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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

I think the point isn't "now it's time for someone to forge papers" but "there are plenty of ways to help and other people with more energy can take them up"

From raising awareness, convincing governments, running for office, donating money and/or labor...just volunteering on a crisis line is a huge help.

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In the context of the original article, and the current world, it appears that far fewer are willing to bring personal risk than in the past.

My guess - and it is a guess - is rather than signing an online petition, forwarding a meme, or attending a demo, in the past direct action, civil disobedience, underground networks and activism was more often used. I suspect that in today's world many of those would be viewed as terrorism or at the very least imprisonable.

> in today's world many of those would be viewed as terrorism

I’m involved in local politics. The problem is a low give-a-shit factor. Older Americans will reliably show up to vote, stop to sign petitions (real ones, not online ones), donate to candidates and show up for town halls and protests. Young, well-educated, technically-savvy urbanites are a predictably anodyne bunch. (To be fair, I’m those things.)

The risk isn’t higher. The cost just is. When activism competes with brunch, Instagram time, and the necessity of a high-paying job to settle student loans, it’s a tougher sell.

I used to go to the planning board meetings for my neighborhood. They were at 4:00 on weekdays - I wonder why I was the only one under 60 there?

Even then it was only because I was trying to bootstrap a startup and setting my own hours.

Also, "When activism competes with brunch, Instagram time, and the necessity of a high-paying job to settle student loans, " -

good points, but remember also that those old people largely could have one person working (and actually getting of at 5 with no bullshit emails/slack/other crap to follow them home) and the other doing childcare/household work/civic things, instead of 2 people working 8-6:00, rushing to childcare, and getting home tired as dogs.

I take a bit of an issue with the tech crowd claiming that a single income family is infeasible. Single parents get by all the time. People in tech make well above the median income in most cases. It's absolutely possible to live a nice middle class life on a single tech income. It's just not possible to keep up with the spending of a dual income family. All about priorities.

Ok, but I'm not just talking about people in tech.

My partner and I are, in fact, a single income household. I make somewhere around the 95th percentile of incomes in my country and I work fully remote, meaning even more effective wealth (we bought a house in a low COL area - one without a housing cartel.)

But I am extremely fortunate.

> People in tech make well above the median income in most cases.

But have to live/work at places where the costs of living are enormous.

As war1025 noted, this is not true. People in tech are the most likely to have access to remote work that pays very well. I bring in the only income while my wife stays home with our two boys (6 and 3). I live in Pittsburgh, PA and worked remotely for a startup based out of SF until they ran out of money late last year and picked up a job in downtown Pittsburgh pretty quickly after that. I wouldn't say we're swimming in money but we are comfortable and don't have to check our balance for most purchases.

They don't have to do anything. There are tech jobs everywhere. Maybe you can't work for one of the big corps and make ridiculous money, but you can still make great money for hardly any effort anywhere the regional economy isn't crap.

> They were at 4:00 on weekdays

I am involved with the Manhattan community board that oversees, amongst other areas, Times Square. Meetings are at 6 or 7 on Thursdays. Public input is sought and listened to—on accession, meetings are shifted to the weekend.

No difference in the make-up of the turnout. A lot of the population self-selects out of the political process.

> When activism competes with brunch, Instagram time, and the necessity of a high-paying job to settle student loans, it’s a tougher sell.

Brunch and instagram aren't the problem.

Working two jobs to barely afford rent is.

American politics is generally focused on meaningless issues for most people. For an older example, the keystone pipeline was going to have zero impact on 99.999% of Americans yet it somehow became a “Major” issue.

That crap sucks up the attention so much that when issues that have real impact show up they get lost in the noise.

A thing I got a real kick out of with the Bakken (thought it was Keystone, but looked it up and it wasn't) pipeline, is that it was a big news event, and several people I knew were all worked up about it. The pipeline literally went within 5 miles of our city though, and no one cared about those portions. They cared about the parts that were hot in the news.

There are still a couple semi trailers parked in fields with big "Stop Eminent Domain Abuse" signs painted on them though. So I guess at least the farmers whose land it cut through cared locally.

Acitvists have always been attacked as "terrorists". Look at the brutal repression of the Civil Rights movement, where imprison was one of msnycworries when faced with a murderous police force and general public.

Really interesting discussion. I would add a guess that living a long life has become so normalized and expected that risk taking behaviour has become more eschewed.

This downplays a significant problem. The man in the story didn't set out to be a forger; it was an opportunity he discovered by chance, based on previous knowledge and talents.

Matching up people with jobs is hard enough with paid work. Doing a better job at matching people with volunteer opportunities that suit them would be a huge win.

Figuring out where best to donate money is relatively easy in comparison; GiveWell does a good job of that.

I'd say it's actually very hard to find effective charities. Most charities don't evaluate the outcomes versus the cost of their work, regardless of their earnest desire to be helpful. While Charity Navigator and GiveWell can weed out some of the truly bad orgs, the orgs trying to do the right thing and being ineffective is probably a larger problem than anyone realizes. You want to make a huge impact on people's lives? Solve food transportation, early cancer diagnosis, or basic medical care. Those are easily the most impactful and least sexy parts of making lives better.

GiveWell and Charity Navigator are pretty much the opposite. GiveWell has a small list of very thoroughly investigated charities, while Charity Navigator has a big list but doesn't say much of anything about their effectiveness.

True, although it's still the case that the really effective, immediate ways to help can get you arrested. Plenty of places are criminalising helping refugees.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-europe-migrants-greece-mar...

In the article you cited it is not about helping refugees, but about the WAY they were helping refugees.

Of course you can argue that the laws violated are stupid or inhumane. But in a democratic country like Greece you’ll have a hard time. The laws are generally a result of balancing different interests, here refugees fleeing from a very unpleasant life in Turkey and there EU tax payers having to pay for their integration for the next few years.

You can disagree and if caught happily pay the price (after all, why not go to jail for some time to save a few humans).

Every generation thought the same.

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