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Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

Don't. Get out. Get powerful. There is a threshold effect. Unless you have a non-normative path to power (organized crime or powerful family or lots of money already), don't do it.

What you're doing is the equivalent of trying to get strong by pulling a 500 lb barbell every day without moving it. It is not effective. Go somewhere where you pull the 100 lbs first and get it off the ground. Then move up. One day you will be able to pull the 500 lbs. Then you can go back and move it.

In the most dangerous places, all the barbells are 500 lbs. You will not get strong. The barbell will not move. The barbell will never move.

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Disagree. You're falling prey to savior complex, so instead you should "Get out and get powerful and come back to be a hero" Translation: Go make fuck you money and then change what you independently determine is important. You're wrong, because you'll have no idea what barbells to move when you come back, you'll just throw them around without purpose, like a meathead in a gym. Even so, not many people can move a 500lb barbell by themselves, but you get a few people around you you can trust, and 500lbs is pretty light. Much lighter if y'all can work together to break it down and take some weight off the bar before you move it, too. You go away and get powerful, make some fuck you money, sure, you can buy a few houses, or support a policy or something, be a savior. You can toss a few barbells around with ease. But if there's no buy in from others who trust and understand your motives, your effort will die. You might get your name in the record books for the barbells you threw, but there wont be lasting impact.

Just to clarify since I was unclear apparently, it isn't about returning to be a hero with no clear conception of what to do. It's all about having sufficient power to overcome inertial force so that things don't revert to what they were when you die. It doesn't have to be monetary.

The peer responses of doing this as part of a community are meaningful alternatives. I don't think that technique would work for me, but that technique may well work for others.

This seems very flawed.

For one, OP didn't provide context but it's plausible they grew up/spent a significant amount of time in this city already.

It seems pretty clear that the GP was suggesting an alternative path to gaining influence/money/power, and it's not at all a given that 'getting your name in the record books' 'won't have a lasting impact'.

I think building stronger ties with your neighbors is a great way to recruit people to help you move 500 lb barbells. You don't have to be able to lift them by yourself, and why would you want to? You'd just become a single point of failure.

Get to know your neighbors, organize with them, and do the work together to make your neighborhood better. Some reading never hurts, either. If you're in a city, I've found "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs to be really insightful.

What if most of your neighbors are cooking meth

In reality most of your neighbors are not cooking meth. They are normal people who want the best for themselves. They might not know how to make things better, but they too want it. (they might also disagree with you on what makes things better)

Then I suspect you don’t know your neighbors well enough yet.

Individual action can lead to collective action in any community. The trick is to distribute the weight of the barbell across a group with shared goals. There's great power in this type of organizing. Movement is certainly possible.

This starts from the premise that you have to do it alone. Cynicism and isolation make it impossible to change things, but if you get together with 5 neighbors I'm sure you'll be able to move the 500lbs. Start a co-op, or a neighborhood civic group and you won't have to go it alone.

In one of Obama's books he gives some detail about his 'community organizer' background. In short, if I recall right: he tried hard, he learned hard lessons, he failed.

And yet, when he ran for office, the people who knew him from this effort were his base.

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