Disclosure: I helped organize this event at Cooper Union in NYC.
For those interested, Jeff Atwood (Stack Overflow/Discourse/Coding Horror) and Alexander Vindman (former NSC official) will be discussing the future of the American Dream. They'll explore how we might bridge our current divisiveness, which I'd say has been accelerated by technology.
The conversation happens in Cooper Union's historic Great Hall, where Lincoln delivered his "Right Makes Might" speech in 1860. They'll address what core values unify Americans today, how to rebuild a collective sense of purpose, and approaches to economic mobility in an era of inequality.
It's a free event on March 20th, but registration on EventBrite is required for in-person attendance (first-come-first-served).
Is Jeff Atwood among the group of people who can speak with insight on how to "bridge our current divisiveness"? The whole reason he's a public figure is from his blog posts that include a bunch of deliberately placed attitude and bombast of the sort that turns a lot of people away but is selected for anyway because it gets just as many (or more) followers, and attention is only additive.
"The whole reason he's a public figure is from his blog posts that include a bunch of deliberately placed attitude and bombast of the sort that turns a lot of people away but is selected for anyway because it gets just as many (or more) followers, and attention is only additive."
This is not a defensible statement *based on my writing*. Give it a shot, if you think you can pull it off. I'd like to see some real citations here rather than broad, unsupported generalizations.
Now try *that same statement against DHH's writing* -- what you said is exactly correct.
> This is not a defensible statement based on my writing.
The writing is all there is; the entire basis for the remarks is the obnoxiously cocky posts confidently published to the Coding Horror blog. (Or, I dunno, maybe things changed and that's no longer the case; I started ignoring everything published there 10+ years ago.)
> Now try that same statement against DHH's writing
Try as you might, you're not going to convince me to give enough of a shit about going off and familiarizing myself with whatever you're referring to all for the sole purpose of being able to figure out who is the biggest blowhard.
I can't make it, but I'd be interested in a summary of the event afterwards.
> How do you make long-term structural change that creates opportunity for everyone? It is an incredibly complex problem. But if we focus our efforts in a particular area, I believe we can change a lot of things in this country. Maybe not everything, but something foundational to the next part of our history as a country: how to move beyond individual generosity and toward systems that create security, dignity, and possibility for all.
In general, if you're talking equal opportunity, I won't be hard to convince. If you're moving "beyond individual generosity" to a system which forces others to be "generous" (via taxation) in order to achieve equality of outcomes, I will be very hard to convince.
The notion of "individual generosity" presupposes that each individual is morally entitled to dispose, as the individual sees fit, of the assets that the individual happens to control, whether in consequence of the individual's efforts, membership in the Lucky Sperm Club, a good divorce settlement, or whatever. As Elizabeth Warren said back in 2011, that disregards all the other factors that went into the individual's coming into control of those assets. [0]
It's reminiscent of what NY Times lead economic correspondent Binyamin Appelbaum said in The Economists' Hour about Milton Friedman, the famed free-market evangelist: Friedman celebrated drivers but took roads for granted.
I’m curious what the is would look like to you, I mean everything in degrees, because one could argue something like billionaires can afford to fly everywhere they want, and taxation for highways is used to provide equality of <transportation> outcome.
So are you arguing taxation is theft and we should abolish the IRS and let private organizations fund through donations fund everything, or are you just on a different area of the continuum than I am.
No, I have no issue with tax-funded police, firemen and roads; nor with equal protection under the law, or equal civil rights for all citizens :-)
But if you start to talk about "moving beyond individual generosity" I start to get the sense that you want to force me to be part of a TBD "collective generosity".
If we let private organizations fund everything, who enforces the contracts that use of anything will require? Does ever organization require its own police force or militia? I'm confused.
I’m trying to understand how you took that message from this. The best I can figure, maybe the allusion to Col. Vindman’s bravery sounds a little like it’s referring to his early-career sacrifices in the Iraq war?
I think Jeff may have been referring to the circumstances of Vindman’s dismissal: namely, in retaliation for reporting up the chain (then testifying honestly) near the end of Trump’s first term when Trump held up Congressionally-apportioned aid to Ukraine (in order to extort support for his political allegations against his electoral competitor, as I recall).
…I get the impression that Jeff’s “Stay Gold” program is not especially compatible with that kind of zero-sum, might-makes-right MAGA behavior and ideology.
I wasn't born American so I like to think that I can say that I experienced a version of the American Dream growing up first hand.
I came over with a single parent and our family lived in a single bedroom apartment for years; sometimes 4 sleeping on two beds that were pushed together. Moved around all over the country. But slowly, my mother was able to get higher and higher paying jobs. Eventually able to buy a small, 2 story 1920's (?) suburban Cape Cod for $130k.
That same house now is over $500k while pay hasn't grown proportionally. While I'm living comfortably, I can't see how I could have achieved the same outcome if I were starting the same journey today.
My wife's dad was a janitor and her mother a crossing guard, but they still owned a home. That home is now also north of $500k. My wife has a masters and now makes 6 figures, something her parents never did -- even combined -- but there's no way she could buy that house.
The price of housing, education, and basic needs have all appreciably increased to push many deep into debt just as they hit adulthood.
Today, I think that American Dream is increasingly difficult to fulfill. Much more hostility towards immigrants and the less fortunate, pay has not kept up with inflation, social services are actively in the process of being dismantled, the underlying infrastructure of commerce hasn't seen the investment that we saw in the past (e.g. Eisenhower's Interstate Highways) because of an "anti-spend" mindset (remember the Tea Party?) and special interests (anti-renewables). I put that term "anti-spend" in quotes because we are happy to spend on tax cuts, wars, handouts to certain industries (but social services are seen as "waste"), and grift (e.g. PPP).
In the time I've lived in the US, I have not seen infrastructure make the same leap compared to countries like Japan, China, SK, or even my tiny home country of Taiwan despite the US being far, far richer. The US just seems to have decided that investing in the public good -- services, infrastructure, basic research is "waste"; that treating her people right is "Communism" or "Socialism". That giving more wealth to the wealthy is more important and just than serving all citizens that produce that wealth.
Is the American Dream dead? I don't know, but it is definitely not as attainable as it was and that's bad news for our next generations. I 100% feel Atwood's sentiment because I feel like I was fortunate enough to benefit from that Dream and I see it fading.
For those interested, Jeff Atwood (Stack Overflow/Discourse/Coding Horror) and Alexander Vindman (former NSC official) will be discussing the future of the American Dream. They'll explore how we might bridge our current divisiveness, which I'd say has been accelerated by technology.
The conversation happens in Cooper Union's historic Great Hall, where Lincoln delivered his "Right Makes Might" speech in 1860. They'll address what core values unify Americans today, how to rebuild a collective sense of purpose, and approaches to economic mobility in an era of inequality.
It's a free event on March 20th, but registration on EventBrite is required for in-person attendance (first-come-first-served).