Comment by 4636760295 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 4636760295 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, this makes sense. I got it especially bad, since I joined startups that raised a huge amount of money on promises of riches, and then failed after burning through hundreds of millions of dollars. The founders cashed out before the companies imploded, but regular employees were left holding the bag. I have lots of illiquid startup stock that's now worthless, after about 10 years in Silicon Valley.

I do feel like the cards are stacked against everyone who isn't already rich. The system is designed to help keep the rich people rich, and make sure the poor stay poor.

I'm excited about the uprising, because we might finally be seeing a period of time that brings about real change. I'd love to see politicians abolished and replaced with real direct digital democracy. Politicians are a leftover from the colonial era when government representatives were necessary because it wasn't possible to have real democracy.

If you were fortunate enough to get multiple jobs in Silicon Valley - even if they didn’t go as well as they could have - it’s hard to honestly claim the cards are stacked against you. Most people drew a much weaker hand.

People have a hard time remembering that if you are in the 51st percentile you're "doing better than most".

I feel like we tend to think more in terms of school grading where even an 80% is "not very good".

That's fair, I am well aware of my luck in this case. I guess I just wish that someone had explained to me the real value of SV lottery tickets when I was younger.

FWIW I grew up poor, and am certainly not wealthy now (I'm still a wage slave), but at least I can afford to buy food and new clothes. Growing up I had to rely on charity.

Congratulations (seriously) on making it, then. I only called your comment out because I think many people in the HB bubble have very inflated standards about a “good” life.

I think about two friends of mine. Both got slammed by the 2001 recession. At one point they were sleeping on couches. They managed in the last ten years to get good paying jobs, 90/120k a year. And when they look at their budget taxes eat almost half.

And then there is a friend who managed to hop skip and keep a decent job and stuff money away tax protected. He's made more off capital gains than he's made from working.

The whole system is set up to allow wealth to accumulate no matter the state of the real economy. While preventing people with earned income from 'breaking out' and competing with the wealthy and their children.

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