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Comment by nasir | Hacker News Reader

Tonight I went for a walk with the 15 yo son of my neighbour who said he wants to start his own company and have 1 million by the time he turns 18. I asked him, what do you have in mind? He said, I want to build a company that is cash positive and then reinvest its profit in itself and grows.

I told him this really does not mean anything. You need to have concrete steps toward this goal which is only 3 years away.

I think those who really wants to achieve the so-called "success" will just go figure it out rather than constantly reading those success story. Yeah perhaps at the very beginning of the journey you get inspired by reading a few of those.

But the rest is basically taking concrete steps and trying stuff out until it sticks. And the best way to do that is to go figure out HOW those people in the success story did it.

At least at the end he was happy with the answer.

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This pattern of the get-rich-quick mentality is alarmingly pervasive among youngsters today.

Even more common are kids who plan to get rich being a famous TikTokker, IGer, of YouTuber.

Since there's not much I can do about it, I'm just curious to see how this shakes out over time.

I mean, it kind of makes sense. These kids aren't stupid. They see that most of the upward mobility ladders have been pulled up by the last generation to climb them, and there's not much left besides gambling on meme stocks, OnlyFans, and trying to become a popular streamer.

They look at their Millennial parents generation and say "Why would I want to study hard, go to college, and work my ass off? That's what you did and you have six figures of debt and work at Starbucks!" We were suckers and believed in class mobility. I think the next generation of kids are more observant and cynical and have figured out the deck is stacked against them.

Yeah that's exactly right. I'm 42 and my wife is 26 and she and her brother (23) are very keenly aware that the deck is stacked against them from the get go. Their early internet consumption mostly consisted of them informing themselves of their odds in the world. And they were horrified with their own conclusions. They kept saying "it couldn't be that bad, could it?". And then they tried to find entry level jobs on the local market...

They are not lazy. They simply are on the lookout for an opportunity that's worth their energy. And truthfully, 98% of them out there are not.

Mind you, this might still end horribly for them because IMO at some point you have to start working your ass off since that at least carries some potential to open opportunities for you (get acquainted with people, for example).

But I definitely understand why they are the way they are.

And I know at least 15 other young people who are on the exact same mindset.

It's indeed an evolutionary process. They're born in a different environment compared to you and me, and their priorities are different.

There’s a lot of negativity towards capitalism here in this thread which is hard for me to understand when the average Hacker News user is upper middle class chatting away on social media in the middle of a work day. It seems like capitalism has done exactly a great job in lifting people out of poverty and continues to do so.

A lot of the negativity simply comes from being detached from real problems, in my opinion.

Or maybe we don’t want to pull the ladder up after us and a lot of us came from poverty too and remember it and have empathy with those still there?

Being able to use social media during the work day doesn’t make housing or health care any more affordable. Don’t those count as real problems?

I've got no idea about the general demographics of the site, but I for one am here in the middle of the day because I'm unemployed, not because I'm well-off.

A study in bourgeois identity crisis. "Anti-work anti-Caren" sentiment. Some Reddit meme I believe.

There have been many people trying to get rich quick in previous generations, as well. If it's growing over time, faster than the "work hard and rise to the top" or other segments of the population, it may be because "working hard" in the same kinds of jobs (level of skill, amount of effort required, etc) people were doing 50 years ago is much less likely to get you to the same level of independence and wealth that it would have 50 years ago.

I think this entire discussion is more about opportunities and the common debate is between older generations that think young people have the same opportunities now that they had when they were young VS young people now believing they do not have those opportunities. I mean, is this not the basis for the entire "OK, boomer" response/meme?

When looking at specific success stories, I think the people talking about luck being opportunity have the right of it. Sure, there might be some plan old luck involved and there's surely a large amount of persistence and effort involved, but it does seem rare to hear about what created the opportunity for the success.

Everybody talking about survivorship bias are really talking about how the success story, as told by people involved in the success, are rarely looking to download their involvement and talk about the opportunities they had, but instead want to show how their involvement and the things they did are the key to the success.

If you can’t afford material security either way, and you’re just choosing between roommates or parents, it’s get rich or die trying. Might as well.

(Without knowing the person at all), I would have asked, 'why?'. Lots of kids these days seem to be just following these paths blindly. A million dollars can be a means to something; it's not a goal.

'kids these days' - maybe this was always true, but it seems like they are trapped in a cycle of trauma, thinking life is a struggle to survive.

It doesn't help that kids now are bombarded by rich influencers all the time on social media.

Your neighbour's son is likely going to be quite successful at least on some level, and he may even get to his $1M.

"It doesn't mean anything" - the opposite, it means a lot, it's 'a (personal) goal' - which is how people focus and motivate themselves.

"the rest is basically taking concrete steps and trying stuff out until it sticks." - well kind of. Yes, you have to 'take steps' at some point, but 'what steps?' to 'what end?' etc. etc..

I think it's probably slightly more beneficial to have people focused on growing the pie, and having a nice way to captures surpluses, as opposed to just "I want to make money" but just having the later is a formidable goal.

You, shall we say, "had a learning experience" if it's 2022 and your son still believes in capitalism.

Maybe it's too late for us old farts, but the generation coming up needs to overthrow the corporate system--and they need to start while they're young and have the energy, and the best of us oldsters will be around to help them, so there's no time like the present--if they want to have a future. There is none in the current socioeconomic system, not for real humans (as opposed to ultrawealthy ghouls).

Corporations as structures aren't going away.

Over the centuries, they spread from England to the rest of the world because they play an important role quite well: they allow people to pool their resources for a common project while protecting their non-invested personal assets from potential bankruptcy.

People want to do business. People want themselves and their families to be protected from utter financial ruin if their project fails and ends in bankruptcy. People want to maintain some kind of continuity in businesses even if an important individual dies or becomes incapacitated.

Legal personae - corporations - are the solution to this set of requirements, whose functionality has been tested by centuries. They will outlast us for this reason alone.

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