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Comment by testval123 | Hacker News Reader

That is privileged take. The things we take for granted in a 'prosperous' society- food on grocery store shelves, doctors available in the ER, plumbers to fix your plumbing, etc. etc. all require people to work 'standard' hours and follow 'standard' paths. The path of the 'creative' tech worker taking two years off is incredibly privileged, and I would argue infantilizing.

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The things we require in society doesn't need people to work 40h a week until they're 70 years old. The reason most people can't take two years off is not because society can't go without the fruits of their labor.

No shit. The whole point of being a parent is to give your kids as much privilege as you can. Why are you talking like it's a bad thing? My parents moved here to bring me a better life than them and I'm working to give my kids a better life than me. Are you planning on hoarding all your money and making your kids stock shelves to keep them away from "privilege"?

this is a common attitude, especially in china where i have observed it, but it is much less common in europe. myself for example i am the total opposite. i don't know what my parents goals were, but i don't think it was giving us a better life. not that it matters though, because i am proud that i never needed financial support from my parents. i achieved more of my goals and dreams than my parents did of theirs because my parents, as imperfect as they were, gave me resilience.

and that is what i want to give to my kids as well. not privilege. i want them to learn that not everyone has it as good as we do, and that we need to work in order to have a better life, and that we need to help others do the same. perhaps this is itself a position of privilege to be able to do that instead of living in a comfortable place in europe where my neighbors would like to go to to have a better life.

“Europe” isn’t homogeneous either. My English grandfather was stingy, irascible, and highly educated, and he kicked most of his kids out at 16 since that was the age when he had to fend for himself. He maintained strained relationships with his kids for the rest of his life, although he loved his grandkids unconditionally and was a pretty good grandfather.

My Eastern European grandfather never finished high school, and his whole purpose in life was to provide opportunities for his kids. They worked hard and built good lives with the advantages he gave them. Now he’s in his nineties and one of his kids visits him basically every day. He seems happy.

He’s also outlived my English grandfather by almost ten years, but that could be coincidence or genetics.

If our society falls apart, it won’t be because I took a break from deploying kubernetes clusters for three months so I could get better at skiing and volunteer on the suicide hotline.

And yeah, this is a very privileged take. Is there some other way you’d prefer that I use my privilege?

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