Comment by themacguffinman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by themacguffinman | Hacker News Reader

themacguffinman

"If you lose everything you own, you generally still have your network and skills"

I get the general call to action that those who have excess resources should leverage that to take big risks, but this really undersells the possible consequences of losing everything you own. No, you don't always keep your network and skills. Sometimes, you lose everything. You lose friends from fallout or you belatedly realize that your network isn't as resilient to you becoming a penniless loser as you thought. Sometimes you go into debt and make enemies. Sometimes you become homeless and then develop a mental illness or a drug addiction. Sometimes you skip the homeless part and just commit suicide [1]. How many people can stomach that kind of outcome?

I do like the general message which I think should be said more often but I feel like people who charge ahead on this call to action should also triple check that they can truly accept the actual risk they might incur. I also think the amount of risk you take has diminishing returns. Making "fatal leaps of faith" doesn't seem to be as necessary or pragmatic as it's presented here.

[1] (heads up: this is a link to a suicide note) https://archive.fo/QaLIw

It smells like privilege.

That isn't to say that the OP was protected regardless. But the mindset that lets you do this is a mindset that comes from a background of abundance. Where you can always get another job if you want one, where you always have friends or parents who will bail you out or give you what you need.

A background where things just always seem to work out.

Another way to look at it (especially for those allergic to the idea that privilege may apply to their own outcome) is that ambition, risk taking, and entrepreneurship are evenly distributed across all socioeconomic classes, or close to it.

It's just that some distinct socioeconomic classes have the capability of failing and retrying very quickly, due to moneyed resources.

Contrast that to the person without assets or access to capital, they save up, take a chance, fail, and now have to wait maybe 10 years or more to get to the same place with jobs. And with time, there is error introduced, divergent paths, life changing events, or simply competing priorities as the years keep going by. Alternatively, everyone else in their similar situation rationally decides not to bother, a good network for them is one that exposes them to basic personal finance gurus on odd forums and youtube, who give them generic advice that works for a broad population.

On the concept of privilege, there is no parade and red carpet that gets rolled out, you just wake up one day and realize that you don't have to apply for jobs to maintain food and shelter, and that your bank account also has enough to make that seed investment or hire developers. So, if you're willing to play your cards, you play them. Enough people are willing to and their successes wind up outnumbering the poorer people that want to play tech entreprenuer.

i liked your comment until the last sentence.

> outnumbering the poorer people that want to play tech entreprenuer.

PLAY?

why the belittlement?

> So, if you're willing to play your cards, you play them. Enough people are willing to and their successes wind up outnumbering the poorer people that want to play tech entreprenuer.

Writing, literature. The word play is used in reference to the use of play in a previous sentence. I think it's a common colorful writing technique.

there is a distinction between "play your cards" and "so, you want to play tech entreprenuer?" but i guess you are so far up capitals arse, you got tone deaf

The richer people are playing too. Its an even distribution of the same behaviors.

Didn’t understand your last sentence

that *also want to play tech entreprenuer

does that help you understand it?

Its an even distribution of the same behaviors, that’s what the whole post is about

I mean maybe, but hn has a primary tech audience. I bet 70% of us here could quit our job, take some risks,go bankrupt, get a new job, all with only mild consequences.

Yes that's privilege and it doesn't apply to everyone but its not an obscure level of privilege. You don't need to be a multimillionaire to have it.

Just an extra thought - what would you guess is the overlap between the remaining 30% and the set that need or heed advice like this?

The author goes on to talk about how there should be a leisure class (basically an aristocracy) and that should be “people of means”. So it’s not even hidden really, it’s just a cementing of the increasing wealth divide more throughly into the political sphere. Neo-Victorianism or something. The working class, literally called “wage-slaves” seemingly unironically in the article and their betters.

The poor have plenty of government support. You can live the liesure lifestyle if you choose to. I used to work 30 hours a week @$9 per hr and pay for an apartment, vehicle, and all of my expenses. The work (cook) was fun and I had a lot of free time to explore tech.

Right after that I got a job as a mechanic and then was laid off. I spent two years on unemployment. I have actual real memories from living a good life during that time. Developing software, hanging out with friends and family, fishing tributaries (walking for hours through a creek or river), tinkering with cars, and reading everything I could get my hands on about world events.

I barely have any memories from when I was trudging through 50 hours a week in a job. Except for those times where I was at a startup trying to change the world (80 hrs a week). But that was an event where I could see the beginning and the end.

Did you reply to the right comment I’m not sure this has anything to do with mine?

Probably not.

Not sure if this was the intention to say it like that.

For me, the interpretation is that when you have time to pursue your own interests, you discover something that is worth fighting for.

I had 2 months off a job and it was the happiest I have ever been because I spend it on researching and discovering problems that I care about. But it was due to the accessibility to "leisure"

The idea that only the rich are able to take risks - or even think about it - is a bias, and an ugly one at that.

It doesn't match history - the only reason we have many good things is because poor people took major risks - and it's part of the tyranny of low expectations that is seeping deeper every day into the fabric of our culture.

It's a remarkably effective way of keeping the pours in their place in the name of "empathy" and "awareness". It's akin to a humblebrag where that the rich can talk bad about themselves while shoring up their position.

And it's a kind of talk that I as one of those pours have zero patience with.

It's not that the ability to take risks is fundamentally different, it's just that if you're rich, the consequences of failure will be easier to deal with, allowing more risk-taking and thus more chances at success.

Of course everyone can take risks, but the consequences of these risks backfiring, are vastly different based on available monetary resources.

A wealthy person may well sink years and piles of money into a dream. If it doesn't work out, meh, that's life. Back to some well paid job and preparing the next try.

Person in strained financial position doing the same and it backfires: May well take years to get back on ones feet, and may even end up in a homeless shelter.

The person who I responded to said "the mindset that lets you do this is a mindset that comes from a background of abundance" - implying that pours have a mindset which doesn't "let them" take risks.

And it goes without saying that the rich have it easier. That doesn't make it their exclusive province, nor indeed should it. It's not exactly as if the risk-free pour life is exactly paradise anyways. When I fell from working class to vagabond in fact it was a significant step up.

> It doesn't match history - the only reason we have many good things is because poor people took major risks

Check your history again - most of the people who made scientific discoveries or breakthroughs were people of means, or otherwise didn't have to do "real" (paying) work[1] and could afford to dick-around with experiments all day long for months on end and not starve.

1. In history - i.e. from dawn of time to about 1950-ish, when research universities and corporate/government R&D matured.

Where did I say science? Many modern scientific disciplines are by their nature exclusionary because they require access to specialized equipment and space, so of course that's somewhat of an exception to my generality.

And I say somewhat because historically a surprising number of breakthroughs did not happen in a lab, nor were discovered by professional scientists. I took a course in the history of science and tech and the primary lesson pounded into us was how often breakthroughs were accidents made by amateurs.

And among the names of poor scientists are folks like Tesla and the early Einstein I mentioned earlier. So my point stands, even extending a little bit at least here.

You didn't - I said science since it's a specific subset of "many good things" in history that has a clear written record I'm familiar with. Do you think science should be excluded? If so, which fields did you have in mind? Philosophy? Political theory? Economics?

I would hope it is obvious I am not talking about the period prior to the modern age in which the only people who could read were rich.

Because that says nothing about mindset, which is the claim I was replying to.

To test his mindset theory, we have to go to a period in which raw non-monetary resources - the most basic of which is the ability to read - is distributed among both rich and poor. And then you see - do the pours do anything?

And they do, across the vast majority of fields - including even science, which I edited my reply above to include. I'm shocked indeed that this is even being questioned. I'm coming from a humanities and social science background and so that's my primary frame of reference, but my understanding is that while it is not the rule of course they are widely a not insignificant minority among those who have made significant contributions. And obviously an even larger group if we include not only the poor but also the "non-privileged" which is who the OP to this particular thread was throwing into relief.

It's polite to mark any substantive edits you make after posting. When I replied - your entire comment was just "Where did I say science?".

Apologies - I edited it apparently just before you replied, and I wasn't familiar with how to mark edits.

i agree, though it's not just a bias. it's a lie, meant to keep those who don't have the capital to sit the fuck down and work for their employers like the rest of them.

especcially since time and time again those poor people who do contribute major inventions, without having much capital, have been, one could say, robbed of their invention by people who do have lots of capital. yeah of course money was exchanged, but not in relation. yeah of course nobody can say how well an invention will lift of, but should be considered in the exchange of goods. that makes it to expensive for the buyer as they cant be sure the risk is worth it when really considering it? then you are an non-Lisper: you know the cost of everything, but the actual value of anything? nah....

money has to go. there is no other way. we need to stop valuating things with money. or rather: at all. Value is a synthetic property, imagined by have's to keep stuff away from have-not's, enforced by the state, who has a lot but is really nobody, since we made it so easy to distribute blame across periods of governance. (not saying we should embrace a kazakh model, just we should be all equal workers)

now, commence the downvoting.

I think it is hard to quantify the risk and what loosing *almost everything* means for each situation.

> the tyranny of low expectations that is seeping deeper every day

Thank you. I agree and in fact I didn't post my initial response because it was too snarky. HN seems to have this idea that people will only take risks if the downside is minimal or a minor career setback. It completely ignores an entire class of people "who have so little that they have nothing to lose."

What part of history are you referring to?

What kind of examples are really coming to your mind here?

Don’t know about privilege, but it certainly smells like “doesn’t have children”

and friends with money, nobody financially depended on him, probably savings to live not just from unemployment benefits (that would even make networking challenging financially I guess)

Just based on his twitter profile pic it appears he does indeed have at least one child

It is privilege. That one may have or attempt.

It doesn't make it less valid a path to consider.

100%.

I don't think this person is considering the single mom who has to work multiple minimum wage jobs just to make ends meet; the people who have never had any opportunity to have any sort of "network" to magically get another job.

When you're in that position, you're constantly exhausted because of how much you're working. You have no savings. You absolutely cannot afford to just "quit" and have things work out.

The author is explicit about who this is for.

There is never a suggestion that the single mom working multiple minimum wage jobs to make ends meet is the target.

> If you have the resources to spend some time exploring, if you are on to interesting threads of novelty that few other people have, and if you have the spirit to tighten your belt, throw out your map, and explore off-road, then your real job is to do so.

Yes, I see the piece as a call to action if you have the means. Like it's almost a moral obligation to yourself or society.

> If you have the resources to spend some time exploring, if you are on to interesting threads of novelty that few other people have, and if you have the spirit to tighten your belt, throw out your map, and explore off-road, then your real job is to do so.

The essay is calling out people of means directly and telling them to stop wasting their time.

If you have the means, it is your real job to do so.

The entire article is a call to build a leisure class. Not whisky and xbox leisure. Newton and Seneca leisure.

This doesn't smell like privilege, it is privilege. But it is highlighting not only the opportunity of that life, but the duty.

Yeah it can come from a background of abundance but does not mean it is not a good attitude to have. I have spent most of my life with an attitude of scarcity and I was jealous of others. It held me back in so many ways and made me unhappy. Now I try to live with positive outlook on the future and try to make things happen with a belief that things will work out some how in the end. Impoverised people could benefit from some of this thinking (balanced with realism) since it could help improve their circumstance.

I "retired" for about ten years. I chose to be poor and just focus on raising my kids and being home with them. I discovered what it is this guy is talking about. I was able to focus on personal projects and learning about the world.

I applied all of that and reentered the corporate world like a beast. It is now ten years later and cannot wait to "retire" again. I miss being able to think about things and live life without the narrowing constraints imposed by wage slavery.

You can't understand how liberating it is until you try it but it takes a lot of faith in yourself.

For those that read the note the blog is gone but I searched HN for the author and found the discussion the day this was posted.

He did end up making it because people called the police.

This isn't to undercut the message of this comment, it is clear from the blog that Dennis was very close to dying because of the financial situation he was in and how hopeless it made him feel. I just had to know what happened after reading the note.

https://archive.fo/U4X6S

Nobody knows you when you're down and out.

Also skills are highly relative. You could be great in some workplace but in another you'd get confused. And the things you were home with are now disregarded.

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