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How rich kids already won the career game

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Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#31

Post by gaius »

yurylifshits wrote: post #21
gaius wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more subtle than that. Let's say you get 100 risk points to spend. An American might say, I'll spend 75 points on setting up my own business. An immigrant would say, I've already spent 50 risk points on coming to America, I don't have 75 to spare.

Non-American can not legally start a business without a green card or getting a work visa for his startup (extremely hard to get)

Yeah - but you are saying that immigrants are risk-averse and that's simply not true - just they have allocated their risk differently than you.

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#32

Post by Locke1689 »

ramanujan wrote: post #29
ovi256 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice personal attack right there. Try addressing his argument next time. And FYI, sociologically speaking, most corporations are brutal psychopats.

Absolutely agree with you that he should address his argument. That said, this is almost too obvious to point out, but it happens to be true that the Soviet Union and Communist China (and Vietnam, Cambodia, etcetera) murdered 100 million+[1] in the name of "building socialism", and it is quite possible that the original poster knows people from those countries who lost loved ones to socialism/communism. Seen in this…

You're making the same mistake that he was by assuming that he was advocating actual socialism/communism instead of a "social democracy"-esque hybrid.

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#33

Post by Locke1689 »

JonnieCache wrote: post #25
scrrr wrote: post #20

Exactly same dynamics as in dating: If you appear like you've been single for a year, you'll have a difficult time. If you look like you just came back from the bedroom of a runway model you'll be surrounded by women. The key here is attitude. While your upbringing influences that, you can always make a choice to be the relaxed rich kid. Even if your parents' income says differently.

Yep. This is the same reason that would-be underage drinkers are always asked for ID every time they try and go to the bar, right up until the day they reach the drinking age. From that point on you're never asked for ID. The bartender can tell from your walk, your gaze and your speech that you have it, just like before they could tell that you didn't.

Nah, I still get carded all the time ;) I look like I'm 19 (or so they say). Although, it is true that the more expensive the place, the less they care. When I actually was 19 (and looked 17) I got offered a long island iced tea at a new place in the city that was ~$40-50 an entrée.

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#34

Post by ramanujan »

hartror wrote: post #13

I think this article is preaching to the wrong crowd here on HN. A entrepreneur is by definition an upstart, an usurper who is out to break the conventions. You can't do this by being a quite yes man. That said what percentage of entrepreneurs, successful or not come from rich backgrounds? This article's ideas would apply two fold to the startup arena where you cannot get anywhere simply by running on the hamster whe…

Relatedly, 60% of NBA Stars are bankrupt within 5 years after retirement:

  http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3469271

  Filing for bankruptcy is a long-standing tradition 
  for NBA players, 60% of whom, according to the Toronto 
  Star, are broke five years after they retire.
So it's not completely true that wealth is an advantage that cannot be squandered. And in the US there was a saying that used to be more popular -- "from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/letter_from_america/11...

  But many more smaller figures of the Robber Baron age 
  made immense fortunes, took no care of them, were not 
  of a generous or philanthropic nature, handed the money 
  on as a life belt to their sons who then squandered it, 
  so much so that their sons returned to the shirtsleeves 
  in which grandfather had landed in the United States.
To the extent that the unusual combination of traits required to create enormous wealth is at all heritable, it is certainly imperfectly heritable. This is augmented by the fact that when you have large families, the wealth is divided among all children. So insofar as we think of income mobility as a good thing, it's actually abetted in part by highly imperfect heritability and large family size.

(Not driving at any particular point here, just some interesting links of relevance to thinking on income mobility).

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#35

Post by digitaltothem »

gaius wrote: post #31
yurylifshits wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-American can not legally start a business without a green card or getting a work visa for his startup (extremely hard to get)

Yeah - but you are saying that immigrants are risk-averse and that's simply not true - just they have allocated their risk differently than you.

I agree. I think that immigration itself is a risky undertaking. One has to abandon everything familiar, which is by no means easy, regardless the difficult circumstances. Besides, all the rich kids in the US today we are discussing and capitalists are the descendants of immigrants. I would not say that immigrants are risk-averse, but I think that obtaining a visa or green card mainly keep them from entrepreneurial ventures. Or maybe language barriers.

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#36

Post by NickPollard »

Locke1689 wrote: post #33
JonnieCache wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. This is the same reason that would-be underage drinkers are always asked for ID every time they try and go to the bar, right up until the day they reach the drinking age. From that point on you're never asked for ID. The bartender can tell from your walk, your gaze and your speech that you have it, just like before they could tell that you didn't.

Nah, I still get carded all the time ;) I look like I'm 19 (or so they say). Although, it is true that the more expensive the place, the less they care. When I actually was 19 (and looked 17) I got offered a long island iced tea at a new place in the city that was ~$40-50 an entrée.

It's also likely that the prior for any given customer being underage is much lower at a more expensive establishment - 16 year-olds don't generally have the cash to splash out.

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#37

Post by RyanMcGreal »

JonnieCache wrote: post #25
scrrr wrote: post #20

Exactly same dynamics as in dating: If you appear like you've been single for a year, you'll have a difficult time. If you look like you just came back from the bedroom of a runway model you'll be surrounded by women. The key here is attitude. While your upbringing influences that, you can always make a choice to be the relaxed rich kid. Even if your parents' income says differently.

Yep. This is the same reason that would-be underage drinkers are always asked for ID every time they try and go to the bar, right up until the day they reach the drinking age. From that point on you're never asked for ID. The bartender can tell from your walk, your gaze and your speech that you have it, just like before they could tell that you didn't.

I actually had the opposite experience: I never got carded until after I was old enough to drink.

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#38

Post by yequalsx »

lionhearted wrote: post #26
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #2

"I believe my generation will overthrow the arbitrary and brutal authority of corporate capitalism and bigoted conservatism in favor of rationalistic, libertarian socialism driven by a scientific approach and a concern for universal social justice." so, did you just take poli-sci to learn buzzwords and impress dumb chicks? I'm guessing you failed to comprehend any of the material. Before you call a fortune 500 compan…

Naz, I agree with you that he's taking a position that's pretty uninformed based on history and I'm a big admirer of your comments and thinking, but I even thought "read a fucking book" wasn't the best way to present a counterargument. People here are smart, if you show them cohesive analysis and can avoid emotionally loaded words, they respond to it. The Western commerce structures have produced more wealth than any…

In terms of material wealth Western commerce structures have produced more. However, much suffering has occurred a result. High levels of pollution, propping up of corrupt regimes in exchange for access to resources for cheap cost, environmental damage done to poor countries, etc.

The costs of this material wealth have not been measured fully. Typically fields like economics only look at financial matters to determine that we are better off. The 'we' part changes depending on context. Are people in the Nigerian deltas better off? Every two years or so they experience a Gulf of Mexico BP level oil spill. Acidity levels in the ocean are increasing and then there is global warming.

In some countries life is good (generally speaking) but this good life does come, at least partially, at the expense of others. From my perspective there is a serious problem with capitalism and Western commerce structures. The problems seem to be getting worse.

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#39

Post by fleitz »

scrrr wrote: post #20

Exactly same dynamics as in dating: If you appear like you've been single for a year, you'll have a difficult time. If you look like you just came back from the bedroom of a runway model you'll be surrounded by women. The key here is attitude. While your upbringing influences that, you can always make a choice to be the relaxed rich kid. Even if your parents' income says differently.

This is pretty much why people with out jobs can't find them and the only hiring going on is for people with jobs. The most important thing in any situation is to act like you should be doing that.

Re: How rich kids already won the career game

#40

Post by ramanujan »

Locke1689 wrote: post #32
ramanujan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely agree with you that he should address his argument. That said, this is almost too obvious to point out, but it happens to be true that the Soviet Union and Communist China (and Vietnam, Cambodia, etcetera) murdered 100 million+[1] in the name of "building socialism", and it is quite possible that the original poster knows people from those countries who lost loved ones to socialism/communism. Seen in this…

You're making the same mistake that he was by assuming that he was advocating actual socialism/communism instead of a "social democracy"-esque hybrid.

It's absolutely true that socialism is an overloaded term that can refer to anything from the European-style welfare state (hardly a hellhole) to far less pleasant dictatorships like Cuba to out-and-out mass murder like in Cambodia, China, and the USSR.

However, the post said "I believe my generation will overthrow the arbitrary and brutal authority of corporate capitalism and bigoted conservatism in favor of rationalistic, libertarian socialism driven by a scientific approach and a concern for universal social justice".

That sounds more like Pol Pot and Lenin than your standard EU bureaucrat. The latter usually pays at least lip service to capitalism and markets even if they often have a conflicted relationship with them.

Also, the thing is that we tend to take people at face value in most other areas. If someone calls for takeover by Hamas or Islamic Jihad or the KKK or the American Nazi Party or what have you, we usually do not go into detail to try to figure out exactly what splinter faction they belong to, or whether they represent "true Islamism" or "true Nazism", because we know that ideologies coming from that direction are a dead end and have killed millions of people.

Similarly, if someone calls for the overthrow of capitalism, it's incumbent upon them to explain that they don't really mean "overthrow" for real, but something more like Sweden [complete with multinational corporations like Ikea].

Postscript: For what it's worth, 90% of Indians and 93% of Chinese believe that trade and business ties are good for the country. These are still large, poor countries -- yet they are actually considerably more favorably inclined towards capitalism than wealthy countries like the US (now at only 66% favorable!)

http://pewglobal.org/2010/06/17/obama-more-popular-abroad-th...

http://pewglobal.org/files/2010/06/269-03-11.png

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