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> A few months ago, a startup developer friend said to me "I don't understand why poor kids, ghetto kids, don't do startups to get out of poverty."

I've got just about zero tolerance left for people who don't acknowledge their privilege.




But they do. Let me explain. I grew up in a barrio, which is a latin ghetto. Junked cars in front lawns, domestic disturbances every night, shootings, drugs, all of that stuff. Every kid in there made money by pure hustle. There were no jobs available for any of us. Some kids cut hair (then went on to become barbers), others worked on cars, but most sold drugs. There were startups, but all were of the illegal variety. No one had any type of business permit, and almost everybody sold illegal substances (including alcohol).

Some people did make it out of poverty and went on to live productive lives. Others, the ones that sold drugs, either ended up being junkies, dead, jailed, or just disappeared. This due to the type of business they got into. I'm sure that had these kids gone into real businesses like mowing lawns, painting houses, working at a farm, selling eggs, or anything positive, they would be good productive people.

I was lucky. At age 9 I started selling candy. Then I joined Amway at age 14. Then I opened up my first (illegal) auto shop some years after. Why always had the option of selling drugs, but it just wasn't attractive as a business. For every sale I would make about a dollar. If I made 30 sales in a day (given the competition from other dealers), then I would be putting myself at risk for $210 week (you worked 7 days a week). Not worth it. I did not make that much selling candy, but at least I was not getting shot at. And with Amway, made twice as that much by selling soap.

Why did I make it out and not others? I was lucky. My parents were professionals, the only ones in the whole barrio. The other kid's parents were not. They also had to incur into dealing drugs, or other illegal activities. The issue is that these people did not do this because they wanted, they did so because they had no other option. Dealing drugs was the only job they could get, much less do. So the kids were grandfathered into selling drugs, too.

Can poor kids do startups to get out of poverty? Absolutely. But they need to have the right information to do so. Their parents need to have legal jobs available. But not fast food jobs, but real stuff. Construction workers, electricians, mechanics, etc. Those jobs are gone these days.

I'm just lucky to be a software engineer. My best friend? In jail.


Those jobs are gone these days.

I grew up mostly in an upper middle class neighborhood, but for high school, we were bussed to a school in a more lower class area. There were a lot more trailer parks in the area and the auto body program at my high school was pretty popular. Just last week I was driving through that area and saw business after business with signs outside looking to hire CNC machinists, HVAC installers, etc. Those skilled jobs aren't gone. They're getting harder and harder to fill. I don't think my high school even offers auto body classes any more, but there are two college-track magnet programs there.


Yes, you point another issue. In high school, I had the option to learn about other subjects aside from the standard math, English, Spanish, and science. There was a program that taught students about business (and had them run one from their classroom), one for music (which had them build a band), and wood shop (which had people building furniture). All of those programs are gone these days. All of them. Why? Budget cuts. But here is the real impact of such programs: All of the older people in the barrio that did not sell drugs, and were mechanics or construction workers, had learned their trade in school. This generation does not have that anymore.


Exactly, and no matter how desperate businesses claim to be for skilled staff they're hardly going to start training them up themselves either. On-the-job training is dead or dying basically everywhere.


Which is a pity, because I know a lot of talented people who are just dying to get an opportunity to learn on the job. Not college trained, or even really bright, but talented, and willing to learn.


Reminds me of a 60 minute segment that talked about the demand fro skilled labor and how they couldn't find anyone qualified. Some companies are starting to bring back on the job training.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57547101/employers-can...


They're getting harder and harder to fill because they don't pay anything anymore.

A friend of mine quit his apprenticeship as a machinist because he can make more money doing phone tech support for a cable company.


More money than an apprentice machinist or more money than a professional? I would guess the former, which is a pity.


His claim was more than a professional. Apparently going rate for a CNC mill operator is something like $14/hr.

Maybe my friend is full of it (and believe me, I gave him a TON of flak for quitting).


Interesting. My only experience is dealing with fabrication for motorcycle parts. Custom CNC fabricated parts are quite expensive, and hourly rates match that for repair work ($80-120 depending on locality)

Generally these are experienced pro's though, so guessing you gotta start at the bottom and work up.

But that's where I say pity, thought I don't know your friend's circumstances, and certainly if he needs the money now then it's the right choice. But so many just choose the quick, easy money now, and as a result the skilled trades in general are a dying art.


That's about right for a new operator. Though they do make more with time, due to how difficult is to find good ones.


Machinists make a good living. How long was his apprenticeship?


he or she should stick it out. a machinist is a good job, especially if you can do the trad and the cnc.


I'm a middle class guy but for whatever reasons for the past 20 years or so I've lived largely in poorer communities. It's not some charity thing either. I just like to save money. And this dude is right, drug dealers don't make much money. They really lack options, like most people in their situation of being poor, minority, and young. The jobs like mowing lawns barely exist (often because there aren't many lawns). They sell drugs mainly because wealthier people are willing to drive into the area to buy drugs. The liquor stores even sell things like nickel bags and smoking gear. Gangs offer credit. The product kind of sells itself, the same way that laptops used to sell themselves, or that big screen tvs used to. When I looked like a dirtbag, people always asked me where to buy drugs. Middle class college kids were the ones asking. I usually didn't know. (I wish people would come up to me and ask to write little utilities for Unix.)

One other thing I notice, too - there's just a ton of stress, and nothing harms learning like stress. I once shared an office in a gangland type area, and it was impossible to work at night because the gunfire and helicopters really stopped any flow of ideas.


The other problem that I've noticed is a lack of emphasis on saving. I lived in a lot of poor neighborhoods as well and worked a lot of entry level jobs. I remember working at a catering job making $9/hour that was abusing the catering regulations to get the workers to work 60-70 hour weeks without overtime pay. (It was a shady but legal loophole) I loved it because I had just come out of a bad situation and had some debt to pay off. I worked there for about 9 months, saving $4000 which paid off all my credit cards and a loan I had taken to get myself out of a bad situation. Then I moved on. I knew a lot of people who had been there for years, working that punishing schedule and had saved nothing, in fact they were shocked that you could save money. They spent most of it on clothes, alchohol, and drugs. I feel like the main thing that is lacking in schools is a realistic money management course that teaches people how to manage their expenses and savings.


Saving is usually motivated by having a need to save money. If you have some goals, you'll save for them. Sometimes, you need role models who show you how to save. I was fortunate and had one parent who was a great saver, and later in life, one friend who was even more into saving. Both people were poorer than I, so I know how to do it. (In fact, they are still poorer, but know how to save money. Saving isn't the path to wealth. It mainly gets you some financial breathing room, and the ability to take risks.)


Most people can't save. The poorer you are the more expensive things get. Food costs have doubled. So has fuel, which in turn increases utilities. They barely scrape by.


It's circular. You drink because you're depressed because you're poor because you spend all your money on booze. Yes food is expensive, but you can buy a bag of rice and a bag of onions and a bag of potatoes, and eat decent meals of stir fried rice and onions, baked potatoes, onion soup, etc for far less than mcdonalds. Takes almost no time to prepare too. People just don't realize it. That's where targeted education would be really helpful.


I don't think that's a fair characterization. Most of the teetotalers and very light drinkers I've met in my life are or were working class or poor people. I think middle class people drink more than poor people. If you go to a party with poor people, there's hardly any alcohol at all. When you go to a party with middle class people, there's a little keg of some craft brew and a few bottles of liquor.

(In fact, I think the fact I don't drink has actually harmed my career, because I don't really socialize as much as I used to. My SO hates alcohol. I like it, but can't partake.)

The main reason why poor people are poor is because they make like $8.50 an hour and no benefits. Also, grocery store stats refute your assertion about foods. The bag-it-yourself stores sell more per customer than the mainstream supermarkets.


It may be different where you're from, but I'm from NS Canada in GDP/capita the second lowest in Canada with the lowest PEI. Alcohol aside, people spend their money on luxuries rather than saving it. Which is just fine as a personal choice, but when it's a societal trend that the lower class are going in to debt or not saving in order to buy luxuries I would say there are some gaps in education. I lived on minimum wage for years and saved large amounts in little time while watching people making more than me living paycheck to paycheck struggling simply because they didn't know how to manage their expenses.


Maybe the situation is different in Canada. I've been there only a couple times, and it seemed cleaner and wealthier. I'm in an area of L.A. where a lot of families cram into 1 bedroom apartments.


Thanks for sharing this.

There's a quote I remember from somewhere about this that was something along the lines of "When you give someone two bad options, don't be surprised when they take one."


Do kids in the Barrios these days have access to Android phones?

It would be good if at least some of them can get to information and bootstrap some education / skillset from there.


yes. metro pcs, virgin mobile, and boost mobile have no-contract $40 a month unlimited and $50 android phones. also, people do have internet and computers. it's around $15 or $20 a month, and you can usually share with a neighbor via wifi. the real issue is that parents don't always see the value of the internet because they themselves don't use it.

they're like the masses of people who got interested in the internet after it was on tv all the time and advertised. (which includes people of all classes of course)

they didn't get exposure from college, like i did, or exposure from work, like many office workers and management did. they got it from tv, and see it as a complement to tv or cable tv (which many, many poor people don't have).

so right off the bat, they don't see internet as more important than television or video games or other things, when it's probably the most important thing in telecommunications in the past century.

now, that said, there's a lot of working class computer users out there. in fact, when it comes to socializing online, i think the working class have been doing it more than anyone else for the past 10 or 15 years, because hands down, the internet is the cheapest way to socialize and meet people. i don't know for sure, but i suspect it's been a very important part of socializing for all the brainy kids in middle and high school.

look at the people being busted for being in Anonymous. it's a mix of classes. they're not all rich kids like Aaron Swartz (RIP).

that kind of leads me into some things that the rich and middle class can do to help the poor. i think the best thing ever has been free and open source software, especially linux, but the whole culture of giving it away, making sources available, and giving away free documentation. i've learned a ton this way, and meet people who have modest resources who are learning programming. a lot of sysadmin jobs are held by people who were working class, too. it's huge on so many levels.

another, which I've done, is just fix up old computers and give them away. i'm sure we all do this. just set them up with xubuntu and open office or something similar. maybe buy some ram. maybe show them how to repair it.

share your wifi password, or go open.

repairing computers for free or cheap helps too, but i'd say only if they really can't afford it. if they can, they should just hire one of the local shops.

Microsoft has done a lot towards making MS stuff cheap or free, and giving away hardware, for people in need or for nonprofits. I think that's helped a lot. FOSS can't really do the same, in the same way, but it's going to get there soon with open hardware.

i think app stores are good. they lower software costs for consumers, and reduce the risks for capitalizing software development. i think the ubuntu software center is a good thing and supporting that by buying and developing for it will help.

i wish i had studied spanish. it would be easier to organize some kind of computer network across buildings. of course, this violates contracts -- so forming an ISP that would allow customers to resell internet links would be a really useful thing for poor communities. also, fighting for legislation to protect this kind of peering service would be good.

facebook's new PAC looks like it won't help working class entry level IT folks, because it will fight to boost H1B. they're also going to push for charters and, probably, reforms to replace classes with online classes. so organizing against that within communities could be good.

I think library-based hackerspaces are also a good thing. Fight to fund those.


I've got just about zero tolerance left for people who don't view other people as people, instead of embodiments of their socioeconomic-racial-gender status.

A person is not their balance sheet, their skin color, or their preferred type of partner.

The truth is that--barring sheer crazy--anyone would play the cards dealt to them as well as they can muster.

This "Check your privilege" stuff, once a useful exercise in introspection, appears to have become another threadbare excuse for real thought and critique. What a fucking bore.


False dichotomy. Paying attention to socioeconomic-racial-gender status doesn't mean you're not paying attention to individual variation also.


70% chance angersock is a white male.


See, the toxicity of this is that, were the facts in support of your obvservation, it would cause many to completely ignore whatever I'd said as "typical white male privileged bullshit."

Don't you understand how much damage that type of thinking does, and how it's as bad as the progress we've been trying to make against, for example, dismissing a woman's opinions out of hand because they're a woman's?

Don't turn try to turn back the clock on equality, especially in a medium where ideas actually can stand on their own merits (or lack thereof).


I find that white people complain the most about racial categorizations... but also talk about racial categorizations the most.

And who made up the categories, and laws that discriminated based on categories, and who still holds the power to use those categories. It's largely white people.

It seems to me like denial, hypocrisy, or both.

(I say that as a person of color. Being Asian, I am a relatively privileged color, too, compared to black and brown people. That's just a fact. At the individual level, though, I know plenty of black and brown people who not only have more privilege than I, but grew up with more than I did and have networks that are more powerful than mine.)


> I don't understand why poor kids, ghetto kids, don't do startups to get out of poverty.

Actually, poor kids start more startups that rich kids but access to money and network is very limited. I do think that "Y Combinator for kids-from-poor-families" might be even more successful that Y Combinator.


Correction: zero tolerance for a system they've spent their entire lives within that never taught them the right way to think about their position in society.


the right way to think about their position in society.

What is "the right way" for a person to think about his position in society? Is there only one correct point of view?


Good point, but teaching them that "your position in society" is a thing that should be thought about and has a huge effect on your worldview is step one.


That's true - it's good that people don't take their life situation for granted.

What concerns me is when it's presented as a predigested, one size fits all "conclusion" - e.g. "Straight White males are oppressors, females and minorities are oppressed, no exceptions ever".


Of course not, the important thing is that they understand and respect the complexity of the situation they live in, and understand how to think about it—not what to think about it, but how.


Maybe. This is a tough point. The 'system' obviously sucks but I don't want to skirt personal responsibility.

It's the upper-middle class straight white cisgendered male's fault if he doesn't take the time to learn about his privilege. He has the resources, but chooses to ignore it.

(Note: I'm not saying the person from the article necessarily fits this description; I'm speaking more generally)


At the extreme risk of starting a flame war, why do you seem to posit that he should do that as a moral obligation?

(I'm reading that you posit that, perhaps I misinterpreted)

If I read that correctly, under what strictures do you interpret reading about the idea of privilege (noting that this word in and of itself has contested and differing meanings) as a moral obligation?


> "why do you seem to posit that he should do that as a moral obligation?"

Because otherwise they become tyrants.

We're talking about the most powerful, most influential demographic in a particular place, whether that's Western European in the US or Han-Chinese in China. There is a dominant group that gets a tremendous amount of decision-making power, and those in power have the moral obligation of having perspective.

Because without understanding and perspective you don't just get silliness, you get real harm - "The poor are poor because they're too lazy to work" is a silly thought, until it influences policy, and then it becomes tragedy.

There is absolutely a moral obligation to seek perspective (cast another, understand one's own privilege), and this goes double if your race/religion/etc grants you power over others.


> those in power have the moral obligation of having perspective.

> There is absolutely a moral obligation to seek perspective (cast another, understand one's own privilege), and this goes double if your race/religion/etc grants you power over others.

Again, I ask why[1]. What precisely gives that moral imperative? My readings in history do not suggest to me that this ethical stricture has been a constant throughout history.

[1] 5 Whys, Question Everything, etc. Don't take it personally please.


> "My readings in history do not suggest to me that this ethical stricture has been a constant throughout history."

Does it have to be? Slavery was the social norm for thousands of years and has only been widely considered unacceptable for perhaps <5% of recorded civilization.

Ditto race equality - we consider it a moral imperative today, but for thousands of years it was not really a thing.

The notion of morality evolves over time - the fact that a moral conclusion is new does not in and of itself make it less, well, imperative.

But there's also the flip side - in this case this is something that has been considered a moral imperative in history. The concept that the rulers have a moral obligation to be informed and just is well supported by historical societies.

Back when we gave power to people based on familial relations, we called this the noblesse oblige[1]. The concept was also applied to other figures of power, such as the monarchy. The concept is mixed up with a lot of notions that one might find offensive today (e.g., that the masses are unable to rule themselves and from which derives the obligation and responsibility to rule fairly in their stead).

Nowadays we don't give out power based on family (much), we do it instead based on wealth and many other secondary factors - race and religion being large among them.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige


Very good question. I'm not sure I have a good answer. I haven't though about it in terms of it being a moral obligation.

My intuitive, immediate response is that it has something to do with (most?) privilege being an unfair, oppressive institution: one that is self replicating unless it's actively fought. I'm not sure this actually addresses the question you asked though.


> My intuitive, immediate response is that it has something to do with (most?) privilege being an unfair, oppressive institution: one that is self replicating unless it's actively fought.

You should be careful how you consider this though. We wouldn't hack a tall person's legs off at the knee to force them to be equally as tall as the rest of us, nor do we give geniuses lobotomies to try and equal out intelligence within the population.

It is no one's moral imperative to punish themselves for being placed in a good situation. If life was inherently fair we'd all still be a soup of completely equal unicellular organisms. Our differences and our circumstances conspire to make it so that not everyone has the exact same shot at success, but that's not the worst possible thing that could happen either.

If you want to reduce unfair privilege I would recommend starting by helping those without it, instead of obligating those with it.


> It is no one's moral imperative to punish themselves for being placed in a good situation.

Nobody is arguing this. People that implore others to examine their privilege don't do so to make people feel bad (although this may be a side effect of having a new perspective).

> Our differences and our circumstances conspire to make it so that not everyone has the exact same shot at success, but that's not the worst possible thing that could happen either.

That's the thing, privileged majority groups often enact or re-enforce policy or social attitudes that have the effect of keeping people not in that group from success. The call to examine one's privilege is so that members of the majority group recognize how their position and actions keeps other people from success. Note that by success I do not just mean financial success, but even being alive for members of some groups is a success based on the amount of violence they face.

> If you want to reduce unfair privilege I would recommend starting by helping those without it, instead of obligating those with it.

You cannot simply opt out of privilege. Privilege is just as much about how others view you as the social systems and institutions that back you over other groups of people. Also, people who are suffering from the systems and institutions do not want a hand out, they want to be free to have their own voices and agency, something that is hard to do when privileged groups continue to undermine their attempts at that agency.


People that implore others to examine their privilege don't do so to make people feel bad

And yet you're saying that just by not being (say) transgendered[1] I'm undermining other people's agency. And I can't choose not to. And that it's my fault if I don't think the concept is fully-baked and don't make certain incantations before I speak.

It seems completely transparent to me that this is meant to make anybody that doesn't adopt the terminology out to be a bad person--a sinner in other words. See the root of this thread: cllns has "just about zero tolerance left" for such people. Why would he need to invoke tolerance if it's just a matter of not having the same perspective?

[1] Or fat, vegan, illiterate, astigmatic, etc. The list of things people are apply the term "privilege" to is constantly expanding. Is there truly nothing amiss with the concept?


That's a very impressive strawman you've got there, given that the comment you replied to didn't argue that people should "punish themselves for being placed in a good situation", let alone that they should be brought down to the level of the rest of the population. All cllns was arguing was that people should be aware of their status in society.

Unless, of course, you think that being made aware just how little of what they take for granted is available to others and how unimportant their own skills were is cruel to privileged people? Because if that's the case, fuck you. Seriously.


Try not to hack down at strawmen yourself.

Upon re-reading the commenter I replied to said he was not quite at the point of speaking about it in terms of moral obligation, which I'll admit to having mis-understood.

But even so, I tried very much to phrase my warning as nothing more than that; a warning. It's perilously easy to get caught up in logical loops that take one far away from ethical and moral underpinnings. Nothing I said takes away from the importance of getting to a state in society where persons are completely able to achieve based on their actions and not their inheritance, but that doesn't mean that all such methods of achieveing that end goal are equally ethical. I hope that cllns takes it in the spirit it was intended, instead of as an exercise to bite back against yet another privileged "cis" piece of shit...


Fair enough.

If you want to follow up in depth later on (rather than HN threads), my email is in my profile.


It's the upper-middle class straight white cisgendered male's fault if he doesn't take the time to learn about his privilege. He has the resources, but chooses to ignore it.

What's in it for him?


Growth, and positive interaction with the rest of the world?


Balance that against the positive ego effects of thinking that you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps and built the log cabin you were born in.

Parent post was right for a good number of people.


And the rest of us are well within our rights to not tolerate those people.


Is such growth and positive interaction only possible if a White / Cis / Male submits himself to this particular narrative, or is there room to debate and disagree?


Absolutely there is space for debate and disagreement - the problem is generally in getting acknowledgement that there are other view points with which to engage.

A considered opinion deserves respect if not agreement. One formed on assumption, in a vacuum is more difficult to accept.


Interestingly people who are upper middle class and devote time and energy to the cause of the poor are often disparaged for that.

Terms like "champagne socialist" or "bleeding heart liberal" are invoked.

Perhaps it is seen as patronising to the poor because it makes the implication that the poor need the help of upper middle class white people to help them out of their problems?


Well, I would argue that during the period where there is a large disparity, that the poor need the help of those most able to provide the help (i.e. those who are already well-off). At the very least they need those they are "competing" against to ease up, otherwise the imbalance ends up locked in.

That doesn't mean "upper middle class white" necessarily, but it does disproportionately seem to affect that group (because otherwise we wouldn't be talking so much about gender, class, race, etc. privilege)


People who use the terms "champagne socialist" or "bleeding heart liberal" as insults are fellow rich people who feel socially threatened by the people they insult.


Correction: zero tolerance for parents who raise children and do not teach them the right way to think about their position in society.

Not that I necessarily agree with my correction, but I found yours to be a bit... politically myopic.


> "I don't understand why poor kids, ghetto kids, don't do startups to get out of poverty."

This is mostly a cliché

The short answer is: because they have more important troubles about to think. Poverty, lack of opportunities, drugs, drunks or the ocassional abuse of members of your family or even from the police.

But the "maybe not so obvious" answer is that in fact young inmigrants are one of the people more focused, and more pressed by family and environment, into the creation of small business in your new country. And a lot are sucessful doing this. America is, probably, one of the countries with more cases of "the small grandpa's store". Now we all live in the supermarketzoic age, so things are very different currently.




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