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Comment by morgante | Hacker News Reader

It's awfully hard to discern a point in this rambling piece.

But I'm not sure what she expects. She and other liberal arts students constantly complain about the 1%, but they're the ones who chose to go into a field which the market doesn't reward.

Yet they're the same people who scoff at and disparage people studying finance or computer science. We chose to study lucrative things, a choice which is equally open to them.

Ultimately, we have to confront the fact that certain industries just don't scale. We don't need more English majors or artists, so if you choose to study that it's your own choice. Welcome to the free market.

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> But any strawberry picker knows hard work alone is a fast road to nowhere

> Those with money usually think they deserve it. But most people who make the world run—who care for kids, who grow food, who would rebuild after natural disasters and societal collapse—will never be rich, no matter how hard or well they work, because society is constructed with only so much room on top.

> I thought of the workers busting their backs lifting boxes at warehouses, while an electronic tracker yelled at them to work faster. Are their egos too big?

> I got my first job at a candy store when I was 14. I worked in the stockroom. I would open a box, take out a smaller box, put a rubber band around the smaller box, and put it back inside the big one. I lasted two days. This job, I remember thinking, does not make use of my intellectual abilities. When I did need work, I went straight into the naked-girl industry.

did you even read the article? it's extremely myopic of you to say that this is about "liberal arts students".

congrats on the upvotes for continuing the STEM circlejerk, tho.

> Welcome to the free market

While I consider myself a proponent of the free market, I think my work as a programmer blinds me to how much rent seeking underlies other high earning professions in the US. Doctors, lawyers, financiers, accountants don't really operate in a free market, rather they work in a system that is better understood as defined by laws. The reason all these fields (with exceptions for parts of medicine) are so lucrative, is because they have thrived in a system mandated or failing to be regulated by law. It is naive to think that said groups do not wish to sustain and propagate that privilege. Market adaption is an important force, but one that for all practical purposes exists within a framework society has created. I am expecting Americans to slowly get to terms with this reality as the economy recovers after long period of credit expansion and it dawns on more people that it has always mostly been a zero sum game.

EDIT: grammar

right, and the decades of classroom time they put in, and the complexity of their field has NOTHING to do with how much they get paid. There will be some bad actors in any group, but to paint both groups with such a broad brush is doing a disservice to the ones that engage in those professions because they have a passion for the law or want to heal people.

Well, "nothing" is a strong word, but I know people who put in decades of classroom time in the (actually quite complex) field of philosophy, and they don't earn shit.

I agree on not painting broad brushstrokes. But there are some discernable patterns.

Do I really need a person who went to school for "decades" to swab my kid's tongue to see if she has strep? Do I even need a person with "decades" of education to then write out a prescription based on the lab results (that I could probably read myself with 5 minutes of reading online)?

I doubt anyone would seriously say that a heart surgeon doesn't deserve big bucks for performing heart surgery. But most highly-paid people in the medical profession aren't doing heart surgery. For the most part, they're getting paid by hiding behind regulations that say they can't be replaced by people with less education who would work for less.

Same goes for the legal profession, to some extent. The fact that you can't represent clients in court without passing the bar is both a consumer protection (we don't want scam artists bilking clients) AND a subsidy to the legal profession. It may be a subsidy we are "OK" with, but don't deny that it is a subsidy.

It certainly has something to do with it, but if we didn't artificially restrict the number of slots at medical school and let anybody who was willing to put in the classroom time then that would make a big difference.

Did you read the same piece I did? She's not complaining about the 1%, she's not disparaging people to study finance or computer science and she's taking full responsibility for the choices she made. Her point is entirely different. It's two points actually:

* You need money to get more money

* Once you have money and manage to keep getting more of it, it's easy to feel entitled to this situation and not recognize how fortunate you were to end up there

I don't have access to original article and I wonder what's the point of making those points? I do not agree with those points but let's ignore that now. Let's say you are in that good position? What does it mean to recognize that you are fortunate? Should you be thankful to somebody? If yes how should you express that? Or should you simply enjoy the fact that you are fortunate because if not you someone else will be in your position? Or maybe not? How to measure how much fortune is in there?

If we assume that one of the values of a society is to give chances to a middle class life even people who are born into poor families, then if you actually discover that it is not often possible, maybe you can change something that it becomes possible. You could do things like vote for politicians who drive for lowering the cost of education.

From another angle: if you keep saying that "it's easy to become middle class even if you are poor", then the article has points that say it's actually not the case. The article also argues that rich people don't understand their advantageous position.

Education is free in my country. Situation with university degree is slightly different but still you can get degree for free if you really want to. Maybe that's why I take things like that for granted.

It shouldn't be easy to become middle class. Our planet can not sustain that with current technological level. But again "middle class" might mean different things for different people.

As well I'm pretty sure that rich people understand what position they are in if we speak about sustainable assets.

>It's awfully hard to discern a point in this rambling piece.

The point is: its expensive being poor. The rich receive so many more benefits and rewards in their world, simply for the fact that they 'are rich' and thus 'have more potential' than the poor.

Until we realize that the poor are kept there by the wealthy, we'll never solve income-inequality in the world. Without such 'rich bubbles' existing in our society, there is no hope for us all to rise.

Can you explain the mechanism by which the rich keep the poor there?

(If the answer is simply "insufficient wealth redistribution", what is the right amount of wealth redistribution? I.e., at what amount of redistribution do we declare that the wealthy have done enough, and the problem must lie not with them?)

The rich get a lot of things for free that most people would have to pay large amounts of money for .. such as free glasses of sekt while waiting for the plane, or gift bags when you enter the host bar, and so on. By just accepting this as a matter of 'life as a rich person', the rich do indeed steal from the poor - those bags had to get paid somehow, the sekt doesn't just bottle itself.

I recently attended a large art opening in a very wealthy city. The party was full of millionaires and billionaires. Everywhere: free food, free drinks, free everything. I felt more connection with the waiters and servers than I did with any of the rich people enjoying the fruits of all the servers work ..

What I think has to happen is that the rich have to realize that their privilege has to be shared, and they simply have to share it as much as they can. This dividing line between 'me and them' has to disappear. I don't think that wealth-redistribution by the government is any sort of solution; what has to happen is that society has to enlighten itself to the point where these greedy, self-indulgent people do not get created by societys' institutions.

I tipped the waiters, anyway. Nobody else in the room did.

An economy ticket costs from London to Mumbai costs $485, whereas the first class ticket costs $2348. The rich person is paying for their own sekt and gift bags. Or are you somehow implying that the poor pay for the perks associated to the first class ticket?

This is like saying the poor rob the rich because they get free ketchup at Burger King.

One example, in the US: poor people get crappy education. The more our economy shifts to a knowledge-based economy, the more effective this is at keeping poor people poor.

Another example: access to legal services (in the US) is essentially required for fair treatment under the law. Poor people cannot afford legal services, and so will generally not get fair treatment under the law. So a mistake/misunderstanding/relatively minor infraction that would be a mere hassle for a richer person can be life-ruining for a poorer person. In the US, we've gone so far as to apply wildly different penalties to "poor people's drugs" and "rich people's drugs" (obviously stereotypes, but the stereotypes have some basis in fact and are why the laws were written that way).

Poor neighborhoods are more likely to experience elevated crime levels. In the US, this means they are often militarized. This makes everyone that lives in them more at risk for life-ruining run-ins with the law. The people of NYC have decided that it's fair for non-white juveniles to be subject to stopping & frisking anytime, for no cause. This is a tax for which no benefit is derived by the payers.

There are tons of examples like these that have nothing to do with redistribution. If you read the papers, you'll see examples every day.

Here's a newsflash for ya: DON'T BREAK THE LAW!!! If they weren't breaking they law there would be no need to send them to jail. I grew up around a bunch of potheads and saw by their example that I never wanted to be involved with drugs. Instead of spending my time getting drunk and high I spent my time in the library reading. I grew up in a trailer park, and now live in a middle-class suburb. Because I was interested in video games, I learned about computers.

Poor people are held down by the chains of their own bad habits, not by rich people.

There are so many laws in the US that everyone there is committing several felonies a day.

It's the poor and minorities the cops choose to scrutinize and enforce against most.

Few times have I seen such obliviousness to white middle-class privilege on HN.

Yeah... I guess this one is true.

I'd have to challenge AutoCorrect's implicit assertion that (s)he doesn't break the law. There are so many laws that the assertion is a little difficult to believe. Your explanation is far more likely...

ie - this is the US and it's far better to be white than black, or rich than poor.

And the worst is to be poor and black.

runako already dealt with this by pointing out that because poor areas are militarized, run-ins with the law are more likely even for "normal" law-breaking. What kid doesn't break the law? I did, tons of times. I wasn't out murdering people, but I took part in the usual American youth mischief. If I'd grown up in a poor, black neighborhood, there's a good chance I would have gone to prison. As it is, I grew up in a middle-class white neighborhood, so I got away with it (and turned out MUCH better than I would have if I'd gone to prison).

Aside from this, militarization leads to people who didn't even break the law being incarcerated or killed. Take a look at the Innocence Project, and AFAIK they don't even handle people wrongfully convicted of minor offenses.

How do the rich cause the poor to be poorly educated? Do they infiltrate the school boards in poor districts and cause them to enact bad policies? I was also completely unaware that the rich went into poor neighborhoods and committed crime. This is terrible!

One possible solution to this is to try and segregate rich from poor as much as possible. That will certainly reduce the harm these rich villains cause. Maybe we need barriers preventing the rich from entering poor neighborhoods (and vice versa, in the interest of fairness). That should reduce crime in poor neighborhoods and improve the schools, right?

I agree with you on the war on drugs.

>"Can you explain the mechanism by which the rich keep the poor there?"

The political system. Same as it's been for thousands of years.

The poor also participate in the US political system and help maintain the regrettable status quo.

When was the last time you saw a lobbyist for the poor on Capitol Hill? And how big a bag of cash did they have with them?

Newsflash: politics != going to the polls

Being a politician is expensive; fundraising, free time and access is required to rise through the ranks and get stuff done. Also, especially in the US, there is this issue of campaign donations. Giving to someone's campaign is also participating in politics.

And then there is the issue of becoming part of the party apparatus. At my present university, a state university in the Northeast US both College Republicans and Democrats are near invisible. In contrast, at my previous uni, a member of the Ivy League in New England, both parties managed to invite all sorts of established party members, and they were recruiting for campaigning. Think internships.

Yet here on HN we see the benefits of state universities extolled. They may be cheap, but that's because one of the things you go to college for is to build a network of peers and established figures in your chosen field.

Highly unequal property rights enforcement by the state. There is a great deal of property in the world. Rich people use the state to control a vast amount of it for themselves. They use that control to deny the poor access to most of that property, coerce the poor into doing their bidding, and accumulate even more control of that property.

Imagine that you are stranded on a desert island and the only source of food is coconuts, for which you must climb trees. You are bad at climbing trees and often go hungry. Is this unfair? Who is being unfair to you?

Let's expand this to a second scenario:

Imagine you are stranded on a desert island with one other person and the only source of food is coconuts for which you must climb trees. You are worse at climbing trees than your fellow cast away. He climbs the trees before you, takes most of the coconuts, and hoards them. When you ask him for some coconuts he says you should have practiced climbing more as a child.

Is this unfair? Who is being unfair to you?

No, it's not unfair. He's being a dick, maybe, if there's enough coconuts for both of you with no risk of running out, or if it's very easy and risk-free for him to obtain them, etc, but this is ultimately fair imo.

His logic is stupid at best, of course. You can practice climbing trees as an adult, and you'll probably progress significantly faster than you would as a child.

His response should be "No, I collected these myself, and you can collect yours yourself."

I suppose this all hinges on how you define 'fair'. As long as there is no agreement on that, it's hard to discuss this issue in a meaningful way.

Fair, from my perspective, is taking care of others, especially those weaker than me. I happen to have been born in a nurturing environment, with above-average intelligence, and lots of valuable experiences that inform my decisions. While I do work hard, it sometimes shocks me how many things 'came free' for me.

From my perspective, it is not wrong that I happen to have won the lottery. It is also not wrong that others have not, and have less than me. But I would say it is unfair for me to not share my advantage with others, and to try to increase happiness of those around me through this.

That said, I respect that your view of fairness is different. I just don't like it, and choose to be different, and I'll fight for my version of fair...

Of course it's not unfair. He doesn't owe you anything. He collected the coconuts, and he can do whatever he wants with them.

Unfair would be if you collected the coconuts, and then somebody else came and took them from you just because he could. Which is not the case.

Let's say there are plenty of coconuts available for both of you, but specifically because of his hoarding you are risking hunger or starvation (I.e., you are good enough at climbing trees that you could feed yourself)

Is it unfair or unjustified for you to take coconuts from him?

Yes both unfair and unjustified. By your principle, force is the only way to interact between humans without regard to any individual rights. Why not extrapolate this in today's world? Surely even wars can be justified by this principle.

What the second person should do is to offer the first person something (maybe he can peel/cook coconuts better?) in return for some of the coconuts. Or find alternative means of food that do not involve climbing.

The problem with these life-boat scenarios is that you try to twist the problem in a scenario wherein the only solution is to harm one or the other person. In real life, there are more options and nuances. And regardless, initiating force is a clear no-no, regardless of the justification - else society quickly escalates into mob rule and might-is-right.

I agree that they are not realistic. And I do not agree that force is the only way to interact between humans. I'm also not trying to twist the problem to justify violence.

The coconuts in this scenario are a shared resource. Neither individual owns the island or the trees. If there are plenty of coconuts on the island for both people, then a simple, "fair" solution for both people to survive is for each person to simply take the number of coconuts that they need.

Yet the answers suggest that a good climber is entitled to take most or all of the coconuts as their ability allows, even if this causes harm to other cast aways. But theft by the poor climber is never justified. Both actions cause harm, but one is considered just while the other is not.

@jljljl

Yes, it's unfair to take his coconuts. He earned them, and risked injury (which could mean his life in this contrived example) to collect them, and they are his.

How they will be used is up to him, if things are fair.

I find this interesting because: by hoarding the coconuts (without necessity in this example), the good climber is causing harm or injury to the poor climber. This injury is considered fair and justified. However, if the poor climber causes injury to the first by stealing the coconuts after the fact, this is seen as unfair.

It's your perception that the good climber is causing harm to the poorer.

How about this scenario: if the coconuts are equally retrieved, both climbers will have their lives threatened. Is it unfair for one of the climbers to take from the other at that point, when simply by having an equal share they are both threatening the life of each other?

Of course you probably have a difference of opinion from your previous position in this case, though I'm not sure how you'll sort it out.

I don't believe there's any inherent right of the poor climber to demand something from the good one. I think he has the right to exist and compete for the same coconuts, and that wherever that lands him is fair.

I have a big heart, and I'd hope that any better climber would share his coconuts, but I don't believe they should ever be taken from him or that he should be prohibited from climbing just because he's good at it, etc.

> It's your perception that the good climber is causing harm to the poorer.

pretty sure causing someone to starve is, indeed, harming them.

How about a third scenario that may be closer to the situation we have been facing in the US:

Imagine you are stranded on a desert island with 3 other persons and the only source of food is coconuts for which you must climb trees. The 4 persons are you (adult 1), who is worse at climbing trees than your fellow cast away (adult 2). There is also child 1 who adult 1 is responsible for, and child 2 who adult 2 is responsible for. Both child 1 and child 2 have zero experience climbing trees and must depend on the adults. Adult 2 climbs the trees before you, takes most of the coconuts, and hoards them. When you ask him for some coconuts for both you and your child, he says you should have practiced climbing more as a child.

Whether his actions are considered fair or unfair, should your child have to suffer for your own lack of tree climbing experience?

Additionally, if you look at this in terms of evolution, is it okay for adult 1 and child 1 to die off, while adult 2 and child 2 to prosper, effectively moving towards a less diverse population?

Teachers get paid basically nothing to do their work. So should no one be a teacher just because it pays poorly? Absolutely not.

I don't know about you but I'd hate to live in a world with no artists. I agree with you that she should know what she's getting into, which is why everyone I know has always told me that if you want to be an artist, you've got to love what you do (FYI, I'm not an artist). But just because our society doesn't reward artists monetarily doesn't mean artists don't have a right to complain about it. Sometimes the free market doesn't solve everything.

> I don't know about you but I'd hate to live in a world with no artists.

There's no risk of that since they're willing to work for next to nothing. It not a good choice as a profession, but otherwise it is quite an attractive occupation.

There are plenty of people willing to work for close to nothing. That doesn't mean it's right to pay them close to nothing.

The idea that so many choose it implies they aren't being paid "close to nothing."

Probably they are being "paid" something other than money, and that's what's so attractive to them.

I don't know about you but I'd hate to live in a world with no artists.

Prices are determined at the margin, not in aggregate. The question is whether you'd hate to live in a world with one fewer artist. I think we could manage.

I.e. if the first 10 artists in the world increase wealth by $100k/each, and the 11'th artist increases wealth by $10k (due to diminishing marginal returns), then the price of an artist will be $10k. That's how much society loses if one artist quits. The remaining $90k x 10 artists is captured by society as consumer surplus.

(This is true of all professions with competitive employment markets.)

Do you really believe that the job market for artists satisfies all of the underlying assumptions of the economic model you are using?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition#Basic_struc...

Infinite buyers and sellers (infinite patrons)? Homogenous products (all artists are fungible)? No barriers to entry and exit (anyone can stop what they are doing and become an artist, tomorrow)?

Two semesters of undergraduate economics can make you very confident in things that are utterly wrong, if you're not careful.

My friend, who is a teacher, makes over $25/hour, which is generally considered a pretty good wage.

Certainly it's not "basically nothing."

> Yet they're the same people who scoff at and disparage people studying finance or computer science

This times 1000. For an example of this attitude, just go through artist-turned-hacker Maciej Ceglowski's [1] essay "Dabblers and Blowhards" (http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm), with the last line:

"But you, sir, are no painter. And while you hack away at your terminal, or ride your homemade Segway, we painters and musicians are going to be right over here with all the wine, hash, and hot chicks."

Make no mistake, I personally think Maciej is without an ounce of malice, and often writes tongue firmly in cheek. Yet the attitude he displays in this essay does exist in reality in a lot of liberal arts majors, like the author of this piece. I'm never sure whether to be angry, or just amused at the airs of people like her who have never had to deal with actual, grinding poverty, and expect the world to fall into their laps.

[1] Ceglowski (@baconmeteor) is the founder of Pinboard.

Luckily, nobody here scoffs at liberal arts students!

Unfortunately your comment is entirely irrelevant, because neither you nor your parent seem to have read the article. Get off your hobby horse.

Did you really come away from that article thinking that the author expected the world to fall into her lap? She's an artist who has worked hard for her success but is humble about it. She uses her own experiences as an example to talk about social problems, unfairness and entitlement. How is that expecting the world to fall into her lap? Why should someone have to experience grinding poverty before it becomes reasonable to discuss the attitudes of the very wealthy? Do the very wealthy have to experience grinding poverty before we take their opinions seriously? Because last time I checked, money was still power.

It's awfully hard to discern a point in this rambling comment.

But I'm not sure what the commenter expects. They and other HN commenters constantly complain about "liberal arts students against the 1%", but they're the ones who chose to go into a field which the market rewards for poor and ethically questionable work.

Yet they're the same people who scoff at and disparage people who achieved financial success in a much more challenging business. The author claims her success was because of privilege, not because of choices she made or didn't make.

Ultimately, we have to confront the fact that not everyone can be a tech slave. It's easy to hire "app" programmers, so if you choose to study that, it may be because it's a gravy train, not because it's your choice. Welcome to the free market.

> It's easy to hire "app" programmers, so if you choose to study that, it may be because it's a gravy train, not because it's your choice.

> if you choose...it's [not] your choice

How could it be any more your choice, when you literally put the decision in the same sentence?

Molly Crabapple, the writer of the column, is an accomplished artist and writer and has probably made more money in her career than most programmers her age. I'd say there is plenty of room in the world for artists like her.

"Artists like her" - aka extremely talented (and attractive) ones. Talent and/or good looks will usually make room for you in any field. That said, why the fuck not do art if that's what you want to do? It would be stupid to go 100k into debt for it, but better the world has happy, talented artists than bad, unhappy programmers.

You do realize she is doing likely doing very well in the free market? CS is lucrative at the moment but than can and probably will change soon.

Why do you think that will change? I'm expecting the CS market to be doing well for at least a decade (unless there's some kind of apocalypse).

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