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Comment by victor9000 | Hacker News Reader

Denying your own child a $15K business loan just to placate your sadistic delusions perfectly describes the mindset of aging boomers. They're happy to watch their own children struggle for the opportunity to validate their ideology. They don't have enough empathy to help their own children, so it's futile expecting them to care about anyone else in society. They use tragedy of the commons situations to justify endless gluttony, and will act surprised when the next generation pisses on their graves.

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Without knowing the personality of the child and the history of behavior, it is rather hard to determine whether the parent made the correct decision or not. The article provides very little context. Sometimes this may be the correct decision based on the individual. Every child is different and requires different approaches to discipline and support.

I guess nobody can know anything and there is no point in trying to look at the typical experiences of generations, since we can never know if someone is just making up a sob story about what are actually their just deserts. (/s)

The article makes it pretty clear

> It’s not that I can’t afford to help him,” Steve told me. “I just have a real problem with handouts. And I want him to have the satisfaction of knowing he’s built something himself, with his own hard work. That’s how I was raised, too.

So it has nothing to with the son, Steve is just looking to validate his world view. The reality of the situation is that the boomer generation was provided with an immense amount of social assistance, affordability, and opportunity. Yet these are the same benefits they deny even their own children in favor of sadistic fantasies.

happened to me when scraping together a down payment for a house offer during the low interest rates 5 years back. parents completely understood the interest rates were basically a winning lotto ticket that would never come again in our lifetime and refused to help back a competitive down payment with any money at all

their logic was that theyd given my sisters tens of thousands of dollars over the years and my sisters remained dependent, but ive been financially independent since college. they never gave me money and id never asked

according to them: they perceived they had made me tougher when reality is that i simply never asked for money when my sisters did, because i assumed that would mean if i ever asked they would respect the request

fucked me up to the point where they noticed how annoyed i was and have offered money since, when i didnt need it, and ive pretty much made a point i hope theyre buried with it

Parents will be cluelessly wondering "why boogieknite doesn't visit anymore"

You sound like you've simply got an axe to grind and you have no intention of analyzing this situation rationally.

If a bank has determined the venture is probably doomed and won't loan the money, why should the parent support this doomed venture? People have idiotic business ideas constantly, way more frequently than they have good ones. On average denying such a loan is correct.

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