Inadvertently becoming the change you wish to see in the world | Hacker News Reader

Inadvertently becoming the change you wish to see in the world

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49 pointsingve32 comments

I'm appalled at the responses to this story.

Yes, role-models tend to be people who are well-known. Yes, Bill Gates is rich. No, not every single dad started to drive their children to school.

The stroy is still about choosing to do something you were not required to do, being a precursor, and initiating change that others emulated.

The secondary harmonics of the moral of the story is still that people are, dozens of years after the fact, holding grudges and bias toward Bill Gates and Microsoft.

In one of these situations, it is someone making a choice to inconvenience themselves in order to do something they believe should be done.

In the other, it is someone inconveniencing someone else because they don't want to do something.

Beyond the lesson that is taught here, am I the only one who thinks 30 minutes isn’t far at all? I drive an hour to work each way and I don’t complain about it. I’m more worried for the influence that kind of thinking impacts a child than I am about a stay at home parent complaining of having to leave their house.

It's quite far, man. If I had to drive, I wouldn't do more than 15 minutes each way. With public transit, total door-to-door I'd do 30 minutes each way.

This is quite common: (caveat: this link is a UK-specific post) https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/feb/12/how-do...

> I’m more worried for the influence that kind of thinking impacts a child than I am about a stay at home parent complaining of having to leave their house.

I'm worried about the thinking that 30 minutes isn't far at all. Living a 15 minute bicycle ride from work is worth a lot to me, and not just emotionally: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-c...

If I lived more than 20 minutes from work I'd be actively working on a plan to shorten that time.

Input work address and time you're willing to commute, then search for residences within the resulting reachable areas:

https://www.freemaptools.com/how-far-can-i-travel.htm

For a lot of people in the US, the two options are either make more money, or move to a bad neighborhood. There are $30k-45k houses for sale that would turn my commute 14 minutes via bike, but it's not somewhere I would want to live.

I don't think it is far for most Americans. America is built to be driven. 30 minutes isn't considered far for most of us, because 30 minutes is a pretty standard one-way for a lot of destinations from suburbia.

In the grand scheme of things though, I think it is far. We have huge, sprawling cities that serve as the hub for most business, yet barely anyone can afford to live there. Among other things. But that's a discussion for another day.

Even though rich and famous people will undeniably have more leverage, we all have the power to move the people around us and improve our surroundings. And this becomes even more important when one's a parent and/or a leader. We can all lead by example.

I wonder how much of this (other fathers driving their kids to school) had to do with the chance to see and/or talk with Bill Gates :)

I fail to see the value of this post. The story implies that the middle-class dads were lazy because they didn't bring their children to school before going to work. If, let's say, I'm the sole provider in a one-child household that doesn't seem fair at all. It's the right message, but the story is shallow and dismisses real issues faced by the average family.

I agree, I fail to see the value of this post.

> It's the right message

What's the right message here, exactly? Because I'm missing it.

> The story implies that the middle-class dads were lazy because they didn't bring their children to school

I highly doubt it was middle-class dads.

Knowing the private schools in the Seattle area, it was likely a mix of middle to upper class. I went to one of them, and maybe 1/3 was squarely middle class or lower.

The focus on the drive to school is too specific to be durable across time. My parents must have been fairly bad given they neither drove me to school nor provided a bus/taxi/limo/my own car. I walked to school from age 5 on (i.e. 1964 and later). Of course it would have been a hassle for one of them to drive me from the dorms to my classes, so we're cool on those last years when I was in college.

> The story implies that the middle-class dads were lazy because they didn't bring their children to school before going to work.

The story basically implies that the dads were acting as a cartel, probably subconsciously, where as long as all of them maintained that the burden of switching contexts from childcare concerns to work concerns was so huge that almost any amount of inconvenience for the wives was a smaller consideration.

Gates inadvertently broke the cartel and showed that even for someone with long hours and a lot of responsibility, there were at least some situations where the burden on the husband driving 2 days a week was smaller than the burden on the wife having 0 days a week without the drive.

It's possible that in fact the burden on even the busiest wife was smaller than the burden on her husband, that Bill and Melinda were a unique exception to this rule, and the wives only succeeded at gaining concessions because of a false analogy (if Gates can do it you can do it).

I don't see why you would choose to believe that though. I the alternative—there were at least a couple wives who were doing more than their fair share, and husbands benefitting from cartel effects—much easier to accept.

If I were the unfireable billion dollar CEO I'd be able to take time out of my job to drop off my daughter to school also. I'd also be able to afford the million dollar house close to work so my 30 minute trip to school would be a dream compared to the 90 minute commute to work.

I was expecting something like "so we sent her to the local neighborhood school and did what we could to make our own community better", but no, apparently the change you want to see in the world is that Dad should do everything?

And that's not even a change they wished to see, there was no "I wish dads were more involved in the education of their kids", if anything, there was a "I can't be bothered to drive half an hour to take the kid to the school you want, so you do it".

I don't get it. Shouldn't it be obvious the parent who's not working drive the kids? This is coming from a dad of 2 who gets the kids up, feeds them, dresses them, drives them to school, picks them up after work, feeds them, etc...

I also work full-time. If I wasn't working you can bet your ass I'd be driving the kids to school without complaint. (I don't complain now)

I don't understand your comment. You drive your kids to school without complaining, but if you weren't working you'd also drive your kids to school without complaining?

Melinda Gates is staying at home (at the time) with the kids, but gets her full-time working partner to drive the kids instead? I just don't get the moral of the story.

So you think Bill should complain or refuse, but you do the same and don't complain?

No, I think the non-working parent should drive the kids to school. Two working parents in my house.

It might be obvious when all children are more or less on the same route. With a smaller child around, as there was here, driving the older child involves an insane amount of logistics with strapping both kids in their car seats, etc, so getting the working partner involved may make sense.

Regarding the footnote, no need for the author to justify himself. I mean, does Bill Gates really need shills at this point anyway?

Ask people who used to work for Netscape.

So, in order to create real meaningful change in the world, the first step is to achieve celebrity, and then do a thing that people want to emulate?

I understand the message that he was trying to portray with this post, but man, does it miss the mark.

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