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Comment by louprado | Hacker News Reader

While there may be HN readers who have little income and possessions and are therefore living in "poverty", true poverty is a lack of those things and a lack of hope that your situation will improve.

If you are really feeling hopeless you don't turn to HN for news on the latest programming frameworks.

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I can't represent everybody, but I personally read HN so that I can eventually, one day, learn some stuff that leads to gainful employment.

Like I said, I know what website I am on.

> true poverty is a lack of those things and a lack of hope that your situation will improve.

I'm not sure where your second criterion comes from. I don't think "poverty" excludes anyone who aspires to someday leave poverty.

Aspiration and hopelessness are not mutually exclusive.

They're equally irrelevant, though. Poverty is when you don't have enough money. It's not a state of mind.

I thought some more about part of your earlier post:

> If you are really feeling hopeless you don't turn to HN for news on the latest programming frameworks.

This really doesn't make sense. I've known at least one desperately poor and depressed person who found escape and satisfaction in scavenging and programming discarded hardware. There's no reason people in poverty can't be hackers. Arguably they've got more motivation to hack than people who can just buy the latest widgets off-the-shelf.

> I thought some more about part of your earlier post

Maybe you should double-check those usernames.

I agree with the first part, but not the second. Even when I've been at my lowest, I doubt there's been a day that I didn't check HN. It's just an addiction.

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