The Unexotic Underclass • Hacker News Board

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#231

Post by nilkn » Wed, Sep 03, 2014, 5:44 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #210

nilkn wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I'm thinking of a different notion of flipping homes. I might be the one confused here. I was thinking of buying old homes, possibly teardowns, in a rapidly up-and-coming area, renovating them, and then reselling them at a much higher price. I feel like there's less risk involved here as long as you have strong data showing the area is becoming popular and you can act quickly (i.e., before the boom ends). If…

So basically, by "I guarantee it" you meant "you could be fucked and lose all your money"?

No.

I suggest you keep up with the thread. You don't even know who you're responding to. I didn't even write the phrase "I guarantee it" anywhere.

As for what I meant, I meant what I wrote. There's a reason I wrote more than one pithy little phrase.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#232

Post by wolfgke » Wed, Sep 03, 2014, 5:52 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #207

wolfgke wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I imagine them needing to spend money on food, accepted > education, There is so much educational stuff available on the internet and public libraries that I can't see a reason why there is a lot money to spend on. > housing Accepted > and entertainment. May I tell you something: As a graduate student I have so much work to do that I hardly have any time for entertainment. Thus rather little money is spent on it. C…

> There is so much educational stuff available on the internet and public libraries that I can't see a reason why there is a lot money to spend on. > As a graduate student You've presumably spent money on college, textbooks, etc.

> You've presumably spent money on college, textbooks, etc.

First: You have to distinguish between learning stuff (which can be done mostly freely or at least in a rather cheap way) and getting social recognition for it (the latter is why you go to college and pay masses of money for tuition).

Thus: You don't have to pay a lot for education but for getting social recognition for it.

Otherwise: I admit that in Germany, university is nearly tuition-free. I only bought few textbooks, since many of them were either available in the library or the lecture notes were pretty good. If no "official" lecture notes were available, students often agreed that everybody TeXes notes for one week to make an unofficial student-made lecture notes.

Thus: Yes, some money was spent, but there are options to keep the spending down.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#233

Post by IkmoIkmo » Wed, Sep 03, 2014, 5:56 PM UTC

km3k wrote: post #141

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how many of your friends "don't give fuck all about the poor"? Almost all of my friends. And I'm from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, generally considered a pretty open-minded, progressive, tolerant and caring place. My friends are educated, middle-class. They're caring and generous to friends and family and have disposable income. But they're extremely hesitant to something even like Kiva - a charity which allows you…

I donate money to various charities and causes and do use microlending too, but it's not something that I end up talking about with my friends, so they're probably not aware that I do it. Maybe that's the case with your friends too. I probably look like I "don't care about the poor" because I usually don't give money to random people asking me to support causes (like at events or stores) if I'm not familiar with the…

No in my case I've had these conversations and they've always dismissed them. Even my girlfriend who liked the idea hasn't bothered with something like Kiva while she's asked for an invite and I've sent her a few and told her several times, and she's done years of community service and studied international development. Somehow a lot of people dismiss participating outright despite saying it's awesome and saying it's cool I'm doing it and appreciate why Kiva's model, and some willing people seem not to be able to be bothered.

I'm not much different by the way. I've been participating in Kiva for quite a while and donate monthly to doctors without borders since I was a teenager, but despite being interested in the topic of development, I am barely motivated to learn the nitty gritty and get more deeply involved. I'm only barely beyond the point of superficiality to be honest.

Hope you'll talk to your friends about it, too!

As for not giving to random things at events, I don't either. Effective giving is extremely important. Here's some great talks to start with if anyone's interested:

http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/research/theory-behind-effect...

For a quick bit of context, here's a very rough example. A guide dog for a blind person typically costs upwards of $20k for raising, training (both the dog and the blind person) etc. This improves the quality of life of a blind person considerably. Alternatively, we can spend about $30 per person to operate on people's eyes who are effectively blind due to a vitamin deficit and allow them to see again. This literally restores their vision. The latter is almost two orders of magnitude cheaper meaning you can help that many more people with every dollar spent.

That's one of the most extreme examples of why effective giving matters.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#234

Post by piratebroadcast » Wed, Sep 03, 2014, 5:57 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #108

rwallace wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. Maybe the answer is, instead of trying to sell something to the poor, look for a way to enable the poor to sell a service to the rich? I mean, two of the biggest success stories in the recent startup scene are Airbnb and Uber. What do they do? Provide a way for people who don't have much money but do have a useful asset (a spare room, a car, respectively) to make a bit of extra cash selling a service to t…

Unfortunately, this is the future. I say unfortunately, because I think if we could see the final version, we'd recoil. The sharing economy, at heart, is about the monetization of spare capacity. So far it's mostly been physical assets, but spare time is next. Anywhere you find a poor person watching TV (or, god forbid, reading a book) there's spare capacity ready to be monetized. And, why are they sleeping so much?…

TaskRabbit is selling spare time for cash. Put together this desk, bring flowers to this girls office, etc.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#235

Post by lsc » Wed, Sep 03, 2014, 6:00 PM UTC

delg wrote: post #117

marcus_holmes wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with the "young entrepreneurs from top schools" bit. Going to a top school doesn't correlate with being a good entrepreneur. It maybe correlates with intelligence and drive, but more closely correlates with privilege and connection. There's an interesting correlation between immigrants and entrepreneurship (old-school building a profitable business entrepreneurship, not SV-type scaling an unprofitable business…

These are some interesting insights, but I wonder: can "bootstrapped" businesses really tackle big problems? Part of the frustration with SV isn't just the kinds of "problems" they're "solving," but also that they're taking up all the oxygen (read: funding capital) that, if applied differently, could fix more meaningful problems.

>can "bootstrapped" businesses really tackle big problems?

Eh, most of your "funded" cash is spent on labor. What does someone working for a funded startup cost? $200K/yr if you skimp on office space?

Figure that as a bootstrapped company, you spend 1/3rd of your time earning money to feed yourself (Without dependents, you can live pretty okay off of 1/3rd of a competent coder's salary, even in SV.) Note, it may be easier, say, if there are three of you to rent out one of you as a contractor full-time and use that money to pay everyone else, rather than all of you working for other people 1/3rd of the time. Getting part-time work that pays good is a significant marketing effort, while $90/hr corp to corp full-time work is easily obtainable through the body shops.

So to compete with a company funded with a half-million bucks, you and your partners need to be willing to put in almost four years of your time.

this is not unreasonable. I've done rather more than that. and there are many advantages; getting contracting work, in my experience, requires a hell of a lot less marketing effort than getting VC money.

Of course, the difficulty increases as your funded competitor gets more funding; if, say, your competition has tens of millions in funding, say, rather than just half a million? yeah, that's going to be rather more difficult.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#236

Post by tsunamifury » Wed, Sep 03, 2014, 6:02 PM UTC

tsunamifury wrote: post #225

heironimus wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very well said. I greatly respect you for what you are doing/have been doing. It's obvious from your comments that you are not just talking nice, but have been there. I'm pretty sure no one has responded because no one knows how to respond to your bleak ending. Probably because it exposes our selfishness. I know I don't know what to say. Do you have any further info about the work you and your brother are doing/have…

I couldn't continue, partly because I had predetermined risk going into this (Strongly recommend a dollar figure in loss and time limit before you try helping society) and partly because I just burned out. Google reached out to me, and after a short interview made me an offer. My significant other and I are now officially 1%er DINKS over night and are constantly working on what it means to continue to do good in our…

My great worry is we are doing what our educated class always has done. We try to help, get scared off when we get too close, then retreat to our safe enclaves of high pay and social walls -- then close the door behind us. I feel so guilty about this it keeps me up at night. My only hope is that we can somehow continue to thrive, but keep the door open to anyone who wants to be a part of it.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#237

Post by innguest » Wed, Sep 03, 2014, 6:09 PM UTC

tsunamifury wrote: post #164

I built language learning applications that reached over 10 million users in the developing world and my brother built a startup that employs only ex-cons in one of the worst neighborhoods in America. We learned a few things from actually doing this: TL;DR its really expensive to make products for the 'forgotten underclass' due to many unforeseen issues. 1) Poor areas are overrun with corruption and graft. Its very h…

Politicians trying to leech off entrepreneurs trying to help the poor. Where are the folks that say Libertarianism can't work because we can't expect private enterprise to help the poor, and only a centralized government has the incentives to do it?

I applaud your and your brother's efforts. Hopefully this will help people realize who has an incentive to keep the poor poor and who actually wants to help them.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#238

Post by ilaksh » Wed, Sep 03, 2014, 6:09 PM UTC

The big problems are structural. And the first structure that needs to be fixed is your belief system, which supports the existing structure.

Start with the word "developing nation". I believe that is a racist term that is used to cover for gross inequality of resource distribution between relatively rich nations and poor ones.

Social Darwinism is another belief system that causes quite a few problems. Basically, anyone who isn't doing well financially, at a root level, many believe that they should either die, or live in squalor, because obviously they have little worth to society. People won't say that outright, but when you get right down to the details, most believe that.

You really have to look at the function of money in society and how it connects to the structural belief frameworks.

Also, in the existing framework, the general availability and buying power of money (which currently has been going down for some time) affects everything and everyone.

The _vast_ majority of people on this planet do not have any security for basic necessities. That is a result of the basic organizational principles of our "civilization". And the belief system assumes they are inferior and that helping that majority of people is a charity effort.

I look to technology to continue to mitigate these structural/cultural problems.

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#239

Post by jonnycowboy » Wed, Sep 03, 2014, 6:10 PM UTC

Why not create a "food stamp" delivery service? Hire ex-cons for delivery & older "unemployable" graduates to manage the whole thing. Deliver in the evening after the parent(s) are back from work.

Better yet, try to change the system to allow EBTs to be used to delivery ready-made meals...

Re: The Unexotic Underclass

#240

Post by ggg999 » Wed, Sep 03, 2014, 6:11 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #161

rmc wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"agenda": The word you use when you want to dismiss someone's issues without actually addressing them. Most of your questions are answered here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/01/richard... "Why does she have a child?" News for you: Sometimes people's circumstances can change. It's impossible to be sure you're income will be stable for 20 years.

I was actually surprised when I read the summary, because that would be a surprising level of poverty in the US. If anything, we are unnecessarily generous with the food stamps here. (Which I am not necessarily complaining about, just observing that they are relatively easy to get.) And lo, it turns out this was in Britain, so saying they can't afford $44 is sort of deceptive. I well believe she couldn't afford £44.…

I cannot leave your comment unanswered, and do not think I can convince you otherwise without baring more than I probably should.

While in high school, my mother finally left my father, taking my sister and me with her. Shortly afterward, she was incapacitated by cancer. My father would not have me back.

I continued to attend high school in spite of my homelessness. I was able to get a job at a restaurant that was a little lax on following labor law, and, initially, what I ate on the job was most of my meals (it was not allowed). I closed, so had keys to the building, and would come extra early and bathe in the dish washing sinks before the prep cooks arrived, then off to school.

I could never have afforded an electronic toy, and especially not the service plan that would come with it. And, no, minors do not get public assistance, if silly enough to try they will end up in foster care which more often than not means someone who wants the child simply to receive the monthly allowance for his "care". Even homeless shelters must turn away unaccompanied minors who come to their doors.

Eventually, I attended a good public university, but it was a long road. I do not want any longer, but I went hungry plenty-- I was 6 foot tall and 130lbs with as broad a build as you are likely to find, yet a rail.