Of course privilege affords you a cushion for many things, not only taking risks. That happens in any environment since "money" correlates to a safety net which could translate into the ability to take time to work on what you want. Some countries which have more supporting social systems also support more risk taking, because if the risk taking doesn't work out, the social system will support you to your next career change or re-education programs will let you shift to another field you are interested in. It is much easier in these countries to stop working in your current field and shift to another field. Since education is payed by the state. In the US the divide between the risk takers and the stable situation agents can't only be associated with wealthy support network(family). Since peoples values and levels of what comfort is can vary dramatically. So dvts example actually illustrates this quite strongly. People from a third world country have put up with different levels of poverty or non-access to comforts, so what they consider risks or comforts are different than what people in first world countries consider risks and comforts. The other thing is that people that live with more risks and are brought up in risky environments are more comfortable with taking risks. Success in an immigration story is dependent on many factors, hard work and a lot of luck.
The privilege of risk
31–40 of 83 posts
Re: The privilege of risk
#32> only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded.
I strongly disagree with this. Anyone can take a risk. This is embodied best by the people crossing the Southern US border where they risk their lives and most if not all of their net worth before they even set foot on US soil. While my experience wasn't nearly as hard, I can relate since I was an illegal alien for years until college.
The difference between the privileged and everyone else is the cost of risk. They can afford to take risks with bigger rewards and they can afford to take risks more often. Consequently they are also more inclined to take risks.
Re: The privilege of risk
#33Privilege is wealth. The idea that there are a number of privileges is a lie people who have wealth tell.
If you have money, you have privilege. If you don't, you don't. Everything else is but a symptom.
Re: The privilege of risk
#34I remember talking to a friend, who was stressed about the risk in her next career move, and I said: "Realistically, the worst case scenario is that you have to move back in with your parents for a while, and I'm pretty sure they'd be stoked to have you back." And she just burst out laughing. Because it had never occurred to her that that is exactly the limit of how much it was possible for her to materially suffer.
I feel like you're totally missing the point here. Not everyone can move back in with their parents for a while, I certainly can't. Despite earning an above average salary (nothing in comparison to bay area) in the UK, I still couldn't afford to just drop my job, and take a year to try and earn some money, I'd starve to death.
Re: The privilege of risk
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 mone…
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Re: The privilege of risk
#36I've always puzzled at Jesus' parable of the talents:
> ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A14...
The condemnation of the final recipient of the investment is so incredibly unexpected and seemingly out of character. Not only did Jesus reward risk-taking but he condemned the absence thereof. I don't really know what to make of the lesson, but it certainly presents a different angle than what I would presume to be the "Christian" approach to life.
Re: The privilege of risk
#37Risk 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…
> Investing $10,000 and 6 months of your life in a startup is not ruin-inducing
Can I just point out that it's not ruin inducing if you have a 100+k job and parents who live in a 1mm+ dollar house.
Losing 10k and quitting my job for 6 months in the process would be pretty much ruin inducing for me right now. I don't have the option to go back and live with my parents for a while, and of course, it depends on your definition of ruin, but that would likely leave mein the situation of sleeping on some friends couches with not a penny to my name and living on £58/week from the government.
> I recently quit my cozy six-figure job in ad-tech to try and bring some of my ideas to fruition
While you may not have the opportunities of a manhattan trust fund kid, you do have an incredible advantage over lots of other people; your job after paying 4k/month in rent in SF, and after paying taxes was more than my gross pay. Not everyone earns 6 figures and can save up 10k to gamble on a venture, and to assume that everyone can is incredibly entitled.
Re: The privilege of risk
#38Risk 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?
His parents have the million dollar house today. Theirs isn't a story of privilege.
Re: The privilege of risk
#39>Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself – only the privileged can take risks and only risk is rewarded.
That is a pretty absurd leap to take. By its very own definition, there is no guaranteed pay-off yielded by risk-taking. And by risk-taking, I mean an individual going off the beaten, risk-minimal, path. In this economy, it is starting a company or joining an early one. So yes, of course, that "risk" is rewarded. But only some of the time for some of the people and that alone makes it insufficient to back the thesis that "Risk becomes a vehicle by which privilege reinforces itself".
If richer folks are able to go off that beaten path more easily or often, that is only because there "risk-taking" is less risky (amortized) for them than for anyone else. But again, that makes the reward neither guaranteed, systematic or easier to obtain.
Re: The privilege of risk
#40The world is somewhat a free to play game where people start in various stages of the game in terms of level, currency and powers.
The really high up players who enter at that level are playing a different type of game because they are exponentially more powerful and have more resources to take on bigger battles and losses aren't as impactful but victories are. Risk is low and game on!
Other players start out gold farming and have to be careful and strategic but they can get taken out by a random small event too costly for their level of resources and their world has ended. Risk was too high but way smaller than the risk for the high up player, game over.
Risk levels vary at all startups/companies really. The investor is taking a risk but that is one of ten deals, but has wealth to fall back on and probably owns the building. The executives are taking risks but have a golden parachute. The early employees are taking a risk but also pretty compensated, if they make it. The employees after are taking little risk but have the most to lose on someone else's risk and the least to gain. The risk should be rewarded as it can bring others wealth but the wealthy risk taker is a high up player in the "free to play" game with less to lose overall in the leaderboards.