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Comment by zdragnar | Hacker News Reader

The two relevant quotes to explain the headline:

> “These people (Chinese immigrants) did not come to be chefs; they came to be immigrants, and cooking was the way they made a living.”

> “These people came to cook so their children wouldn’t have to, and now their children don’t have to.”

Basically, a story of the American dream, not too dissimilar to my own (european) family's story. Immigrants take on difficult work and long hours to provide their kids with opportunities they themselves didn't have. The natural result is they age out and their kids take on different occupations, the line of work they did changes to accommodate fewer people doing it.

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That reminds me of something John Adams, second President of the United States, wrote in a letter to his wife in May, 1780:

> The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.

Here is a link that seems rather official: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-03-02-0258

That is truly inspiring, I really like it.

Really good stuff. Thanks for sharing. I guess I’ve made it when my son is able to go study poetry :)

The problem with that mindset is that once all of the experts in government die off, then the ignorant descendants run into a mass Chesterton’ fence problem and start removing important bits.

Or remove bits knowing perfectly well how important they are but because it sits their agenda.

From a polemic in The Spectator:

"There is a huge cast of well-paid people, from management consultants to economic advisers, whose entire salaries are earned by ripping out Chesterton’s fences. Interestingly, these are mostly male-dominated industries (men are more prone to narrow systematising than women). Silicon Valley, which is overwhelmingly male, is possibly the worst offender of all. The very fact that a fence is over ten years old, requires atoms in its manufacture or creates employment for human beings is reason enough for them to want to get rid of it."

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/chestertons-fence-and-th...

And of course the fence he's talking about is print advertising. He's pretty selective about what he calls fences, though fences are a universal argument against change.

There is a philosophy that success lasts 3 generations, which is somewhat prophecized in this quote.

Each generation has it better than the last but at some point the knowledge of the fundamentals of life and success is lost and the process restarts.

Not a hard and fast rule of course, but an interesting concept.

Wealth lasts three generations. The failure of the last generation, which is entirely disconnected from its original creation, is what causes the success to end.

does that apply to billionaires and the ultra rich?

Yes, because it's not that much more difficult to blow through a billion dollars than a million. Just ask Jefri Bolkiah, whose bill of amusements came to somewhere between $15 and $40 billion depending on who you ask:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefri_Bolkiah,_Prince_of_Brune...

Yes, it is that much more difficult to blow through a billion dollars than a million. The fact that one moron managed to waste a vast sum of money to amuse himself isn't proof of anything other than one moron was stupid enough to do it.

> isn't proof of anything other than one moron was stupid enough to do it.

Look, if you need a second moron stupid enough to do it, I'm just letting you know, I'm available.

Brewster's Millions[1] pales in comparison to Brewster's Billions.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster%27s_Millions_(1985_...

I'll do it for a thousand dollars.

I see what you're trying to do here, and it won't work. Because I'll do it for ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS. Go big or go home.

I remember blowing my first billion. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to be poor.

> I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

Say more, please. Interested in hearing your stories.

That's almost certainly a quote. Adding the attribution would have been helpful.

An adaptation of a famous scene from blade runner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU7Ga7qTLDU

It's a bit ironic that one of his sons became president himself. I'm not sure what John Quincy Adams' sons studied (if he had any).

Yeah, sounds like this is basically by design. It's interesting that new immigrants aren't opening new restaurants to make up for the closures, but even that's not too surprising given the current state of things.

There has been an explosion of Authentic regional Chinese restaurants in the U.S. in the last 10 years or so. Even if that can't replace the Americanized Chinese takeaways that are closing it is much easier to find high quality Chinese cooking these days than ever before. Heck, take a place like Minneapolis that's not a particular hot spot for Chinese-Americans and there are probably 4-5 pretty decent Sichuan restaurants.

Yeah, the older polynesian themed chinese scorpian bowl places are closing here in Massachusetts, but those were always lounge/bars with food to get around local liquor laws.

Minneapolis/St.Paul has (or had - my info may be as much as 10yrs old) the largest population of PRC national college & university students in the United States.

I suspect that it is much harder and more expensive to open a new restaurant now than it was a few decades ago; the article does also mention a few things around some modern challenges (delivery app companies, online reviews, etc).

New immigrants have more safety nets but fewer overall opportunities, I think, in particular if they came without professional skills. I recall the story of my grandfather and his brother who- during the great depression- drove halfway across the country on a small motorbike with nothing but a box of tools, trading a bit of mechanical work for some food and a night in a barn's hay loft along the way. They eventually stopped and worked as mechanics until they could open their own shop. That is the sort of thing that just seems unthinkable nowadays.

Perhaps the skills just changed. Driving halfway across the country on a motorbike with nothing but a macbook and a phone to tether to, freelancing or remote working along the way doesn't sound so unrealistic.

I think it’s the direct exchange of labor for room and board that’s the unrealistic part these days.

Now with a MacBook, you work in a comfy coffee shop to earn enough to stay at a regular motel for the night and get a regular meal.

Also, MacBook freelancing is a higher bar than handyman mechanical work. It requires literacy and training on some skill on the computer that puts you above the Mechanical Turk workforces in much cheaper countries.

> New immigrants have more safety nets

Please elaborate.

For full context, "more" was a comparison to what is available now versus when my grandparents came over. The department of health and human services runs 31 social benefit / welfare programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Medicaid, though they are not immediately available (5 years residence or 40 quarters employed).

26 states run their own programs as well which may or may not have different time requirements for accessing them.

Per the most recent census, a majority of non-citizen households utilize some public benefit (most often medicaid and food assistance) likely due to the difference in education (63% at 10 years living here).

If my grandparents had come here today, they would also certainly be making use of these programs. Since they came over roughly 20 years before the New Deal was passed, local community support was the best they had.

Pre-WWI US is so different as a country that I'm not certain it's useful as a comparison.

FFS, re-read the thread. The conversation was literally about how little there was for immigrants way back then in terms of safety nets but there was more opportunity for unskilled labor.

...and the new wave of immigrants take their old jobs. Rinse, repeat.

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