Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Someone is stealing your life (1990)

lycaeum.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 165 posts

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#81

Post by grammaton »

jarin wrote: post #5
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…

Also, take a look at the jobs he's listed as doing. That's not the career path of someone who has any direction or ambition, it's the career path of someone who takes whatever job comes along because he's out of money and desperate. I know, because I used to be that guy. My early career path looks like this: work at dad's restaurant, work at mom's jewelry store, temp agency, Cutco salesman, furniture assembler, temp…

"That's not the career path of someone who has any direction or ambition"

This is essentially a veiled ad-hominem attack. You don't know the author's motivations or reasons for taking these jobs. You can't a priori assume that he took these jobs because he's lazy and unmotivated.

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#82

Post by grammaton »

Tycho wrote: post #77
grammaton wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That brings us to the follow up question of, if a small number of people are privileged during a small part of history, does that mean that the rest of it - filled as it was with problems and exploitation - is no longer a problem, and the critiques are no longer valid? Just because capitalism works some of the time for a few of the people, doesn't mean that it's above criticism, and has no problems. Since the majorit…

The way you phrased the initial objection, made it sound like our current state (whereby anybody with internet access can launch a webapp with global reach for practically nothing) is some sort of insignificant fluke rather than part of a trend of continual improvement.

The current state has been thus for all of about a decade, maybe two if you want to get technical about it. It remains to be seen whether it sticks around for the long term. It is also debatable whether this really represents an improvement, much less a continual one. With the increasing availability of the basics to launch a web application, the expected value of doing so has declined correspondingly.

Even if we take it as given that relatively wealthy American programmers have experienced continual improvement in their lot over the past couple of decades, that doesn't mean that we will continue to do so - or that everyone else has experience anything remotely similar. I would argue that we - developers - have experienced more upward mobility than most careers in the last couple of decades, and it is precisely because of this that we are relatively privileged.

In short, our experience doesn't necessarily generalize to society at large.

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#83

Post by grammaton »

steveklabnik wrote: post #78
pdx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could both move forward together, rather than ensuring that someone is always ahead and another is farther behind... A rising tide lifts all boats.

If it's evenly distributed. The benefits of capitalism are very clearly not evenly distributed.

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#84

Post by grammaton »

istari wrote: post #75

I walk into a restaurant. They charge me $10 for a meal. Yet they only paid $2 for the ingredients! Now I don't know a lot of math, but even I know that 2 goes into 10... FIVE times! They are charging me FIVE times what it cost them to make that meal! Sure, they came up with the money to open the restaurant, and the time to make the meal, but does that give them the right to rip me off? Because I spent my life earn m…

False analogy. You can choose not to go to a restaurant if you don't want to pay the markup. You cannot choose not to work if you enjoy not starving.

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#85

Post by steveklabnik »

grammaton wrote: post #83
steveklabnik wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could both move forward together, rather than ensuring that someone is always ahead and another is farther behind... A rising tide lifts all boats.

If it's evenly distributed. The benefits of capitalism are very clearly not evenly distributed.

+1. Just saying that 'either I'm ahead or I'm behind' is a false dichotomy.

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#86

Post by stonemetal »

grammaton wrote: post #81
jarin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, take a look at the jobs he's listed as doing. That's not the career path of someone who has any direction or ambition, it's the career path of someone who takes whatever job comes along because he's out of money and desperate. I know, because I used to be that guy. My early career path looks like this: work at dad's restaurant, work at mom's jewelry store, temp agency, Cutco salesman, furniture assembler, temp…

"That's not the career path of someone who has any direction or ambition" This is essentially a veiled ad-hominem attack. You don't know the author's motivations or reasons for taking these jobs. You can't a priori assume that he took these jobs because he's lazy and unmotivated.

This is a straw man attack. Lack of direction, and ambition doesn't mean lazy or unmotivated. His job choices show lack of direction, with the random job walk he has done so far he certainly isn't moving in one direction. Same with ambition there doesn't seem to be any greatness seeking in his job selection.

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#87

Post by zasz »

jarin wrote: post #5
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…

Also, take a look at the jobs he's listed as doing. That's not the career path of someone who has any direction or ambition, it's the career path of someone who takes whatever job comes along because he's out of money and desperate. I know, because I used to be that guy. My early career path looks like this: work at dad's restaurant, work at mom's jewelry store, temp agency, Cutco salesman, furniture assembler, temp…

The author does have ambition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ventura

He's a successful author and columnist. Hopefully, this now gives him the right to say a lot of low-paying jobs are shitty ones that barely treat you as a human being, and not everyone is able to work their way through them, despite how much fortitude they may otherwise have.

This thread is full of ridiculous ad hominems. I don't think your comment even makes any sense. So you both used to work a string of dead-end jobs. While you're willing to note that you, yourself, ended up becoming an entrepreneur, you're not willing to grant this author the same possibility that perhaps he simply started out with a poor lot in life like yourself, and ended up also working his way up.

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#89

Post by grammaton »

stonemetal wrote: post #86
grammaton wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"That's not the career path of someone who has any direction or ambition" This is essentially a veiled ad-hominem attack. You don't know the author's motivations or reasons for taking these jobs. You can't a priori assume that he took these jobs because he's lazy and unmotivated.

This is a straw man attack. Lack of direction, and ambition doesn't mean lazy or unmotivated. His job choices show lack of direction, with the random job walk he has done so far he certainly isn't moving in one direction. Same with ambition there doesn't seem to be any greatness seeking in his job selection.

Again - you don't know what his internal process was for picking these jobs. You can't mind read and impute motivations for his selections.

And no, it's not a strawman. Lack of direction, lack of ambition, lazy, unmotivated. See how they all go together?

Re: Someone is stealing your life (1990)

#90

Post by JonnieCache »

grammaton wrote: post #84
istari wrote: post #75

I walk into a restaurant. They charge me $10 for a meal. Yet they only paid $2 for the ingredients! Now I don't know a lot of math, but even I know that 2 goes into 10... FIVE times! They are charging me FIVE times what it cost them to make that meal! Sure, they came up with the money to open the restaurant, and the time to make the meal, but does that give them the right to rip me off? Because I spent my life earn m…

False analogy. You can choose not to go to a restaurant if you don't want to pay the markup. You cannot choose not to work if you enjoy not starving.

Yes you can. You just have to adjust your expectations.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Freeganism

Note: these ideas do not necessarily reflect the views of the management

Post reply on HN