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Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

1843magazine.com

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Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#521

Post by nommm-nommm »

marknutter wrote: post #498
nommm-nommm wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now and in the past. If the job was so high paid and cushy then why would there be 100% turnover? And 100%? You believe there's literally nobody who is a trucker for more than a year? You are not making any sense. "Pay for truckers varies by distance and employer. Glassdoor estimates median pay for truckers drivers -- mostly long haul drivers -- is $54,000. The American Trucking Association says that truckers w…

You are right, I was wrong about it being "minimum". $54k is still an absurdly high salary for any entry level employee, so my original point about there being plenty of jobs out there still stands. And I know that turnover rate sounds absurd, but it's really that bad: https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryjosephs/2016/01/06/100-driv...

"[Truck drivers] typically live paycheck-to-paycheck while employed, and then suffer a big step down in income when they retire with only social security."

Uh..... Doesn't sound like the ideal job you're making it out to be to me...

If turnover is so bad there's got to be a reason, thus the job must not be as cushy and perfect as you claim. If 100% of people are quitting their job there must be something very, very bad about that job.

Anyway, the point of that article was for some moron to say how awesome ESOPs are. I once worked for an employee owned company, ESOPs are no silver bullet to a toxic work environment. They aren't going to do anything at all on their own. If you go to a shitty company to work for and make them an ESOP that doesn't do anything. ESPOs help in that better companies to work for are the ones who tend to consider being employee-owned.

$54k is median salary, not starting, entry level, salary. Your starting salary is more around $35k-ish, from what I've seen.

Where are these magic 5 figure sign on bonuses for people without a CDL? Are you a truck driver? What was your sign on bonus? Did you have to get a CDL on your own time?

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#522

Post by complexmango »

laughfactory wrote: post #150

It's not just video games either. Add Netflix and social media, and soon, VR, to the equation, and it's pretty clear that the game of life offers insufficient rewards relative to one's efforts. I don't believe we ended up here due to some grand conspiracy, but I do think that the top 1% have gotten so skilled at trapping wealth and therefore opportunity that it's really screwing over everyone else. Even as a relative…

This is a particularly ironic comment on HackerNews. While there indeed is a depression underway (as has been the case every 50-80 years in recorded history), opportunities have accrued to tech in an unprecedented fashion. Anybody can learn to code in their bedroom and open up options that require no connections or wealth (e.g. freelancing online). Combine that with unprecedented global mobility, and all of a sudden being an American programmer living and working in South America, Eastern Europe, SouthEast Asia etc means life is better than its ever been in history. Sorry man - I'm an immigrant to the US, and this strikes me as a very classic first-world-problems type sentiment.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#523

Post by dang »

antisthenes wrote: post #454
robattila128 wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have used the word socialism instead of redistribution to make it more clear on my stance, but I didn't want to get political. You are right though, butchering the middle and upper class with taxes then passing it around does help people out of poverty -- At the cost of making our future generations poorer, happens every time through out history. I am heavily against government welfare. For markets to surviv…

Ah, you're one of those who think government corruption is what causes collusion and regulatory capture. Surely the purely perfectly competitive free markets would never collude and lobby the policymakers to create barriers to entry. I'm going to chalk it up to you never taking anything beyond Economics 101, so it is forgivable and understandable. But do yourself a favor, and try not to embarrass yourself in the futu…

That crosses into personal attack and we ban accounts that do that, regardless of how wrong or ignorant someone else is. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#524

Post by chongli »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #497
chongli wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starvation is not the motivator I would suggest. Just curious, have you taken a look at the comments section on YouTube? There's an ENORMOUS amount of hate being tossed around and I would conjecture that it is coming from the cheeseburger gamer cohort (and their employed gamer allies). This hate is being directed at anyone who appears to be doing better than they are of late: women, minorities, Jews, middle and upper…

So we should pay the Nazis not to harm innocent Jews? Can I also get paid for starting a nationalist movement and threatening innocents?

If you were a Jew, would you rather have the Nazis sit at home collecting cheques and playing video games or cleaning your house and looking after your children for minimum wage?

All kidding aside, it may already be too late for a lot of these people. The argument to be made is what sort of program would do a better job of creating fewer violent nationalists. You think it's serfdom, I'm not so sure.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#525

Post by marknutter »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #447
hyperpallium wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about gradients in evolution, what directions are fruitful for an organism to evolve in. The acceleration in intelligence in our line would seem to require an ongoing survival-advantage gradient for intelligence (that somehow, wasn't available to other apes...). It also relates to the brain-body ratio for species, because investing in intelligence works for them - it says something about that speci…

I doubt we're more intelligent than apes. We just have some specialized language machinery that allowed a new parasitic species (memes) to evolve on top of us. We're just apes with a "copy" button in our brains. We look intelligent, but that's just because we're being farmed by memes. The memes aren't smart either, but the 2-layer system is smarter than any 1-layer system.

But you and Dawkins.. oh yes, you're much more intelligent than apes..

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#526

Post by mfukar »

nunez wrote: post #507
mfukar wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same kind of "advice" depressed people get. "Have you tried getting better"? "You just need to be happy". "Try my coping mechanism". "See a standup comedian". "Just try". I hope I don't have to go through all the reasons this is fundamentally disconnected from the problem described in the article now.

What's your alternative?

Professional therapy.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#527

Post by intended »

cableshaft wrote: post #517
intended wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is NOT going to work, You alone can do nothing. There is NO way, an indie, or a Game firm, can afford to NOT make as much money as their competitor in the industry is making. 1) Margins and discovery is difficult in this industry. 2) If you are a public company, you will face management and market pressure to improve your numbers which means going ahead and making a skinner box. This is straight up a case for le…

I'm not sure what you're claiming I'm planning to do is not going to work. I'm not trying to fight the market trends, I understand they're bigger than me. My main job isn't even in the game industry right now, but in the healthcare industry. My plan right now is design board games, get them published somehow (I'm slowly working on that front, my games have been evaluated by some publishers and professional designers,…

My point is that This is an advocacy issue, not a design issue.

My deep concern is that this is also an issue with media and political legs. It's got "think of the children" and "evil video games." Built into it.

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#528

Post by greenhatman »

mfukar wrote: post #347
greenhatman wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no guarantee for anything. That is not a reason not to try. There is literally nothing better to do with your life than try. So just try.

This is the same kind of "advice" depressed people get. "Have you tried getting better"? "You just need to be happy". "Try my coping mechanism". "See a standup comedian". "Just try". I hope I don't have to go through all the reasons this is fundamentally disconnected from the problem described in the article now.

Thanks, but this gives me nothing actionable. What am I supposed to do with this? Just be depressed?

Re: Young men dropping out of the job market to spend time in an alternate reality

#530

Post by ionised »

marknutter wrote: post #382
petre wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialists screwing things over and keynesian economics at work. Maybe not so much in the US as in Europe, but you were on the right track with your previous administration. Mindless state borrowing without any intent to pay back. Taxes. Then a single salary wasn't enough for a household so why not encourage women to get a job, be independent? Feminism. Then why not encourage immigrants work small jobs for us? Those…

Very well put. I'm not a fan of extreme theism or conservatism either, but we've swung way too far in the other direction.

You say that almost like you believe politics in the US and western nations in general has been dominated by the left-wing, when the exact opposite has been true for decades.

The US Democrats are right-wing by any serious measure of the political spectrum, as are the UK's New Labour and Conservative Party.

The US has had one lefty on its radar in recent times and the DNC roundly conspired to never allow him a serious chance at the candidacy.

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