, to love, going beyond simply surviving from one day to the next.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#45

Post by CPLX »

googletazer wrote: post #37
ryandrake wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew someone who was so aggressively proud of their success, having founded and grown a successful business. He'd talk your ear off about how people like him were the ones adding value to society and how unsuccessful people are just lazy and don't try hard enough or don't take enough risks, or are just deadbeats, and how successful, hard working people are punished with taxes--you know, the standard soapbox speech.…

I see what you're saying, but to be the devil's advocate - someone at some point in the family of "Cartoon Republican Villain" was also a poor sob with a single shot to make it. The tragedy is that he forgot, or never knew about it.

Not necessarily. There's been intergenerational wealth transfer going on in continuous unbroken lines for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#46

Post by dbshapco »

tome wrote: post #16
dbshapco wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is the feeling that you can't mess up that this references and which persists. My past was a single mother, deadbeat dad, welfare and food banks. Now I have a comfortable six-figure income and have been employed for over two decades. I still feel like I'm one bad break away from being on the streets.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying. Do you mean you feel like you're only one bad break away, emotionally, but rationally you know you're not? Or do you mean you still are actually one bad break away, for some reason?

Emotionally and quite illogically.

You can take the kid out of the ghetto but you can't take the ghetto out of the man.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#47

Post by dv_dt »

ryandrake wrote: post #26
trjordan wrote: post #3

I wish I could remember where I read this, but I once heard it explained to me as this: It's easy to deride the journey of the rich college student: 80-hour internships at Goldman Sachs, unpaid positions in government, etc. But, the things that are done by successful people are hard, as hard as walking a tightrope. The difference is that rich students walk this tightrope over a bed of pillows. Poor students walk it o…

I knew someone who was so aggressively proud of their success, having founded and grown a successful business. He'd talk your ear off about how people like him were the ones adding value to society and how unsuccessful people are just lazy and don't try hard enough or don't take enough risks, or are just deadbeats, and how successful, hard working people are punished with taxes--you know, the standard soapbox speech.…

Yes, and a bit of empirical data that one might think about in relation to this theory is the long term decline in small business starts.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#48

Post by gautamdivgi »

nostromo wrote: post #23
trjordan wrote: post #3

I wish I could remember where I read this, but I once heard it explained to me as this: It's easy to deride the journey of the rich college student: 80-hour internships at Goldman Sachs, unpaid positions in government, etc. But, the things that are done by successful people are hard, as hard as walking a tightrope. The difference is that rich students walk this tightrope over a bed of pillows. Poor students walk it o…

This is even more the case with the legal system. Regular infractions (under-age drinking, recreational drugs, shoplifting) are minor speed bumps for kids in a middle-class family. But for a poor family, they can send people on the wrong track indefinitely.

That is a travesty of our justice system (or maybe any justice system). The more money you have, the better your lawyers, the better deals can be cut. The rich & upper middle-class will probably just get off with a slap on the wrist (if that). The poor & lower-middle class with not so many means and court appointed lawyers get the harshest sentences and are basically used as statistics for your public prosecutors promotion and advertisement.

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#49

Post by mixmastamyk »

hayksaakian wrote: post #30

The most important thing nobody teaches lower class people is how to work "the system." "work hard" is the catch phrase everybody shouts from the roof tops. It's a lot like tax filing / accounting, or hiring a lawyer for a public trial. In the case of the lawyer, society has recognized how absolutely hopeless it would be to defend yourself in criminal court, and the law entitles every individual to an attorney. A law…

So, what they need is some sort of advocate to show them the ropes. Sounds doable, if approached respectfully. Vaguely reminds me of the book "Rich dad, poor dad."

Re: Lost Diamonds: How our current system is failing underprivileged talent

#50

Post by kamaal »

ryandrake wrote: post #26
trjordan wrote: post #3

I wish I could remember where I read this, but I once heard it explained to me as this: It's easy to deride the journey of the rich college student: 80-hour internships at Goldman Sachs, unpaid positions in government, etc. But, the things that are done by successful people are hard, as hard as walking a tightrope. The difference is that rich students walk this tightrope over a bed of pillows. Poor students walk it o…

I knew someone who was so aggressively proud of their success, having founded and grown a successful business. He'd talk your ear off about how people like him were the ones adding value to society and how unsuccessful people are just lazy and don't try hard enough or don't take enough risks, or are just deadbeats, and how successful, hard working people are punished with taxes--you know, the standard soapbox speech.…

>>What's the saying? Going from $0 to $1M is almost impossible--going from $1M to $2M is almost inevitable.

For the very same reasons going from $2M to $0 is easy.

It takes a lot of character to handle money and power, if you don't understand the work that goes behind it or it value. You will lose all of it soon.

Edit: Why the down votes?

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