Where you are born is more predictive of your future than any other factor

In everyday American English, "the projects" often refers to a very dangerous urban residential area, or at the very least, a non-desirable one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidized_housing_in_the_Unit...

I went through similar things. I do alright now but my brother stayed on the same line and things aren't so good there.

If there is one difference I can point at, it was my friends and girlfriends (and now wife) that are the causative factor in my direction. They pushed me to be more than the sum of my past and circumstances. My brother's friends just held him in place. I was lucky.

The American ghettos / projects are a solvable issue. It baffles me how such a relatively easy problem (compared to middle eastern wars) is so hard to fix for the richest economy on earth. Can you tell me why it is difficult to fix the projects and ghettos?

That sentence is one of the coolest and most hopeful things I've read in a while. When people can see the "other" as "just like me", despite the obvious difference, then maybe we can break down some of the walls that divide us.

McMillan and Omaha North were my first introductions to computer programming. I fell in love. Met so many people of different backgrounds. And I don't know where I'd be today without those initial classes.

While it’s not my preferred arrangement, some families have one partner worry solely about money, and another solely about the housework.

Make that 10 miles.

Your anglocentric view severely overestimates the similarly between our standards of cleanliness and theirs. I doubt these women are washing loads of clothes daily, if they even have more than a handful of items of clothing, or mopping dirt floors with any frequency.

Cooking on charcoal isn't that much worse than cooking over a modern stovetop.

You also seem to imply that men are just sitting around all day, based on the context of the message this is responding to - but I don't know enough about the culture in these remote African areas to say if that's wrong.

I don't understand this habit of bending over backwards to show that women have it harder everywhere. Aside from hauling water from long distances, the work you describe is hardly grueling - and says nothing of what the men in these areas are experiencing.

If you want to talk about gendered violence and lack of rights as second class citizens, that's one thing, but there seems to be a tendency to exaggerate as a signal of virtue or something.

The friend pool at Phillips Exeter's got a higher top-end of friend quality and a higher bottom-end, generally speaking, than your average public school—the best and worst likely cases for your kids' friend groups are both "better", probably—to pick an exaggerated example.

We do the same thing when we choose where to live for the public schools. It's largely about finding better likely friend group outcomes. "Better" kids are easier to teach and their families are more likely to push them academically, so a proxy for that is how "good" the school is (test scores, college readiness, reputation) but it's kinda sorta mostly about the kids with whom your kids will be hanging out 7-8 hours a day.

Kids at average to bad public schools never meet people who own investment properties, don't learn how to pitch ideas, and don't treat their bank and insurance companies with the careless veneer of superiority that convinces them that whatever has happened to you is merely bad luck, a challenge on the way of better things, versus proof of your moral and genetic worthiness. Kids at average public schools think they can fail, and not merely that the world can fail them. Kids at average public schools think it matters that they be good, and not merely surround themselves with people and circumstances that are good to them.

They tried busing, which is kinda like that but just for schools. My understanding is it was pretty effective, but also wildly unpopular (and not just among the well-off) and the actually-rich were already in private prep schools anyway so didn't have to participate, while those of moderate means could afford to switch to parochial schools, lower-end private schools, or to move out of cities (all three happened, a lot).

https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-46-the-not-so...

Bill Gates is an American businessman. His values, identity, source of income, and entire way of life is derived from a particular culture - American, Western, market-based culture. A culture which, depending on your viewpoint, has certain good qualities and certain bad qualities.

The point I am attempting to make is: Bill Gates is in a position of power - defining power as the ability to harness forces. When the Gates Foundation, or any other powerful entity, gets involved with a particular less-powerful culture, it unquestionably affects the social structure and culture of that society. In the case of the Gates Foundation, it inevitably it becomes more of an American, westernized one. It is easy to see this from the shared link; it is written from an American worldview and frames everything in American terms.

I am simply asking if replicating American (broadly, Western) cultural values is necessarily the correct solution to solve poverty and other problems around the world.

Personally, I would rather see the diverse cultures of the world manage to develop technologically and socially in their own unique ways, rather than simply adopt Western social structures.

"race" in the US is just a proxy for "out group". It's the only country I know of in which "race" is an official term (as in you have to give your "race" to get a driver license, ID card, &c.) no wonder americans have such a big issue with racism.

Or is it like with Tutsi and Hutu, where ostensibly these were ethnicities but in reality just labels given to people, and dependent on their status?

I don't like this narrative, because it gives credence to a discriminatory standpoint - which is, to me, the core problem here.

Sure, but let's not try to pretend that those kids will have an equal start.

A lot of them also went straight from the army (forced enrollment) with no skills or higher education to coming over in their early 20s and then found their way in business without needing specialized formal education to be successful (doctors / lawyers, etc.). Lots of food related business, selling clothes, contracting work, etc..

The "patently absurd take" is that women are the disadvantaged gender in the US.

(Obviously the situation is very different in some countries.)

Part of the problem is that this community is so male, so much so that even the men that get it tend to stay silent for fear of being losing status in such a male community.

Also I don't know of any men who gets to open a charity with his wife's money or influence, but I know a lot of women who do. Even the first lady of USA gets a charity fund and a small crew of people to help her spend it, why do we do that? Because that is what we expect powerful husbands to do for their wives. Shouldn't such things get taken into account when we dole out privilege points?

I mean, men are more likely to earn a lot of money and influence, yes, but women are much more likely to marry into a lot of money and influence. So if your goal is to get a lot of money and influence but don't want to do the sacrifices required for it then you'd rather be a woman.

Or in other words, marrying into wealth and getting to spend said wealth on your pet projects is one of the most privileged roles you can have and the sex ratio for said role is extremely skewed in favor of women. Taking Melinda as an example of a woman who had to struggle due to her gender is very poor taste since she is basically the embodiment of female privilege.

I think it's important to add the concept of "financial," "independence," or "power" somewhere in here.

AFAICT, these are the only things that matter to people, so it's a pretty big deal to have your sex/gender be an obstacle towards them. But the overall equation of happiness has a bit more variables.

Ultimately, I meet (on average) about the same amount of unhappy men as women, so from a happiness perspective it would appear that neither men nor women are winning and focusing on money and power instead of well-being is short sighted.

Like maybe we should quit arguing which gender gets the most money and try to figure out what makes a human happy.

on edit: finished, got cut off early by interviewer.

That phrase does not mean what you think it means. You're looking for the words "person of no consequence".

> Boys’ worlds expand [...] and enroll in high school or college or get a job.

> girls’ worlds contract. They transition, sometimes at a very young age, from being subservient to their parents to being subservient to their husbands.

Emphasis mine.