Someone is stealing your life (1990) • Hacker News Board

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#21

Post by exit » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 4:09 PM UTC

why was foljs comment killed at 2 points? looks like how he characterizes hn is true:

2 points by foljs 52 minutes ago | link [dead]

HN is not really a good place to post this.

Here the audience is mostly aspiring "entrepreneurs" dreaming of making it big, so they are tied to the rat race and take all the "american dream" BS to heart.

Apart from a statistical insignificant minority that will "make it", the majority can always come back to it in 10-20 years, when they are bitter and wised enough. -----

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#22

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 4:18 PM UTC

exit wrote: post #21

why was foljs comment killed at 2 points? looks like how he characterizes hn is true: 2 points by foljs 52 minutes ago | link [dead] HN is not really a good place to post this. Here the audience is mostly aspiring "entrepreneurs" dreaming of making it big, so they are tied to the rat race and take all the "american dream" BS to heart. Apart from a statistical insignificant minority that will "make it", the majority c…

[deleted]

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#23

Post by yummyfajitas » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 4:22 PM UTC

exit wrote: post #20

swombat wrote: post #2

It's easy to be indignant when you wilfully misunderstand and/or ignore the fundamental principles of human society.

foljs comment shouldn't have been flagged. some libertarian probably took offense at the mention of scandinavia: 1 point by foljs 43 minutes ago | link [dead] It's also easy to believe that what goes on in your small part of the world is according to the "fundamental principles of human society". Most of the shit you take from your employers wouldn't fly on advanced Western European (inc. Scandinavian) countries. To…

All of foljs's comments are dead, starting 47 days ago. Most likely the automated filter believes he is a spammer. Or perhaps moderators killed him for trollish behavior (I don't know if they do this or not, but I know the spam filter occurs).

It has nothing to do with whatever he posted in this thread.

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#24

Post by hendler » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 4:35 PM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #3

> On the other hand - or so they say - you're free, and if you don't like your job you can pursue happiness by starting a business of your very own, by becoming an "independent" entrepreneur. But you're only as independent as your credit rating. And to compete in the business community, you'll find yourself having to treat others - your employees - as much like slaves as you can get away with. The whole piece is like…

The suffering is real.

I agree the tone is defeatist, but I don't blame the author or hold resentment for the expression of the suffering.

Poverty is a learned, psychological problem. Escaping the trap is possible, but not easy for most.

The disease of poverty can cured with education and liberty, many believe. Where education and liberty fail, poverty brings us all down and holds us all back from our potential.

Poverty isn't just for the poor. A significant portion of the wealthy also have a poverty of mind and perpetuate poverty by not investing in the future.

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#25

Post by kbutler » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 4:47 PM UTC

tl;dr I'm a victim, so you are too.

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#26

Post by rwl » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 4:52 PM UTC

The upshot of this piece is much more significant than the comments here have been willing to admit. Yes, you can write the author off as having a whiny, blame-others attitude. Yes, you can say that if he would just take matters into his own hands, the path of entrepreneurship is hard but ultimately rewarding. And maybe that's right.

But if you say that, then you have already accepted a premise that the piece is calling into question, namely: why should that be the choice that everyone faces? Why should the only options be self-sacrifice to the drudgery of the rat race for the sake of security, or a different kind of self-sacrifice for a different reward, that of "independence"? Why should we structure our society so that, for the average person, self-sacrifice is the only way to survive, much less get ahead?

To say that there's a better way, but that the better way involves social changes that a single person can't simply choose to make for herself, is not just to whine and blame others. It's a reasonable criticism of our economic, social and political institutions -- one worthy of debate, no doubt, but not worthy of dismissal.

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#27

Post by ajju » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 5:07 PM UTC

" And to compete in the business community, you'll find yourself having to treat others - your employees - as much like slaves as you can get away with. Pay them as little as they'll tolerate and give them no say in anything, because that's what's most efficient and profitable. Money is the absolute standard. Freedom, and the dignity and well-being of one's fellow creatures, simply don't figure in the basic formula."

This is patently untrue based on my own personal experience but forget me, to just cite two of the many famous examples that immediately come to mind:

1) Zappos gives their employees complete freedom in how to do their job and has succeeded wildly.

2) Google pays their employees quite a bit in salary and perks and is one of the most successful companies in the world.

The whole piece is full of claims that are provably false and claims about how it is impossible to fix it. Sure, many companies treat their employees like cogs in a machine. I worked for one. Then I started my own company to do things differently and I was able to. It wasn't easy but compared to anywhere else in the space-time continuum I feel like we, in 2011 in the United States, are in one of the best environments for entrepreneurship.

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#28

Post by _delirium » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 5:09 PM UTC

phamilton wrote: post #13

He paints the boss/owner as such a stress free and secure position. The reason an owner is entitled to higher pay is that they are also entitled to no pay or negative pay. My father in law is a partner in a law firm. For the past year he has made less money than his non-partner associates, working on half salary to compensate for a lack of revenue. The working drone is much more protected against speed bumps. A bad m…

That's often not the case in larger businesses, though: if the business does well, the boss wins (bonuses, stock options); if it does badly, the boss also wins (eased out with a golden parachute). In that case the owner still shoulders the risk, but that owner (the stockholders) is too diffuse and hands-off to really be functioning as a boss, so the company is de-facto run by an executive management that gets a lot of pay while not shouldering much risk.

I can see people getting a stuck-in-a-machine-with-a-stacked-deck feeling at a lot of large companies, because many sort of are giant, dysfunctional, bureaucratic machines. Coupled to that, many people see working for a large corporation as their only practical option.

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#29

Post by cookiecaper » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 5:10 PM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #3

> On the other hand - or so they say - you're free, and if you don't like your job you can pursue happiness by starting a business of your very own, by becoming an "independent" entrepreneur. But you're only as independent as your credit rating. And to compete in the business community, you'll find yourself having to treat others - your employees - as much like slaves as you can get away with. The whole piece is like…

For the record, this was written in 1990, when low-cost startups like web sites were pretty difficult to conceptualize. Back then, there was very little you could do, outside of generic consulting, that didn't have a huge bootstrapping cost, making credit ratings much more important as you had to get a loan or an investment to get anything done. The internet has changed much of that now.

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#30

Post by pdx » Wed, Mar 02, 2011, 5:11 PM UTC

rwl wrote: post #26

The upshot of this piece is much more significant than the comments here have been willing to admit. Yes, you can write the author off as having a whiny, blame-others attitude. Yes, you can say that if he would just take matters into his own hands, the path of entrepreneurship is hard but ultimately rewarding. And maybe that's right. But if you say that, then you have already accepted a premise that the piece is call…

     Why should we structure our society so that, for the 
     average person, self-sacrifice is the only way to 
     survive, much less get ahead?

So, we should structure our society so that you can get ahead without sacrifice? Do you get to be ahead of me or do I get to be ahead of you? I just want to be clear which of us gets ahead of the other one, what with neither one of us sacrificing anything.