Hacker News Reader

Comment by charles_f | Hacker News Reader

Well there's nothing much to add. This is a good piece.

It isn't anything surprising to read from Andressen, rich capitalist wants "the market" to regulate everything and claims we're being lied to (note - without any data), and we should trust him and people like him to guide society to a better place since we're here thanks to him and his predecessors in the first place. The planet is burning, wealth distribution has been on the decline for years, there's the opioid crisis, the subprime crisis, and all these things, but we should keep our faith in the market because it obviously works so well, and we're the ones who don't see the light of truth for the beauty it is.

I used to have some respect for him, mostly because of "hard things", but I guess this kind of point of view comes with the job and wealth

View on HN

> but I guess this kind of point of view comes with the job and wealth

I am very much convinced that a big downside to being rich is it allows your opinions to ossify. No matter where you started, how hard you worked, or how world-changing (debatable) someone's contributions were, once they get power (in any form, but especially money), it insulates one against having to change. I'm not advocating for austerity all the time, but it's painfully obvious from pretty much every "self-made man" that made it big that they are living in a bubble, full of yes-men because they fired all the people who had the temerity to say "hey, perhaps that's not quite right."

Even though I'm slightly above average in a number of markers and I've taken pains to expand my horizons and take on differing POVs, I'm still surprised (quite often!) by things I just had not thought of. And I'm not even rich, albeit I'm privileged enough to take long breaks from paying work.

I credit a lot of my worldview and politics to the fact that I have a lot of friends who are poor and/or have chronic health conditions, and that I have to contrast that with my well-paying and secure tech job and other institutional advantages.

I've been with them on the phone and in waiting rooms, seeing firsthand how they have to navigate systems (both public and private) that are set up to fail -- public benefits systems that randomly corrupt their information and require them to prove they aren't defrauding the government, mental health hospitalizations that leave them more traumatized than when they entered, abusive bosses who take advantage of their precarity, systems that would leave me as an able-bodied/able-minded person absolutely exhausted and demoralized. And most of the time, all I can do is hug them, and send them money when things break down worse than usual.

It keeps me humble, and angry, and with a real sense of survivor's guilt.

I do agree that the lack of a meaningful feedback loop seems to distort the opinions of the powerful - they’re isolated and they don’t even realise it. But then do most people’s opinions not ossify as they age? I don’t know many 50+ people changing their views on very much.

I'm 66. My views have changed a lot over the last 15 years; I've become more radical. (I think you're supposed to get more conservative as you age.)

> I've become more radical.

A midlife crisis will do that to you.

As an older person myself, I have come to think that it's more nuanced than that. There does come an age where we've largely settled on our worldviews, but I think that age is around the late 20s/early 30s, not the 50s.

But even then, people can and do alter their opinions as they learn and experience things. It just takes more for that to happen. That's as true of a 60 year old as a 30 year old.

I think it's a natural, explicable, and even good thing.

There is a very disturbing tendency for the wealthy and powerful to believe that they have some sort of superiority over others (after all, the argument essentially goes, if they weren't better, smarter, etc., then they wouldn't be rich and powerful).

That tendency has always been there, and the notion has always been ridiculous. It's up to the rest of us to make sure that we don't buy into that delusion as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com