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Comment by Natsu | Hacker News Reader

Not all effort is equal, though. Learning to discern which sorts of effort are more worthwhile is an important life skill.

Toiling away for 16 hour days in a factory with no AC isn't necessarily as valuable to others as working from home on computer problems that have huge impact.

And I say this as someone who has done both of those things personally.

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The issue is how much of that inequality derives from things inside versus outside our control. Many (most?) people who labor in a factory for 16 hours a day don't choose to do it rather writing code for an equal length of time for much higher pay. To the extent that the lack of choice derives from circumstances that a person didn't choose as an adult, that is unfair. It might be inevitable, but its unfair.

It's not as if I chose to do one when I had opportunity to do the other. The reverse would be far more accurate, that I chose to do what I did for lack of other opportunities at the time.

And yet, oddly enough, doing the one helped me get the other job. Not many come out of a factory job with a letter of commendation from the company president, after all.

I think it is true that we don't all have equal access to opportunity, and that extent I do think it unfair. My solution to that is to use my advantages to create more opportunities for those who lack the same and I have done this where I was able.

>>To the extent that the lack of choice derives from circumstances that a person didn't choose as an adult, that is unfair. It might be inevitable, but its unfair.

Again, its not. Unless you are stuck in a war zone or in some remote corner of Africa.

Most people in developed and developing nations today have the freedom to make decisions that decide how they are going live their lives. For centuries we've fought and asked for these rights, Now we have them. The fact is most people have fewer reasons to blame for their failures these days. Sooner or later you have to face the fact, you are what you are because of your decisions.

Even the person who works 16 hours at a factory has a choice. It might be a difficult choice, but the person still has some remote chance. The question is do you want to the same work another 15 years from now, or can you do something in your spare time and change that.

There are always going to be some people in that factory who won't be doing the same job 15 years from now, and there are always going to be people who will the same job 15 years from now.

> Even the person who works 16 hours at a factory has a choice. It might be a difficult choice, but the person still has some remote chance. The question is do you want to the same work another 15 years from now, or can you do something in your spare time and change that.

What spare time? Have you tried laboring for long periods of time in very unpleasant conditions? The majority of humanity is engaged in a daily struggle for survival (in fact, for most of them our original state as hunter-gatherers would probably be an improvement). For the majority this condition is not a choice, but mostly a circumstance of the birth lottery.

Eh, even at that work load, you do end up with some spare time and, in developed countries at least, vacation time.

I actually ended up using all of my vacation time to take a class that helped me churn out some projects that really impressed them on my interview for a much better job.

> It might be inevitable, but its unfair.

If it is inevitable but unfair then fairness is not a relevant consideration. Nothing can be done to make a situation more fair if it is inevitable.

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