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Comment by NSX2 | Hacker News Reader

This "experience" seems like a bunch of bs - he had $25, got menial physical jobs despite a small army of illegal immigrants flooding this country daily willing to work half the min/wage rate for cash, and ... secured an apartment with no credit history (but first/last/security deposit?) ... and, oh yeah ... just by coincidence decided to write a book about it.

Here's how this really happened. This guy read Prozac nation or one of the many "Reality Books" that are populuar these days and decided, "I know, I'll go talk to publishers and see if they'll pay for a book like this based on my experiences."

He found a publisher, then went to get some "experience" to write about. End of story. Yet another pretentious pseudo experiment which teaches nothing about life other than if you come up with a good enough concept, some publisher somewhere will pay you to write about it.

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The book is beyond the point. Maybe he planned to write the book beforehand, maybe not. I don't think that has any influence on the experience that he did ultimately write about.

If the article is true, this man turned $25 into an apartment, a truck, and $5,000 in savings in under a year. It shows that it can be done, at least for a single random sample. I hope that the fact that he wrote a book about his experience doesn't prevent people from seeing the result of the experiment.

He also had nothing to lose. He knew he wasn't going to starve, so he had no reason to fear failure.

I don't know how the issue of fear would affect him, but as far as not having anything to lose, I believe that he had the same if not more to lose than people who are actually living in those conditions.

so what? are you saying the reason poor people stay poor is their fear of starving?

> so what? are you saying the reason poor people stay poor is their fear of starving?

I'm saying it probably doesn't help, and I can think of a couple situations where it would hurt.

1. You interview two relatively equally qualified candidates for a job. One is desperate for a job; he is broke and has a few days of food left. The other knows there are other opportunities out there for him, and has an emergency credit card in his pocket. As a result, the second is more relaxed and confident, and can talk to you as an equal. Maybe the first is a pressure player and would rise to the challenge, but assume he's not--you can tell he's desperate for the job. Who do you hire?

2. The same people now have similar minimum wage jobs. They make ends meet, but just barely. The situation sucks and they want to look for a better one, but taking time off for job hunting is likely to get them fired. In other words, it could land them back in situation 1. This is a greater risk for the first person than the second.

I don't know whether this is a major or minor factor. It's probably a complex issue. Still, I don't see that the guy in the article overcame poverty. He just won in a poverty simulator.

At no point would he have felt trapped or hopeless because had no debt and he knew he could leave at any time.

IMO, most poor people are not mentally stable and living on the edge tends to unbalance them even more. Take an educated person with zero mental of physical issues who is willing to do without TV, Drugs, etc and they can climb out of poverty quickly. However, for whatever reason many don't so saying they can leave does not let us understand why the bottom third of our nation is so marginalized.

guys please don't downmod him. he's not trolling. he expressed an opinion and wrote it with some clarity. that's interesting even if you disagree. we shouldn't dissuade people form expressing unpopular opinions well. only from expressing any opinions badly.

This brings up an interesting point. What does downmod-ing "mean?" Is it something other than "I disagree?" Is a downmod to be reserved for trolls? Or fools? Where do you draw the line? I saw it as a yay/boo button, not an anti-troll feature. Thoughts?

I voted you up because I agree ;)

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