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The privilege of risk

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Re: The privilege of risk

#11

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

dvt wrote: post #7

Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. This is patently untrue. My parents emigrated to the States in 1997 (from the post-Communist Romania) with two briefcases, two kids, and $2,000 -- hardly privileged. After their Visas expired, we technically had illegal immigrant status (after a few thousand dollars in lawyer fees and many years…

>Obviously, I don't have the same kind of opportunities as a rich trust-fund kid from Manhattan. But I'll be damned if I don't try. I recently quit my cozy six-figure job in ad-tech to try and bring some of my ideas to fruition. Will I fail? The odds are stacked against me -- I've failed before and failing sucks. The purpose of life is not wallowing in self-pity, but rising above the adversity. I leave you with this quite by Nassim Taleb[1]:

...

But your parents have $1M house, and you have a six figure job. Are you not the definition of a rich trust-fund kid? (To be fair, I don't know your age) I don't understand? To me it seems that you perfectly personify this section of the article:

>The research that concludes that entrepreneurs don’t have a propensity for risk, they just have wealthy parents backs this up. It is less of a risk to start a company if you can be supported while doing so, and have fall back options.

And this one:

>A senior manager once told me they loved risk, and I remember thinking, ‘but you aren’t affected by it’. They’d go on to a well paid job elsewhere, and not only would they be untouched by any failure of their risk but it would likely boost their status. They become a person willing to take risk, which has increased currency. This is not the case for someone who may be made unemployed in their late 50s with little chance of re-employment as a result of the change they sought to introduce.

Re: The privilege of risk

#12

Post by colemannugent »

oconnor663 wrote: post #8
glhaynes wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you're agreeing with what's being quoted: risk of any sort is, well, riskier (in many cases, impossible) for the unprivileged. Maybe I'm misreading you or the quoted part.

I was about to say the same, but on a second reading the language is really extreme: > only the privileged can take risks I guess that could be true if we take a position like "everyone is privileged to some degree", but that's not really what anyone means when they say "the privileged", and it would make the whole line meaningless anyway.

This is what I was disagreeing with. People are allowed to take risks who are not part of "the privileged", else we wouldn't have terms like "self-made millionaire".

Re: The privilege of risk

#13

Post by stretchwithme »

dvt wrote: post #7

Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. This is patently untrue. My parents emigrated to the States in 1997 (from the post-Communist Romania) with two briefcases, two kids, and $2,000 -- hardly privileged. After their Visas expired, we technically had illegal immigrant status (after a few thousand dollars in lawyer fees and many years…

Right on.

The US was not settled by privileged people who could go back and live with their parents. Many came with absolutely nothing.

Having grown up poor myself, I find it strange to have people classify me as privileged. They see success and make up their own story about it. The ideas they've accepted are more important than the real world.

Re: The privilege of risk

#14

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

stretchwithme wrote: post #13
dvt wrote: post #7

Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. This is patently untrue. My parents emigrated to the States in 1997 (from the post-Communist Romania) with two briefcases, two kids, and $2,000 -- hardly privileged. After their Visas expired, we technically had illegal immigrant status (after a few thousand dollars in lawyer fees and many years…

Right on. The US was not settled by privileged people who could go back and live with their parents. Many came with absolutely nothing. Having grown up poor myself, I find it strange to have people classify me as privileged. They see success and make up their own story about it. The ideas they've accepted are more important than the real world.

Didn't almost all of our founders come from privilege?

Re: The privilege of risk

#15

Post by colemannugent »

davesque wrote: post #6
colemannugent wrote: post #4

Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. Which is not to say we should all be cautious and people or institutions should never venture to do unusual things. I agree with what the author is trying to say here, but disagree with the second part of the first sentence. Everyone can take risks, and risk is not the only factor that determine…

If your lower end is someone who would be placed into financial hardship by losing 50% of their net worth and your higher end is Elon Musk, you use only the two most extreme examples to make your point. There are plenty of lower-tier rich (millionaires) who would stand to gain far more and lose far less (relatively speaking) than the average person by taking risks. Also, I'm not really sure just what point you're try…

" someone who would be placed into financial hardship by losing 50% of their net worth" would include most people in my estimation. Since privilege is relative, I used someone who is privileged relative to most people. The author claimed that "only the privileged can take risks", I demonstrated a situation where that isn't true.

Aside from that sentence, I mainly agreed with the author.

Re: The privilege of risk

#16

Post by svachalek »

stretchwithme wrote: post #13
dvt wrote: post #7

Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. This is patently untrue. My parents emigrated to the States in 1997 (from the post-Communist Romania) with two briefcases, two kids, and $2,000 -- hardly privileged. After their Visas expired, we technically had illegal immigrant status (after a few thousand dollars in lawyer fees and many years…

Right on. The US was not settled by privileged people who could go back and live with their parents. Many came with absolutely nothing. Having grown up poor myself, I find it strange to have people classify me as privileged. They see success and make up their own story about it. The ideas they've accepted are more important than the real world.

Serious question: is it "risk" when you have literally nothing to lose?

Re: The privilege of risk

#17

Post by dvt »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #10
dvt wrote: post #7

Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. This is patently untrue. My parents emigrated to the States in 1997 (from the post-Communist Romania) with two briefcases, two kids, and $2,000 -- hardly privileged. After their Visas expired, we technically had illegal immigrant status (after a few thousand dollars in lawyer fees and many years…

The quoted rule would have been better stated in terms of frequency, like: Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – for the most part, only the privileged can take risks, and for the most part, only risk is rewarded. There is substantial evidence in support of this thesis, from decades of research in economic mobility. Your story of success is only a single data point in answering this question.

> Your story of success is only a single data point in answering this question.

You are, of course, right. My story is meant to inspire and serve as counterbalance to the fatalist viewpoint in the original post.

Re: The privilege of risk

#19

Post by colemannugent »

svachalek wrote: post #16
stretchwithme wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right on. The US was not settled by privileged people who could go back and live with their parents. Many came with absolutely nothing. Having grown up poor myself, I find it strange to have people classify me as privileged. They see success and make up their own story about it. The ideas they've accepted are more important than the real world.

Serious question: is it "risk" when you have literally nothing to lose?

No, I guess a corpse has nothing left to lose.

Short of death, everyone has something to lose. Risk is the ratio of cost to benefit. And as long as the cost and benefits of some action are non-zero then there is a risk.

Re: The privilege of risk

#20

Post by dvt »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #11
dvt wrote: post #7

Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded. This is patently untrue. My parents emigrated to the States in 1997 (from the post-Communist Romania) with two briefcases, two kids, and $2,000 -- hardly privileged. After their Visas expired, we technically had illegal immigrant status (after a few thousand dollars in lawyer fees and many years…

>Obviously, I don't have the same kind of opportunities as a rich trust-fund kid from Manhattan. But I'll be damned if I don't try. I recently quit my cozy six-figure job in ad-tech to try and bring some of my ideas to fruition. Will I fail? The odds are stacked against me -- I've failed before and failing sucks. The purpose of life is not wallowing in self-pity, but rising above the adversity. I leave you with this…

> But your parents have $1M house, and you have a six figure job. Are you not the definition of a rich trust-fund kid? (To be fair, I don't know your age)

No. And here's why: I grew up dirt poor. I never was able to attend computer club chess club, or what have you. My parents, when I was in high school, were constantly working (often under the table and at odd hours). They could also never afford to give me any money for school. Attending college was also a nightmare. We moved across the US after my dad lost his job on the East Coast (I was 19, after my freshman year at GSU), so I had to start working as I couldn't afford out-of-state tuition. I finally finished school when I was 27 (I'm 31 now). At UCLA, I had a full academic scholarship and graduated with an almost-perfect GPA. I was able to pay for housing with the money I had saved up from FAFSA while attending community college.

I earned my salary and I resent anyone that would argue otherwise. I've contributed to Google Go, have two technical books under my belt (one as editor, the other as co-author), and dozens of open source projects. I've started a handful of startups and have taken my fair share of risk.

Finally, my parents got their house in 2011 (at one of the lowest points after the housing crash) and it was kind of a fluke. They never expected such a nice house at such a low price point (around 700k at that time), but hey, God is good. My post was mainly about my parents and the risks they took, but I've had to suffer many of the consequences of those risks and I still criticize my parents for some of their decisions. But c'est la vie, I'm making do.

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