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Comment by nicoburns | Hacker News Reader

If you live somewhere with a social safety net (I'm from the UK) then there isn't the same social imperative to save: saving becomes a luxury for those who are not the poorest in society (which in reality it is anyway)

This works because we end up sharing the disproportionate costs which sometimes fall on those who are unfortunate (they lose their job, they get sick, etc). It's much more efficient than everyone having to have individual savings.

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And it sure is difficult for folks to save when they are working their butts off to pay crazy rent/mortgage and sky high medical/dental so they can stay healthy to work...plus college and grad school loans that got them the low paying job in the first place (although they went to school to have an actual profession which would have covered these expenses but doesn't come close anymore) all in a city where there are some jobs but no affordable housing. If you can't afford your monthly bills, you can't save and you go deeper into the hole. This is the case for many with graduate degrees in the US.

No one forced anyone into taking loans or living in places with expensive rent. Just because someone—erm, our whole culture—lied to you and you took the bait, doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. That’s how freedom works. It requires individuals to know, to teach their kids not to take loans from creeps (aka basically all loans), not to believe nonsense mantras like the value of higher education. Just because Barack Obama made some pretty speech about going to college doesn’t mean he’s right. It means he’s getting votes by making people feel good. Just because you feel like you “worked your butt off” doesn’t mean you actually did anything or that anyone owes you anything.

Gosh. I didn't expect anyone here to be this unable to imagine/relate that many of our circumstances are not in our control. I know how hard it is to hear that innocent, strong, intelligent, accomplished people could be suffering, even after great accomplishment. It reminds us that we are all vulnerable to being crushed under the same weight ourselves. It's painful to watch if we have a shred of empathy in us, and I believe many do. One thing our culture is terrible at is teaching empathy, and that's because it doesn't offer any- not a shred. It's got this tough-guy cowboy tone that echoes, empty and false when you ask yourself how truly tough one has to be to kill and steal...to enslave... destroy natural resources. It would have been "tougher"to work together to embrace- to empathize -to aim to preserve irreplaceable resources of value, but we do create false narratives to cover for our most horrible mistakes and shames. Our society here in the US evolved from slavery making development possible and affordable - I assume you realize that. This same narrative forms a constantly evolving and deepening culture of abuse that permeates everything we do- how we educate, how we employ, how we treat our family and friends, neighbors and visitors.. and even fellow "hackers" who contribute to a conversation here. It is important we remember this. I'm responding to you so that someone reading your comment who is already feeling without hope knows that there isn't agreement on your perspective. Sometimes, hope in a place like this one is very important. When a people are abused and in turn become abusers themselves, as that is the natural tendency without conscious opposing effort, they eventually think that vulnerability means weakness and militarism means strength-a kind of tank-like war procession of knowing invincibility. This is the kind of thinking that totalitarianism happily thrives in-- and it surely is the opposite of freedom. (since you wanted to get into how freedom works) This kind of thing actually makes you vulnerable to control. Your attitudes are looking for or resonating from an unkind master- they accept abuse as the cost of doing business and that makes sense here in this culture,sadly. Don't you think it would be better to aim to be strong enough to listen, to seek understanding, to collaborate,to empathize,and to care about rather than this false "strong" enough to crush and dominate? That truly is a weapon that is easily turned against its own shooter in a second. When people are talked to in this way over and over, our most vulnerable-- are killed off in spirit by this , or they are killed off literally by the societal force of poverty or sadly, more literally by someone who was too vulnerable and could not bear another second of this kind of lack of empathy and smug cruelty in the face of their crying out to their community to be heard. Your people are in desperate need of help, even in the form of empathy on a forum for those who should be able to empathize with their plight. If that is you, man, I feel you and we will change things, and if it isn't,please give some thought to kindness perhaps especially because it clearly was not offered to you often enough.

> Just because someone—erm, our whole culture—lied to you and you took the bait, doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. That’s how freedom works.

This sentence is contradictory: since individuals are told these lies/take this bait when they're minors--ie, not 'free' in any legal sense--they in fact are off the hook. When most minors, particularly those closer to the left-hand side of the privilege bell curve, do not have parents with the necessary social/economic background to teach them 'not to take loans from creeps', they are precluded from assessments such as the above.

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