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Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

nautil.us

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Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#121

Post by nerfhammer »

colanderman wrote: post #103

The article (and some comments here) seem to conflate luck and what I will call lot . "Luck" I define as random happenstance during one's life. You can manage luck. Doing so is the central theme of many board games. You can increase your luck "surface area" by taking more chances. Entire industries (e.g. insurance) exist to manage luck. Your "lot", on the other hand, I define as what you were born with. How you were…

Richard Wiseman wrote a book on the subject of changing your luck: http://amzn.to/2jDN04M

Shorter overview: http://www.richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#122

Post by coldtea »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #113
kyleschiller wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the current system, yes, properly implemented, UBI would end poverty in America while still allowing for massive inequality. It sets a floor, not a ceiling.

I'm not sure that inequality is necessarily the thing to be fixed. I suspect that when most people talk about inequality, what they mean is, "a few people are doing really good and a lot of people are doing really bad". If you can lessen or remove the "doing really bad" part, whether through UBI or some other means (progressive taxation to fund other programs, whatever your ideology prefers), then statements of inequ…

>I suspect that when most people talk about inequality, what they mean is, "a few people are doing really good and a lot of people are doing really bad". If you can lessen or remove the "doing really bad" part, whether through UBI or some other means (progressive taxation to fund other programs, whatever your ideology prefers), then statements of inequality start to mean just "a few people are doing really good" and I think there are far fewer people that are bothered by that.

I'd say the problem with inequality is something else entirely than "some people doing really good" vs "lots of people doing really bad".

It's that there are resources in the world, and some people have way more access to them.

This can hold even when all people are out of poverty: of the potential and resources of the world, still some people could take the lion's share to the exclusion of others, regardless of whether everybody has a house and food on their table.

And this inequality (with the true sense of the word, not mere poverty vs richness) is also related to opportunities and squandered potential (as in: yeah, we all have UBI, but this dumb mega-rich person could pay his way to Harvard, whereas some other with much larger potential -- e.g. smarts, inventiveness, etc-- had to settle for some lesser school, and didn't get as far in their career).

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#123

Post by andrewclunn »

andrewclunn wrote: post #58

A lot of this "luck" can be traced back very easily to causes like "had two parents who gave a damn" or "had enough to eat eat growing up." The people pushing this narrative that you're not really responsible for your failure / success want it both ways. They want to make you admit that you benefit from living in a peaceful stable society with infrastructure, while also not wanting to hold parents accountable for hav…

Though this is really just giving people the opportunity to down vote me twice, I feel the need to expand on this:

The war on self-determination, and promotion of the notion that you're not really responsible for your lot in life is an ongoing narrative. Basically the introduction are always the sanest arguments: There's a history of racism / sexism that people are still struggling to overcome. The benefits of having a safe society with infrastructure. Of course the implications they then allude to are that if you question the wisdom or effectiveness of any particular conclusion or prescribed policy they advocate for, then you are racists and hate public roads (this should sound awfully familiar to any libertarians). Also the hypocrisy of saying that others are just ignorant of all the hidden things that helped them succeed, while also ignoring things like single-motherhood and having large numbers of children as being obvious causes for failure (both for the parent(s) and children) is particularly glaring.

What it comes down to is basically not wanting those who succeed to feel like they are in any way superior to others, by giving all credit to institutions that the modern neo-marxists (who now call themselves progressives) support (such as public school systems), while also not wanting those who fail to feel like they are in any way inferior to others, by giving all credit to institutions that they dislike (like law enforcement). Also the benefits of institutions they dislike are also completely ignored (family, religious communities, etc...)

Make no mistake, this is a lie meant to justify stripping you of your individual freedom by asserting that you are not in fact an individual capable of any sort of self-direction, but a predictable causal robot of the society in which you live. The continuing inability of the social sciences to make reliable testable claims is merely in an inconvenience to their demographics as destiny mentality. That such an ideology, which attempts to shackle you to easily sorted "identities" bills itself as transcending these barriers, is some sick form of double think that is now spread as gospel by public educators (the priestly caste in this faith that refuses to admit that it is one).

I urge those of you who are have children, and are concerned for their well-being to make sure you expose your children to the insanity of this philosophy in the same way that you would seek to vaccinate them from the virus of religious BS. Because make no mistake, if you don't tell them about it with the appropriate criticism and skepticism, others will do it for you, but in an attempt to sway your child to giving up their self-determination to a nanny-state, and embracing a perverse view of justice called "social justice" where the individual reaping what they sow is of no consequence, and all that matters are peoples not people.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#124

Post by Firadeoclus »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #79
dv_dt wrote: post #23

I think this touches upon one of the biggest weaknesses of the current economic system. We systematically waste the human capability of millions of people because the system essentially randomly gives much better opportunity to some over others. Meritocracy somewhat exists but mostly to the extent that people can maximize the opportunity they've drawn as their lot in life. I like the idea of Basic Income, but it's a…

>but it's a somewhat limited solution to capping how far down someone can fall in society That's welfare's job. UBI is to provide a living wage when its not possible or difficult to do so (depressed areas, automation taking jobs, etc). As a social safety net UBI does nothing welfare doesn't, and in most cases does worse. Welfare can be controlled via food stamps that stop people from wasting their money on alcohol, c…

By definition, a UBI must be insufficient to finance a middle-class lifestyle. It provides an income floor.

The most important effect of UBI on the poor is that it gets rid of the welfare trap. Even the poorest paid part-time job will increase your income. At the same time you can walk away from a shit job without becoming destitute.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#125

Post by ergothus »

jartelt wrote: post #109
ergothus wrote: post #33

My father and I have somewhat productive political conversations: He's fiscally conservative, I tend towards the liberal side of the scale. Drilling in to find what we really disagree about, it seems to boil down to two concepts: (1) I view success as a matter of luck that your effort can make better or worse. He views effort as the single most important deciding factor in success in life (2) I'm willing to tolerate…

The amount of success one finds in life is probably some combination of luck, effort, smarts, and appetite for risk / ability to take risks. I think most would agree that you can determine how much effort you put in and you can study hard to get at least some amount of domain expertise. It seems like your father likely ignores that people do not get to choose what family situation they are born into, what skin color…

I see luck even within those fundamentals. I'm pretty successful, and I'm aware of how generally lazy and procrastinating I am. Perhaps it's Imposter Syndrome, but while I can point to some areas where my work ethic or effort is greater than some, I definitely don't think these are better than some other friends and peers that I'm clearly more successful than. I just got lucky, more than once.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#126

Post by jartelt »

downandout wrote: post #71

It's certainly true that you need to be very lucky to become a billionaire - generating wealth at that level usually involves tremendous numbers of other people loving whatever business you have decided to create. But if you're reasonably intelligent, at least in the US, it's quite possible to become a millionaire without much luck, through decades of hard work and discipline. Examples: software engineers at large co…

You are ignoring the fact that someone born into a poor family in an inner city like has an underfunded, underachieving public school, overwhelmed and inexperienced teachers, a below average guidance counselor, no role models who have gone to college, parents who do not know anything about applying for scholarships or financial aid, a diet of fast food, and few examples of other people in similar roles who became millionaires. In a lot of cases, the best chance of success for people in these situations is to be LUCKY and win a lottery to get into a charter school. Or, to be LUCKY and have the physical tools needed to get a sports scholarship.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#127

Post by iagreeentirely »

downandout wrote: post #115
charles-salvia wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why is poverty concentrated geographically in inner-cities and rural areas instead of evenly spread out? Obviously location and environment affect opportunity, including the perception that breaking out of poverty is even possible to begin with.

Because breaking out of poverty is a hard thing to do. It is certainly possible, beginning with a focus on achieving at a high level early in school (which can be a difficult task when dealing with life issues imposed by poverty). Doing extremely well in high school, which can lead to college, scholarships, etc. is one of the few exits on the freeway to adult poverty for impoverished children. Once that ship has sail…

I would disagree with your luck statement. I broke out of poverty. My parents were both unskilled labor, we were on assistance at least once that I can recall.

Part of what allowed me to escape is luck. Yes it required that I developed early and so was ahead of my peers in education. It also required hard work to capitalize on that lead. However, what kept more than one of my cohorts from escaping was bad luck. A family member had a health issue, a legal issue, whatever. Their need to care for their family caused them to miss an opportunity (Get a job rather than go to college).

Unless you're advocating living life as a sociopath and ditching people as 'dead weight', luck is absolutely part of escaping poverty.

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#128

Post by lisper »

crdoconnor wrote: post #83
lisper wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely right, but it's important to be aware of why it always spirals out of control: it's because part of people's decision making is based on their expectations about the future, and part of those expectations are the result of the societal rules that are in place at the time. So people get used to planning, for example, on the basis that they can expect an annualized 8% return from the market. It has been that…

Rather than considering whether an 8% return is "reasonable" perhaps we should be considering whether distributing unearned income unequally is a good thing at all.

If you don't, how are you going to convince anyone to invest in anything?

Re: Don’t Tell Your Friends They’re Lucky

#130

Post by sbov »

Shivetya wrote: post #41
ergothus wrote: post #33

My father and I have somewhat productive political conversations: He's fiscally conservative, I tend towards the liberal side of the scale. Drilling in to find what we really disagree about, it seems to boil down to two concepts: (1) I view success as a matter of luck that your effort can make better or worse. He views effort as the single most important deciding factor in success in life (2) I'm willing to tolerate…

I would tend to favor your father's position; I'm a libertarian. I put in the context of some are our industries brightest and best have had some remarkable ideas and luck but how many times did it take them to get there? Like an old Ted Turner story about his smart quotes and the remarks of just how many bad ones it took to get there. the issue with this in society is the ability of people to have enough bad outcome…

I didn't downvote, but: there are plenty of entrepreneurial people you could bring up with regards to this, but Ted Turner went to prep school & collage in an age when most people didn't go to college. His parents were well off business owners who presumably not only set him up as a good position in life, but more importantly - and this is to your point - was a safety net so he even COULD fail over and over again.

The vast majority of the population are not put in a position to be able to fail over and over again like Ted Turner was, so since you used him as your example the answer to your question should be obvious.

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