The Unexotic Underclass (2013) | Hacker News Reader

The Unexotic Underclass (2013)

miter.mit.edu

169 pointskelukelugames62 comments

Describing veterans as an unexotic underclass feels incorrect to me. Maybe it's just perception bias, but for instance my FB feed contains an order of magnitude more appeals for veterans causes than literally any other endeavor. GoFundMe's, petitions, charities, races, events - you name it. 4 out of 5 of my last donations concerned veterans (as a group) or individual vets, as were 5 out of 5 of my last signed petitions (whose value, I will grant, is probably a bit tenuous)

Maybe there is some other social circle out there that exclusively cares about black and latino inner city youth, or Kenya, or Bangladesh - but if they really are as over-represented and over-valued as the author seems to derisively imply, then I'd like to see some data to support that.

edit : the instant downvotes interest me. Can you qualify your disagreement?

edit : to clear up some confusion, I mentioned anecdotal experience with veteran charities and fundraising efforts in order to illustrate their relative popularity - not their success. In my opinion, a popular cause is by definition not un-exotic (i.e. marginalized), which is the notion that I am responding to.

The veteran thing is strange. To a non-American the veneration of military personnel and veterans seems over-the-top to the point of self-parody. Watching the Super Bowl a couple of years ago, I wasn't sure whether I was watching a sporting match, or Starship Troopers.

That said, for all the splashy thank-you-for-your-service it's a shame but no real surprise that veterans are getting shafted, behind the scenes, by one of the largest bureaucracies in the world.

There are plenty of classes of non-American, and most Anglo-Saxon countries also venerate their troops. It's also a reflex to what happened after Vietnam, where the veterans got an almost criminal level of under-appreciation, despite many being draftees.

Yeah, I understand why. It's still shocking to see / hear. I say this as an arm-chair war nerd. Nothing good can come from this level of military fetishism.

Perhaps. I'd argue it's not military fetishism though - there are no goose-stepping soldiers, missiles being wheeled through the streets, and so on. Closest they get in the UK is the Trooping of The Colour, which is a few centuries old, and hasn't caused a problem so far [citation needed — cf "Buzzfeed: The Three Countries the UK Didn't Invade?!"]. The focus appears to be on sacrifice and dulce et decorum est rather than on militeria.

I don't think troops are really venerated in the UK. This, after all, is what Kipling's "Tommy" was all about. http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_tommy.htm

There's some veneration in a distant way for the RAF following the war, and the Sun newspaper runs its own pro-military campaign, but it's not something that comes up too often in political language. "Poppy day" is becoming more politicised in worrying ways, though.

Militarism has intellectual consequences. The tacit admission that US military members sign up to fight pointless wars is not allowed: loud patriotism drowns all dissent so that they will not be demoralized by the grim reality that they are expendable pawns.

It's all PR, of course: the veterans end up as broken husks that are left to rot as soon as they get home-- a very convenient political issue that is stored safely in the bank for whenever a distraction or stirring election platform is needed.

To answer your question: it is Starship Troopers that you are watching.

While I believe in American exceptionalism as much as the next guy, you guys do have a tendency to forget that we in Europe (and the rest of the world) have been doing this for a very long time.

"Militarism has intellectual consequences" - is probably true, but the British and French (and Dutch and Prussians and Spanish et al) were doing it for 500 years, a period which gave us the birth of The Royal Society, Proust and Voltaire, Leibniz, and so on. The Islamic Golden Age happened under an expansionist empire. The Romans weren't short the odd intellectual as well... I'm sure someone more familiar with Asian history can give many examples too.

"It's all PR, of course: the veterans end up as broken husks that are left to rot as soon as they get home" - while true, this is nothing new, either.

Absolutely. The VA is a disgrace, and it's a clear cut example of the government not living up to its obligations vis a vis veterans.

However, my point concerns public perception, which is to a significant degree the focus of the OP. Specifically, the author made the claim that veterans are perceived as being an unexotic cause in public consciousness - whereas I think the opposite is true. I think their cause is a popular one in America.

For comparison, this is how I personally perceive a few of the various underclasses he mentioned :

The rural poor in Appalachia? Unequivocally unexotic : lower income whites often appear to be more scorned than pitied. Inner city youth? Periodically exotic. Veterans? Unequivocally exotic, in the sense that I perceive their cause to be one of the most popular in contemporary American society.

Exactly.

One problem is that it is difficult for the VA to fire people for performance problems. There was a bill (HR 1944) that passed the House this summer, but the corresponding Senate bill was only introduced in November.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/108...

> According to the latest report, a follow-up to one McCain released in May, military services have dished out $53 million in sports-related marketing and advertising contracts since 2012. Of that, more than $9 million went directly to teams in the five biggest American professional sports leagues (the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and MLS). Although Flake and McCain determined that some contracts constituted legitimate marketing and advertising, such as stadium signs and recruiting booth space at games, 72 of the 122 contracts they uncovered involved inappropriately funded “patriotic tributes.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2015/11/paid...

Exactly. It's not fetishism of the military, it's advertisement.

As far as NFL goes, they(NFL & teams) are paid money, and the pomp and show is a seamless advertisement and a recruitment campaign.

To understand it, you need to know recent American history. During the unpopular American intervention in the Vietnamese civil war, draftees and volunteers returning home from duty were met with protesters, who showed them exactly as much respect as you might expect that an anti-war protester would offer to a soldier.

The canonical anecdote is that the returning soldier was spat upon and accused of killing babies. I have never actually known any Vietnam veteran who claimed to have experienced this, nor any former protester who admitted to doing it.

Nevertheless, the military leadership decided that this should not be happening. And so the Pentagon started dedicating more of their budget to the manipulation of public opinion. They have essentially produced the current state of public opinion through four continuous decades of advertising.

It is occasionally revealed that the "thank you for your service" portion of a sporting event is sponsored directly by a hefty cash payment from the military.

You can see how the federal government actually feels about its veterans by how it treats those no longer able to turn their assigned cog in the war machine. Not only are disability claims routinely reduced or denied outright, but the medical care that veterans get is often far inferior to that available in the nearby non-VA facilities. The vets find that for all the cheerleaders they see shaking pompoms on the sidelines while they are in the game, they are still completely alone with a traumatic brain injury after time runs out and everyone goes home.

Part of me wishes it really was like _Starship Troopers_ (the book), and that veteran amputees would hang out near recruiting centers without their prostheses visible, talking loudly about all their VA, disability, and pension problems.

Are people downvoting because the things you mentioned aren't actually very effective? The veterans were possibly expecting a certain level of service (as compensation) and they haven't received it. This goes back to things like the Bonus Army. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army)

> Are people downvoting because the things you mentioned aren't actually very effective?

If so, they've missed the point of my comment. When the author describes veterans as being "unexotic", the implication is that comparatively few people care about them. It's orthogonal to whether or not veterans causes have been successful in remedying, for instance, the dysfunction of the VA.

Last I checked, we haven't been particularly successful at solving - for example - inner city poverty (a cause the author describes as "exotic"). Hence, whether or not a problem is solved is not a reliable barometer for whether or not it's important to the public.

Perhaps it's a deeper reflection on the level of commitment most of our society currently shows towards most causes. We "like" a page and suddenly we've helped the problem go away. We pour a bucket of water on our heads, video tape it, and this is somehow equivalent to donating money to charity.

I was going to push back on the veteran portion too. I received my MBA for free thanks to the GI Bill. I got someone to actually look at my resume on Wall Street simply for being a veteran. My generation is getting a lot more public attention than the Vietnam vets I know.

Couple other points: 1. Service may be voluntary, but it is still mostly the poor, both rural and urban who have few options out of High School. 2. Disability money may take a while to arrive, and yes it sucks, but the standards are pretty loose for a disability now. I have a torn ACL from service for which I receive about $400/month. I really hate that I can't run anymore. I miss playing sports, but do I deserve $400/month for the rest of my life? I don't know. I plan to save it and get a new knee at some point. 3. The VA does suck, just not for the reasons outlined. The truly wounded/traumatized veterans out there are being neglected and need more attention. 4. I don't disagree with the thrust of the writing. Coming from Afghanistan, the U.S. in general sometimes feels unreal. A dating app that vettes people based upon their Ivy League cred? This is what I fought for?

To be fair, the ice bucket challenge was effective in both marketing and donations. They raised well over $100 million across multiple charities.

I do agree that there is a false sense of contribution with "liking" and sharing. Sharing can be effective, but it can't be effective without those who actually take action beyond sharing.

I suspect one problem the military has is that its superficial popularity sharply limits actual accountability. For instance, Congress is happy to continuously approve pay raises for all the troops. While this looks like motherhood and apple pie from the outside, is rewarding the incompetent and competents alike a serious personnel policy? Unfortunately, it seems that everything the US government does has been turned into a public relations exercise.

The best sort of comparison of pay raises between the military and civilians is:

http://www.defenseone.com/management/2014/09/heres-chart-sho...

It doesn't seem like either civilians or the military are getting much of a pay raise, especially when one considers the inexorable inflationary rise of prices.

ah but you must consider that most military based in the US receive "BAH" which can easily double their total pay, tax free. For example, an E-5 with a high school diploma in Maryland can get $2k per month tax-free: http://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/site/bahCalc.cfm

But to your point, I readily grant that the government mismanages civilians as much as military personnel.

1. Service may be voluntary, but it is still mostly the poor, both rural and urban who have few options out of High School.

Is that still true? I thought it had changed post-9/11 (per [1]), has it reverted?

[1] http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/08/who-serves-...

That's an interesting point. I had not seen that.

I can't refute this with stats, but I would not say I have seen the same thing either. I would be curious to know if different branches of the military have widely disparate demographics. I suspect the Air Force takes in the most highly educated and also wealthiest recruits, and that the Army takes in the least educated, least wealthy.

In the Marine Corps I saw big differences in backgrounds based upon MOS. My boot camp platoon was roughly 50% Hispanic and most of them ended up 0300 - infantry.

I remember when the PBS news show would list the causalities in Iraq every evening along with their hometowns. I perceived that most military members who died were from rural areas in the South and Midwest.

Well, not in absolute numbers, at least.

  State	     Fatalities
  California	478
  Texas		420
  Florida	196
  Pennsylvania	196
  New York	191
  Ohio		188
  Illinois	162
  Michigan	160
  Georgia	142
  ...

http://icasualties.org/iraq/uscasualtiesbystate.aspx

Interesting. It would be interesting to see this table normalized by the state's population.

It's hard to do anything about the VA from the outside. It's a closed system. Congress or the administration can force change, but it's hard for third parties to have much impact.

How does it work that veterans get so much public support even when the wars they were in don't? Is it different groups of people who support veterans and who don't like wars? Or do Americans somehow blame politicians for invading other countries but not soldiers?

The troops were so in, in 2013 iirc. The entire political spectrum from Jon Stewart to the NFL was banging the drum to employ. those. veterans.

The entrepreneurial scene was of course quick to get it on the action and as OP mentions, adding the word veteran to any business plan earned you as many points as "big data" then or "AI" does today.

She uses the VA as an example of an approachable "underclass" problem...but in order to work with the government, you have to be on their procurement cycle, which is (perhaps by design) anathema to all but the large contractors who have equal budgets for their legal and software development teams.

Edit: he to she

She, not he.

Thanks for letting me know. I need to get in the habit of either using "they", or being more strict about checking before I use pronouns.

Previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261098 [496 days ago]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5782704 [958 days ago]

If you click on "past" under the article title at the top of the page, it will show you several previous discussions.

Oh, is that new? I don't recall seeing it before, but I like it.

first time I noticed it too

Unless we can find a way to give everyone a basic level of subsistence without any bureaucracy (read a basic living income) then nothing startups can do will help, apart from driving your business into the ground as there is no one to pay for it! Charities will not even touch the scale of the problem going forward.

I think the existence of the Gates Foudation and the success it has had is sufficient rubutal of your argument.

Ok, then the plan is start a world-beating company which monopolizes its (rapidly growing) market, then retire and start a non-profit.

It might not be the best plan, but it's not the worst plan.

Step one: Do something mildly skeevy that skims from the public weal, e.g. by using monopoly power to suppress competition (hurting the ability of the invisible hand to give hand-jobs to the rich) and thereby profiting more than an "honest businessman" would. Step two: take actions that will actually benefit the least fortunate on a massive scale.

More concisely, steal from the rich, give to the poor.

Bill Gates is Robin Hood. We who read HN are the rich from whom he stole. I used to mildly resent it, but now I only resent that he couldn't figure out how to do it without side effects like giving a cut to Steve Ballmer and giving Paul Allen the capital he needed to start Intellectual Ventures. Until those guys start Robin Hooding too, at which point I abandon all comprehension of which white collar bastards are actually bastards.

Sorry, but some of those "rich" is my country's government, that Microsoft was caught bribing a couple of times and, like every other government, gets its money basically from the poor.

A businessman is a pragmatist, if the unexotic underclass as a whole can be a good market, a business will serve them. The start-up culture of trying to hit the homerun, and making billions needs certain kind of generic market, but if a few million dollars worth market is present among these unexotic underclass, SV will not make a play, but a few good people can come together and work on the 'big problem'. You do not have be necessarily a charity for being both socially beneficial and economically profitable, but I concede it a very difficult intersection to find.

I should say I'm extrapolating out a trend; there is no working poor in 20 years - there are those under complete government control, watched every waking moment, scared to stop earning a meagre living. That's you. There are also the proles.

I wonder about this with open-source as well, since it's often about scratching the itches of the demographic that participates in it. But I don't know the unexotic underclass well enough to know if there's anything helpful software could do.

> I wonder about this with open-source as well, since it's often about scratching the itches of the demographic that participates in it.

This is why I believe open source will always be much better at creating compilers and programming editors than desktop environments and word processors. There's nothing wrong with this, but it kind of explains why the Year of the Linux Desktop has yet to arrive. It's a lot harder to solve other people's problems than your own.

I would posit as a counterpoint that improving compilers, programming languages, and programming editors feeds back into improving the open-source tools available to tackle the problems of others. Hopefully, we eventually arrive at a series of summits where creating a useful solution for a non-technical problem using an open-source tools requires less and less obtuse, finicky, technical knowledge gained through trial-and-error.

That being said, I agree with you. Anecdotally, I haven't contributed anything to non-technical open-source projects outside of the odd bug report. That may be a good belated New Year's resolution.

I'm also hoping that interesting experiments in lowering the unnecessary barriers to doing powerful things in programming will inspire folks like me to find a useful way to contribute to one of those summits. We need infinite Alan Kays and Bret Victors.

Entrepreneurship is a capitalist phenomena, and as such serves capital. People trying to solve real problems are going to fail more often, because there is just a lot less money in it. Helping rich people find a place to get their toenails done is a way safer idea then trying to help the homeless find a place to stay or whatever.

This speaks to me on such an impressive level. Being one who lives in the midwest and not in a city, all the startups out there pouring just asinine amounts of money into solving complete non problems is just an endless source of amusement. Like that article I found way back here on HN about how you shouldn't send some rep from some shop-for-you company to CostCo, and I was literally laughing out loud saying "No shit, did this question really need an answer!?"

So much of Silicon Valley now is peppered with insipid firms run by well educated and street dumb people spending atrocious amounts of money solving problems that exist to no one outside of an urban center.

At the risk of sounding too rural: Ya'll look so silly.

This just shows how much capitalism is broken.

Wow, I can't upvote this enough.

> The dysfunction in D.C. is a big problem.

Indeed, it's high time for a disruptive change.

Lost me early on at the assumption that entrepreneurs have always faced Big Problems... When was that assumed/implied? Entrepreneurs are just small business owners... literally

This video is a counter-argument to the idea that single moms are suffering and looking for flexible jobs, etc.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhU85b7cidA

It's happening! Those companies that serve the cushy urbanites (Uber et al) are also providing above-minimum-wage jobs to the unexotic underclass.

In general I wouldn't characterize the money Uber pays it's drivers as "above minimum wage".

I can't even think of so many frivolous examples, off the top of my head. Most technology would also benefit the "underclass"? Maybe Tinder helps veterans and single moms to get together and have sex. Uber facilitates the date, and AirBnB organizes their honeymoon should they hit it off? Amazon saves time for everybody.

What are the horrible startups - are they really dominating?

What would be an idea that would benefit exclusively the underclass? (Political issues aside - or how could you launch a startup to fix the paperwork veterans have to do, wouldn't that have to come from politics?)

The frivolous examples all have something in common, spending money.

One thing all underclasses have in common, is not having much money.

As income and wealth concentrate into ever smaller groups of people, technologies that extract money are naturally going to focus on ever smaller demographics.

The point of the article is possibly there is some social good in doing something other than finding new ways to extract money by entertaining the ever shrinking pool of ever richer people, and by doing that, possibly, we can avoid joining the underclass. Ironically that joining is inevitable, much as people can try to avoid death but can't really, "we" can't avoid demographic pressures and we will all be poor sooner or later.

One aspect carefully tiptoed around in the article is if the number of rich people only decreases and the number of poor people only increases, there is some enlightened self interest involved. All of us are far more likely to become poor than to become rich. And that makes us and everyone around us extremely uncomfortable for obvious reasons, so its really cool to help exotic people on the other side of the planet, and really uncool to help our own people locally, beyond the minimal symbolic stuff like saying we support the troops and putting a ribbon on the car, for example. If you help a poor white male, that's going to make people extremely uncomfortable because its socially unacceptable to discuss that as our inevitable future, even if we all know it is our future and even worse we can't talk about it.

A couple of years ago I visited a castle in Slovakia. The boss of the castle had all sorts of amenities (the museum told), such as people who washed their clothes, food that would appear magically, heated rooms. That required a whole castle with lots of employees (slaves?) to sustain. These days "normal" people live better than the kings in former times, with zero employees, thanks to technology. So poor is not always the same as poor.

Also, please provide an example of startups catering to rich people? Tesla comes to mind, but other than that? Netflix is pretty cheap, I think - certainly cheaper than the cable subscriptions of old times?

The article isn't talking about the relative wealth of modern, industrialized/technologized society to medieval times.

The point is that a single mom (with an 80% chance of being "poor or hovering on the nasty edges of working poverty") probably isn't worried about how much Netflix, or rather cable TV, costs when she can't afford someone to watch her child so she can go to work and make money to pay for food and a roof over her head. She isn't going to pull out her iPhone and call an Uber to drive her to work from this place she AirBnB'd last night -- adding it to her Snapchat story, of course, before she heads out the door.

Is that really the case? I think some citation would be nice. For example the refugees in Europe often have a smartphone among the very few things they take along on their journey, simply because is is essential to their survival. I mean they have nothing, but they have a smartphone. And some smartphones have become really cheap, too - (there is Android, you don't have to buy an iPhone).

At least 5 downvotes, but no answers. At least list some frivolous startups.

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