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Comment by ronnier | Hacker News Reader

What was lost was hard work ethic and the perspective of how good life is now, respect for others, and we've gained some arrogance from never having to suffer.

I had an odd life, I lived in the projects as a child until I was sent to my grandfathers farm for 6~ years, and after that, back to the violent city I had originally lived in. I was at a huge disadvantage compared to my peers but from the hard word I was subjected to in those 6 years (work ethic it taught me), pure luck of getting into computer science (thanks to John Carmack via doom/quake), and meeting the right people, I was able to work much harder than those around me and rise up quickly through the worlds biggest tech companies, make a ton of money to the point where I was able to retire at 40 (though I didn't and still work).

To answer your question, in my view, that's what was lost -- a connection to brutal hard work that keeps the world moving forward.

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I don't think it's hard work that has been lost but rather a connection to 'direct results' which are notably lacking from a lot of jobs.

This is my sense as well. Growing up in a restaurant, I could see the cash being counted each evening. You scrub the toilets, make smalltalk, get orders, cook the food, serve it, clean the tables. At the end of the evening you have more cash in the till than at the start. Results are very obvious.

Most people who get a desk job will not see this, in fact they will barely ever meet an end consumer (person who eventually pays VAT for example), and the money will have passed through a huge number of hands before getting into their account each month. Doing a slightly better or worse job makes no difference.

Worked my way through college on semester breaks on farms in Oregon and Germany. I can totally relate. The camaraderie of showing up at the shop with the other hands on a frigid morning, working until sunset, sometimes longer. Watching crops grow. Harvesting. It also helps that I grew up in the last great generation of feral children. We were outdoors all the time. Rain or shine. I get depressed if I'm not outdoors enough to this day. Outdoor living (as well as hard work) seems lost on so many people today.

My parents infected me with the same disease -- an intense conviction in the nobility and virtue of individual hard work -- and it led me to a terrible place, the physical sciences, where I received a harsh lesson in the nature of capitalism. It's not about creating value, it's about capturing value. In a low-leverage situation, when everyone works hard you are simply paid less. Surplus is captured through ownership and ownership is concentrated at the top. In low-leverage jobs, this system transforms hard work from a noble individual value to a collective curse.

The explosive growth of the software industry over the last few decades has led to an abnormal situation where regular employees have enough leverage to capture a substantial fraction of their surplus. Most people are not so lucky. For most people, the system looks more like:

    You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
    Another day older and deeper in debt
    Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go
    I owe my soul to the company store

and having experienced work environments that were low leverage through no fault of the employees, I understand this, I respect this, and I did not forget it when I left for software, where we have it much easier not because we work harder but because we are in a growth industry.

I too found it easy to climb. I too enjoy the "free" money from real estate investments and a stock portfolio. But I know where it comes from. I do not pound my throne and launch spittle as I demand for those beneath me to work harder for my benefit.

You shouldn't either.

Thank god, I'm also well off and work hard. But I know plenty who work hard and aren't. Luck is a big factor.

Working at creating value is what matters, not just working hard.

Can you explain this? Value for whom? The business owner, the customer, yourself? Can you please give an example?

Value for the person you're going to trade it to.

If you work hard to make a mud pie, you've created no value, and nobody will want it.

If you work hard to make an apple pie, people will be willing to give you money for it, because you created something of value to them.

"It works on my machine" - apt comparison for the software crowd.

I grew up in a restaurant, but my main lesson from it was that I didn't want to be forced to do that kind of work. People have praised me for my work ethic, but I'm not sure it came from doing anything at the restaurant, it came from NOT wanting to do anything at the restaurant.

About two weeks in to my first job, as a dishwasher, I told myself that I didn't want to do this for the next forty years. I stayed in restaurants another ~five years and was known as a hard worker, but that desire is what drove me to college and to a career.

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