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Comment by gist | Hacker News Reader

I am not a programmer (although I can program) but I do a fairly important job at the company (that I own) that takes a great deal of thought, training and experience. So yes I do feel that I am "better" than a postal worker or a garbage man a job that doesn't take a great deal of thought, training, intelligence or experience or quite frankly in most (but not all cases) motivation. Of course there are people who are garbage men or postal workers that are there because of luck not intelligence or effort, but there are also people who grew up middle class like I did that aren't doing anything significant in their career either.

This idea that all of us are equal (we are not even factoring in luck) is really just a modern day PC version of the way the world is not.

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I mean no offense by this, but how old are you? I ask because I used to believe the same thing, but as time passed I realized that being special and having specialized knowledge are not one and the same. Very few of us are truly special.

Well I'd rather not say how old I am but I will say that I am not young by HN standards.

The issue is not whether one is special but special relative to someone who does that type of menial repetitive job.

And just that I think I have more capabilities than the average garbage man or postal worker. And I grew up in a time when it was ok to say something like that by the way.

Well, you can always move your goal posts...

There's "better", and there's better.

Are you better in terms of intrinsic worth as a human being? No, they're just as human as you are.

Are you better in terms of physical strength or stamina, as mattwood asked? No.

Are you better morally than them? (Remember that "morally" includes not just overt acts like theft or murder. It also includes things like pride.)

Or is it merely, as you said in your reply to mattwood, that you think you're better mentally? (And perhaps in terms of achieving financial results.) But of all the possible axes of measurement, why did you pick that one to be the definition of "better"? (Cynically, I wonder if you didn't pick it because it's the one you win on...)

This is such a nice explanation I've never heard before and I too have been guilty of thinking like this.

"Are you better morally than them?"

Yes. And I really don't see why you'd bring up pride, since if that's something that comes to your mind when you think about moral superiority, then you're barking up the wrong tree with the rest of 'em.

You're better in what way? Thinking? Are you physically better than the garbage man that is outside in 100 degree heat all day picking up your trash?

As an aside, I always leave the garbage man Gatorades because frankly the job looks like it sucks.

Yes in a thinking way.

LOL. I'm friends with sons of a garbage man. They are highly unionised with a bulletproof health plan, pension plan, college savings plan, etc. And if the city tries to take away even one of those things... ever see trash spontaneously combust when its been left to sit in its own juices for weeks.

The guys that haul trash have got it exactly right. It's a hard job that no one wants to do so they know their worth and when they demand they get it. If I lose Facebook for an hour its a bummer. If the trash isn't hauled away its a health hazard.

> so they know their worth and when they demand they get it

> It's a hard job that no one wants to do so they know their worth

Well not exactly. They have a union in most cities and some of those jobs the pay is so good there is a waiting line to get the job actually. And since they can strike in many contracts they have quite a bit of leverage (what you are saying).

Link below is without overtime pay. In some cases with overtime the pay can easily be 6 figure. I can assure you that there are many takers for this job, although perhaps where you live that might not be the case of course.

Examples:

New York:

http://salarygenius.com/ny/new-york/salary/garbage-man-salar...

Cincinnati:

http://salarygenius.com/oh/cincinnati/salary/garbage-man-sal...

So, while I find your attitude rather repgnant, the truth is that you just refuted the parent comment's claim. Which, quite frankly, isn't hard to do (I've encountered the attitude frequently myself, and occasionally have to check myself from adopting it).

But the HN Hivemind doesn't want to hear this, apparently.

Well what exactly is "repugnant" about what I said?

You just told a lot of people that there's no difference between them and a garbagemen. I think you're pushing the point that unless you own a company, you're not "equal" to the people that do (and one assumes you don't mean that employees are better than entrepreneurs).

It doesn't even matter whether you're right or not but you can't attack people's self-worth and expect to be rewarded for it.

Sort of like if I were to say that all company owners and management are fraudulent exploitative criminals.

Were you expecting upvotes ?

That sounds like the opposite of what they were saying.

It's one thing to recognise abilities and capabilities. Or even to volunteer that somebody else as a greater human, particularly than yourself.

To self-nominate yourself as "more worthy" than others seems a road down a slippery and ugly path.

Then again, my worthy ancestors have fought on both sides of numerous bloody disagreements over this very concept.

More generally, and I mean this quite generally, I tend to find externally imposed tests far preferable to internally imposed ones. Human eugenics is internally imposed. The incestuous processes of party politics and academic mutual admiration societies strike me as similar. Likewise, to venture into more locally fraught, if less literally gut-spilling ground, defenses of Web or application layout and design which concern themselves with everything but what actual users actually need.

There's also the possibility that someday you'll find yourself less able, or perhaps just recognised and rewarded, than you are now. Will a deaf, or blinded, or crippled, or sick, or depressed, or senile you be less worthy than you are now? Be careful how you answer that, because the loads imposed should you find yourself there are all the more crushing.

Go out there. Do your fucking job, and do it well, for as long as you can.

But let others tell you you're a good person.

It's one of the better ways to be one.

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