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Comment by twcooper | Hacker News Reader

But from a broader social standpoint, isn't it a good thing that people who can afford to take risks are the ones taking the risks? It sucks on an individual basis if you're living paycheck-to-paycheck and can't risk failure, but it's not such a bad thing that the affluent are taking larger economic risks than the poor.

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It sorta spits at the idea of social mobility ("the american dream") though. The biggest rewards are only really available to those who can take risks like starting a business, and if you restrict that to only those who are already well-off, you remove most chances for the poor to ascend to the higher classes.

This implies that you believe that there is a global elite and there has always been a global elite and that they are all related and there is no way to become a part of that elite.

Because if you say that "if you restrict that to only those who are already well-off", their parents probably weren't or their parents' parents etc.

There are many occupations that really only require hard work and little risk that has big payout.

The end result here is that no, life isn't "fair". But by and large, a person that has the ability to take risk, does and succeeds will create that ability for others to do the same in the future.

> There are many occupations that really only require hard work and little risk that has big payout.

Such as?

Medicine.

You need quite more than just hard work to become a doctor.

This is why a social security net (ie. Welfare state) can actually be good for the economy. In fact, most western countries qualify as 'welfare states' when compared to 3rd world countries.

But this supports the whole idea of a basic income - if everyone is able to live without working, they can take risks such as going to University, starting a business, etc...

A lack of social net prevents risk taking and severly limits mobility, creating a 'have-not' class and keeping them there for the most part.

There isn't that much social mobility, there's plenty of statistics that prove that. The American dream is just that, a dream. Like most dreams, the odds are long. You can reduce those odds, but don't kid yourself that it will be easy.

Maybe so, but there's no point in making the situation worse. If we can make it better, we should.

Do you have those statistics? I'm not trying to be unreasonable. It's just that I've tried looking for this data before, and all I found was that social mobility (in the US) has remained relatively unchanged for about 50 years, and that's probably the best it's ever been.

I think we could do better, but I'm not sure what you are saying is correct, either.

There's a lot out there spinning the same result different ways; but I think that's the general status -- social mobility hasn't changed in the US for decades.

There's rather clearer data that the gap between rich & poor continues to widen in the US, which makes it a bit more bleak that going from poor to rich is still a rough uphill battle.

It's also fairly disheartening when you think of all the things that have changed in the past 50 years, many efforts that should help social mobility. Attempting to stop pervasive lead poisoning, lots of grants and policies to help get poor kids through basic and into higher education, legal and other sorts of efforts against sexism and racism... all kinds of things intended to hopefully make the playing ground more fair for everyone haven't actually moved this particular needle at all.

For a bit more context, also look outside of the US. If you want to live the American dream, you'll have a much better chance in Denmark. Reference here (though I read about it elsewhere a few years ago... can't remember orig src): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...

Of the 9 developed countries in that study, only the UK ranked worse than the US.

No, that's the opposite of how it should be.

In an ideal world would be everyone would be free to take business risks, and customers would reward the ideas that offer a real benefit.

What we have now is a world where hardly anyone is free to take business risks, and the people who are tend to share the same political and social values.

Politically, that makes for caste perpetuation and monoculture - which is the exact opposite of the entrepreneurial mythology.

I would rather see the most able taking the risks, because they'll be the ones most likely to succeed, and we all benefit.

Assigning resources to the most able is, of course, an immensely difficult problem that nobody really knows how to solve. But it should be the goal, and I don't see affluence as a good substitute.

How many people are out there right now with the personal ability to change the world in some large beneficial way, but without the necessary finances? What are the rest of us missing out on because they're stuck working a 9-5 job to pay their rent, while some idiot with money is building Twitter for Cats and talking about how much of a risk taker he is because he's living off $50,000 in savings until the VC money comes in?

In some ways it's good, but in other ways it's worse. One noteworthy change in the last few years compared to say 10 to 20 years ago, most startups are either self-funded or funded through incubators of the already rich, unlike pre-2005 or so when regular investors had a chance getting in relatively close to the ground floor (let's ignore that most everyone lost their shirt!)

I think the negative of this is that most of the wealth created in the technology is going to remain in the pockets of those who are already rich and well connected.

I'm increasingly feeling like as our society becomes more technically advanced, it's almost inevitable that the vast majority of wealth is going to flow up to the top 10%.

yeah, the affluent, taking one for the team <3

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