Hacker News Reader

Comment by didericis | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a lot of why the 50s and 60s is remembered so fondly by many people in the United States. Of course there were lots of major problems at that time and a lot of that fondness is just nostalgia, but I think there are legitimate reasons to think that way. The amount of turmoil and first hand mistakes that generation had to live through early on in their lives was pretty staggering, and I think the high stakes consequences and first hand experience of what it means to make unnecessary risks, while also experiencing the unavoidability of risk, lead a disproportionate number of people in that generation turning out as good/effective leaders and team members. Basically I think that whole hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create bad times thing is probably true, and it probably applies as much to economic bubbles as it does to politics/times in general.

View on HN

Wouldn't that logic mean the recession will ultimately lead to Gen Y being good/effective leaders?

Personally, I'd counter it was the inequality compression caused by WWII that lead to the prosperity of the 50s and 60s.

Or in other words, on the timescale of decades, the mob of capital doesn't act in its own best interests. Because individual greed overcomes sustainability.

> Personally, I'd counter it was the inequality compression caused by WWII that lead to the prosperity of the 50s and 60s.

I think it was the entire productive capacity of the remaining world being bombed to destruction was the reason the USA experienced prosperity during that period. The US dollar becoming the international reserve currency probably helped also.

Yes, I think the near monopoly on manufacturing that the US had after the war was a huge part of the pursuing prosperity. I don't know that much about the history of the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency, but that was probably a large factor as well.

Just to clarify, I'm not trying to make the claim that the US was prosperous during that period solely because I think the war created more conscientious people. But I do think part of the reason you saw that prosperity distributed better and had things like pensions was because people back then had a better sense of what the cost of NOT distributing more fairly is, along with a better sense of the importance of camaraderie. That's an admittedly romantic view of the time, but I think there's truth to it. Widespread adoption of computers has lead to huge increases in prosperity after that period, and I think part of the reason that hasn't be shared is that the generations since then are more child like and have less of a sense of responsibility.

Not necessarily; I think the type of bad times experienced and how the majority of people need to act in order to weather them play a big part in how it affects their character.

Although obviously war is horrible and hugely detrimental on net, I think the one silver lining is that you are put into life threatening situations in which you NEED to trust the people around you. Political backstabbing, greed, brown nosing, refusal to take responsibility, laziness... these will get you and/or the people around you killed. I believe people that go through that tend to put more emphasis on creating healthy, sustainable, working organizations than their own self aggrandizement.

When people come on hard times during recessions, I don't think the dynamics are such that it makes strong people, necessarily, or that it offsets selfish impulses in the same way something deeply scaring and emotionally impactful like war can. But I do think people that come out from recessions figure out what lead to the bad times, and generally come out stronger in that they're less likely to repeat the same mistakes.

It's a fair point.

You can't serve next to folks in combat situations and look at "others" with quite the same distain as is evidenced today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com