The article's essence: "All you pesky, silly little humanities students, go do something useful like we CS people/engineers. No really. Build an app. Become an entrepeneur. Fail horribly, sleep on somebody's couch, oh wait. Have instant success. Become rich. Be the new Zuckerberg. Or work in a bar. Forever. Serving drinks to us. Silly, silly non-engineers."
We've had dozens of these articles recently, and they all garner the exact same responses, lots of people here (rather unsurprisingly) agree (→ know your market), some disagree, both camps supply their position by dabbling in dazzling amounts of anecdotal evidence. Voilá, HN front page + discussion in a nut shell...
Alternative reading: Y'all just need to learn to code, so you too can be instantly successful...
Bonus points: Guess which camp I belong to, bash me for my post solely because of this, ignoring the HN critique
I was cynical when I clicked on the link-bait title, but you're totally mischaracterizing what the article said. It's like you didn't read it.
The article doesn't advise learning to program to build an app so you can be useful like CS people.
His point is that you need to do something that others value. You need to adapt to the markets out there and learn how to sell rather than think you can go make a great living weaving baskets from bubblegum wrappers because that's "your passion".
For a given set of goals, I think that his advice is spot on. If I were to quibble with the article it's in the assumption that everyone has his goals.
Maybe I don't want to make a bunch of money. Maybe I'm happy barely getting by as long as I can play the pan flute to people wandering through the New Orleans French Quarter.
Then again, this is an article up-voted on HN, a site dedicated to entrepreneurs.
In short, I went on thus for a long time (I may say it without boasting), faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still less accepted, still less paid and settled. However, I have not set my heart on that.
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off- that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed- he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy.
Thoreau goes on to say that he wove a basket of his own, but, rather than making it worth others' while to buy them, forgo the necessity of selling them altogether.
My problem is that the article makes great sweeping points, pretending to talk about some sort of general truth while in fact catering to a very specific readership, HN possibly being exactly that.
I am aware what HN is, what bothers me is the generalising tendency apparent here without actually being self-reflecting enough to also see that not everybody's world works like that. I find this to be observable in both the article and many comments.
catering to a very specific readership, HN possibly being exactly that
So your point is that this article is way too entrepreneurial and HackerNewsy and you don't like that?
I don't understand the need to participate in a community based upon a set of ideas and then rail against them as though everyone else here made a mistake in the URL line of their browsers.
I love entrepreneurialism. I love startups and the startup culture. I love the idea that you can free yourself of the corporate world by adopting the right attitudes, honing the right skill sets, and working really hard. I feed off the energy of HN and enjoy reading articles about how people succeed, how they fail, and just what other entrepreneurs are up to.
I grant you that the article assumes some wants and the way some people work. However, I believe that the author is reacting to a very present "you can do whatever you want, little snowflake" theme in society.
In reality, I feel that there's a fine balance between finding something you love to do while adapting what you love to something that you can sell and market. But I don't criticize the author, his article, or HN for believing that the pendulum could use a big shift away from the snowflakes of the world.
> So your point is that this article is way too entrepreneurial and HackerNewsy and you don't like that?
I think his point is that the article is hiding a narrow-minded view of the world as general advice.
>I don't understand the need to participate in a community based upon a set of ideas and then rail against them as though everyone else here made a mistake in the URL line of their browsers.
I don't get the point of discussing things only with people who will exactly agree with you.
I don't understand the need to participate in a community based upon a set of ideas and then rail against them as though everyone else here made a mistake in the URL line of their browsers.
> the article makes great sweeping points, pretending to talk about some sort of general truth while in fact catering to a very specific readership
For reference, here are the article's points:
> The market doesn’t care what you love
> You must create value
> You must be adaptable.
> You must learn how to sell
> You must be entrepreneurial
Clearly list your criticisms. The absurdity of your two comments is staggering.
As someone who's reached my 40s and never been particularly concerned with any more financial success than it takes to pay my bills, I wish I had heard more advice like this when I was younger. Because it's still pretty good advice.
You don't have to throw every ounce of effort you have into your career and work harder than everyone else. But you do have to have skills someone wants and put in effort to build a career. How specialized those skills are and how much effort depends on what the job market is like and what your goals are. In any case, no one owes you a job -- but they might give you one if you can demonstrate that you can help them meet their goals.
Whether that's waiting tables or a low level professional job or a "rock star" developer or running your own business empire, those basic principles are still true. And there's nothing wrong with any of those as long as you're happy with the tradeoffs involved.
Your summary has virtually nothing to do with the article's essence. Among other things, the article doesn't state or imply that engineering is superior to other disciplines. Instead, it speaks of creating value, a concept independent of field. Indeed, the author isn't even a programmer—he's a product developer and strategist, and his degree is in marketing (http://www.sean-johnson.com/about/).
No, actually I don't think the article is excluding CS engineers. He just says you have to learn how to sell and be entrepreneurial. If anything, he's addressing those engineers that think making an app is enough to give you success.
Apart from that though, there aren't all that many "other" professions where you can "just" invent something new and go and become an entrepeneur just like that. They have a higher entry barrier, so I do think the article is very much about CS, dismissing everything else just outright from the onset.
> there aren't all that many "other" professions where you can "just" invent something new and go and become an entrepeneur just like that.
The article didn't say to invent something. It said to produce value.
You can see lots of opportunities where that's possible by just going through any reasonably sized town. You may not be able to just start a refinery, but you can sell gas and/or repair cars.
I think the problem is that you focused far too much on the "You must be entrepreneurial" section. I didn't like that section either, and it falls prey to criticisms like your own (I also strongly dislike the "everyone should start their own business" attitude).
The rest of the article was insightful and not too techno-centric... he even points to a non-engineering discipline like nursing as a field with plenty of demand. If anything, the broad takeaway is "try to find something that's enjoyable AND has market demand, and then provide value to that market." He never says the market has to be tech/engineering.
I think you read a lot more into this than I did. Maybe it's because I've been indoctrinated into the silly value-providing member of society camp, but I don't really see how it's possible to disagree with this article.
I mean, if you disagree with the premise that a job should provide value to your employer, then how do you think the job market is supposed to work? What's the opposite? Are you supposed to go find a Job Tree and wait for a Job to fall off so you can support a family?
This makes some sense, but honestly I'm not seeing much new in these endless repetitions of the same debate. It goes back to at least the 1960s and the debate over the "Me generation" [1]. Probably earlier. There's a tension between raising armies of cogs-in-the-machine on the one hand, and beautiful butterflies on the other, and some orthogonal other questions besides.
Some of it also interacts with politics, and I'm not sure I accept all the premises. For example, from my current vantage point in Denmark, society does generally believe that you are entitled to at least a basic living (food/shelter/healthcare), even if not a great one. Then it becomes a question of what you wish to do above that, in both economic and non-economic senses. One presumably wishes to both earn more money than the absolute minimum, but also to contribute to society beyond the absolute minimum; the two desires may or may not be aligned, and there are many paths to doing either/both. In other countries (notably the USA), political views are different on that question. In my own personal opinion I do think it is, in part, "a moral or systematic failure on the part of society" that the situation in the USA is as it is, but that's sort of its own debate (I'm not really anti-market, as I feel they're useful and in any case inevitable, but I don't necessarily think that maket valuation is everything).
You clearly don't work with college-aged students in the United States if you think the material in this essay is old hat. Regardless of what's been written or how often, the vast majority of students entering top universities today are deluded.
The general arguments are that it's worth sacrificing some of the top end to reduce the severity of the bottom end, partly for ethical and partly for economic reasons. The hypothesis is that in successful Western societies, at least, the majority of value is not created by people who are working solely to avoid dying. And therefore there is no great loss if we remove fear of dying from the list of motivators to work.
The hope is that it can be administered in a way such that it will not greatly harm incentives to be successful either, merely dampen the curve by some percentage: so there are still rich and poor people, but the rich people maybe will only be 20x as rich as the poor instead of 200x. It's still much better to be successful than to be on welfare, both in terms of prestige and social standing, and material comfort (you can think of it as an order-preserving nonlinear mapping). And there are some arguments that it may help economically in some cases: by raising the floor of what bad outcomes look like, it becomes more plausible for individuals who don't have a family safety net to take risks.
As for what possible societal benefit, the Scandinavian societies are fairly nice places to live, partly as a result, though making like-for-like comparisons in economics is notoriously difficult. They certainly have lower levels of severe poverty, crime, homelessness, etc. But there are many books arguing for and against these views, so I'm not sure I can convince you in a comment.
Not having a job generally means you won't have health insurance, nor an income, and thus won't have access to non-emergency health care. Recent estimates are that there are about 45,000 excess deaths annually due to lack of health insurance (source: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-find...).
Furthermore, homelessness and malnutrition also increase the death rate. There are lots of homeless and hungry people in the US.
So while you might not immediately die due to being unemployed, as there are a variety of safety nets, being without a job will, statistically decrease your expected lifespan. Food assistance does not prevent people from going hungry. Homeless shelters are packed to the brim, and in some cases quite unsafe. You can't get non-emergency care if you are unemployed and broke, at least until Obamacare kicks in (or if you are covered by Romneycare).
Literally die the hour you lose your job? No. But lose a job and become homeless? Or desperately find another job that barely supports your family and you end up living in poverty in a neighborhood with high crime? Almost every major US city.
I don't think delirium was suggesting someone would keel over and die after N weeks without a job. Rather, not having a job makes paying for healthcare, eating well, owning or renting a home difficult or impossible (these are difficult for many people with jobs!). All of these are significant factors in increasing both life expectancy and quality of life.
While working solely to live longer and live decently doesn't have quite the same ring as working solely to avoid dying, the meaning of his statement seems clear.
The problem with positive rights such as these [1] is that it's difficult to say that someone has a right to something when it may actually be impossible to actually make good on it.
This is part of the difficulty with the USA's current healthcare debate. It's simply impossible to offer to every person, every imaginable medical care. There are not sufficient resources.
So from a philosophical perspective, how can there exist a fundamental right that cannot be fulfilled?
And then from a practical perspective, someone is going to have to decide where to draw a line. Someone will have to decide who will be given what procedures. The effect of this is that, at the very least, our rights (and not just these new positive ones) will be tossed around like political volleyballs. And at the worst, it creates an explicitly class-ful society, where some people are granted privileges that are withheld from others (which is the universal outcome in all Communist nations thus far)
[1] "Positive rights" are those where we say that someone must be given something, as with food, shelter, or healthcare. "Negative rights" are when a person is guaranteed to be free of something, as with freedom of speech (government may not limit speech), freedom from double jeopardy, etc.
Why is it "simply impossible" to provide healthcare for all? I can name many counter examples of countries that can and do. Have you made the calculation based on finite resources in the world and the size of the world population that it's simply impossible? Even if it would be impossible by today's technological standards to provide care to all, that doesn't mean it's true for the future when there might be additional productivity gains, preventing disease etc.
I don't think anyone's arguing that there's a fundamental right to all possible health care, but many people would argue that all have a fundamental right to basic health care, which is absolutely possible to offer to all Americans. In fact, many other countries do it while spending less per capita on health care. Of course, there are hard decisions to be made, but the status quo seems worse to me by a long shot.
My concern here isn't the breadth (who is covered), but the depth (what and how much is covered). That is, regardless of the number of people we're covering -- whether it's everyone, or excluding the poorest 20% who can't afford insurance, it is impossible to cover every conceivable treatment.
Consider, for example: a headache could be a symptom of brain tumor or other problem, the best diagnosis of which would be through an MRI. We'd like to catch these things as early as possible, so we'd like to do MRIs on everyone who is a possible victim. But imagine that every time a patient walks into the doctor's office with a headache, the doctor orders an MRI for him. How long do you think this practice can be sustained for?
The fact is that in a world with scarce resources, we must make decisions about how to allocate those resources. When the field of medical care is controlled by politicians, then politicians will be making those decisions. The questions over who is covered for what maladies with how much treatment becomes a political question.
So you can expect that maladies that cluster on easily-identifiable demographic groups will receive a disproportionate amount of funding. For example, one might expect that because gays may comprise a voting bloc and suffer from HIV more than others, politicians will pander to them for votes by allocating funds for HIV treatment that are out of proportion with the number of sufferers and the severity. By contrast, other maladies -- say, my Crohn's disease, which has weaker demographic ties -- are likely to be relatively overlooked.
And in the end, although the GOP is certainly using hyperbole in referring to "death panels", someone is going to have to make a decision at some point that treating this 90-year-old geezer just isn't going to have the ROI in terms of quality-life-years saved, and that it's not cost effective to continue treatment.
Anyway, my claim is that when the politicians can decide what and how much you're getting of something, it's difficult (in my mind, at least) to call something a "right". What other rights do we have for which the politicians get to make the decision about how much of that right each of us is entitled to?
Firstly, I don't think your hypothetical qualifies as basic health care. I understand your concerns, but they just don't seem to be huge issues in the countries that actually have implemented universal health care, especially compared to the current situation in the US. Getting caught up in the semantics of where your rights start and end (by the way, many rights are regulated by laws created by politicians) is a distraction from the pragmatic approach of looking at expected outcomes.
I don't think your hypothetical qualifies as basic health care.
And there is the problem. Someone has to make this judgment call. It's all a matter of opinion. And it changes over time, there's no single objective answer. Today, "take this Z-pack and keep the wound clean and dry" is a completely ordinary treatment; a century ago it was sci-fi, that wasn't even available to the hyper-rich. When does it cross the lines from experimental to esoteric to mundane?
by the way, many rights are regulated by laws created by politicians
That's only sort of true, at least in the USA. If something is understood to be a right, then those regulations are limited to only what can clear various tests as defined by the courts. Enumerated rights like speech, for example, are protected by a strict scrutiny test; at the other end of the spectrum is the rational basis test.
But in the end, these are actually judged by the courts. In other words, it's ultimately the non-political branch of the government that makes the call.
By contrast, these positive rights are entirely driven by political caprice.
(Caveat: I'm referring to Federal regulation here. It may vary somewhat state-to-state, because of how state Constitutions are designed.)
The line has to be drawn somewhere. Why do we provide police protection to unemployed people? I would think that as a society grows wealthier, it could grow more humane and, like _delirium said, "there is no great loss if we remove fear of dying from the list of motivators to work".
Why do we provide police protection to unemployed people?
Since we provide police protection to unemployed people, should that also mean we provide them ponies? What are the limits of this argument you're attempting to make regarding "providing unemployed people things for free since they get police protection"?
as a society grows wealthier, it could grow more humane
You're assuming that it's humane to teach people to not be self-sufficient. I would argue that the cycle of dependency created by not incentivizing people to get up and go work for a living every day is inhumane. Often, it is done by politicians who benefit from the perpetuation of that cycle for reasons of maintaining their power base.
>Since we provide police protection to unemployed people, should that also mean we provide them ponies? What are the limits of this argument you're attempting to make regarding "providing unemployed people things for free since they get police protection"?
You never answered the question about providing police protection. Instead you changed the subject.
Any system of decision making is arbitrary at some point. "Letting the market decide" is no different, it just absolves society from culpability of life outcomes. In many ways, it's not that different from people who claim things happen because of "God's will."
And one of the benefits of democratic government is that society gets to answer these questions. You can see the very different solutions countries like Denmark and the US have come to (and Denmark has done more for unemployed people than the US has without resorting to giving them ponies).
>You're assuming that it's humane to teach people to not be self-sufficient. I would argue that the cycle of dependency created by not incentivizing people to get up and go work for a living every day is inhumane. Often, it is done by politicians who benefit from the perpetuation of that cycle for reasons of maintaining their power base.
This is a straw man argument. There is incentive for people to get up and go work for a living. Denmark has an unemployment rate is 6%, and their welfare state is far, far more generous than that of the US. I would suggest your anger at unemployment benefits is misdirected.
Sorry, tongue in cheek ... but do you say that you are self-sufficient? You are never using any public transport? Never drive on a street that wasn't built by yourself? Only eat things that you grew yourself. (No, it is not enough to counter with "I'm paying for it/I pay taxes.") First world societies are made up of people that _can't_ no longer be self sufficient.
The normal projected benefit for this kind of social model is that people don't have to work for sustenance. Instead, the whole range of human motivation can become a driving force.
It is assumed that you get more focused, happier and more committed working people, because they can choose their work based on whatever motivation drives them. That could be money, curiosity, laziness, skill, chance etc. It is also assumed that people would be willing to take greater risks, since they can be sure they a) won't become homeless and b) won't starve.
If society provides a safety net for everyone, you don't have to build your own while trying to do all of the above work on top of creating a baseline of security.
Then the children of really rich people should really be an interesting lot, since they have all their needs met plus have plenty of money to do whatever they want, right?
Personally, all the people I know who inherited their money are useless and/or dysfunctional. I'm not saying that none find the motivation to do much with their lives after their needs are met... but to assume that enough of society is going to behave that way to change the way that society works seems to be wishful thinking.
Selection bias. You're specifically selecting for people whose only money is money they inherited; failures, in other words.
There's a lot of children of rich people who are quite successful in their own right. Bill Gates, for example, did not come from a poor home. And the other thing you have to watch out for is reversion to the mean. It's unlikely Gates' children will outdo him.
"Personally, all the people I know who inherited their money are useless and/or dysfunctional."
So you don't know a lot of people who inherit then. That is probably because most of those people do not show off this money and you will never know.
You only see those that show of and why not to say it? what you want to see based on your prejudices.
I have known a lot of people who inherited, some of them are useless or dysfunctional, some of them are really resourceful and know how to make good use of his money. E.g the creator of "Zara" inherit a small clothing store:
http://www.zara.com/
Now is one of the biggest in the world.
Half of the greatest philosophers, mathematicians, physicist of all time came from wealthy families, so they could dedicate time for non-primary necessities, a luxury even today.
Not a fair comparison. Children of really rich people are way more richer than the people living with only what is needed for "basic sustenance" (food/shelter/health).
Hasn't Marxism already failed enough to avoid proposing it as a solution to anything?
Didn't communists in the USSR find that when you give everyone a "right" to have all their basic needs met and when you took away their motivation to work hard to succeed, a lot of people decided not to work or they decided to work at things that the community didn't need?
Then, to make up for the fact that there was no reward incentive model, they had to bring in authoritarian force.
The most insightful criticism of communism that I've ever heard was from a bunch of Romanians I know who grew up in a country under control of the Soviets. When they hear Americans or other Westerners espousing pseudo-communism as a solution to society's problems, they get apoplectic. They can't even begin to grasp why a society that has discovered and nurtured capitalism would turn to empirically failed socioeconomic models.
Seriously, if you're going to want to stand on someone's shoulders to move society forward, why Karl Marx's?
"This argument has several problems. I’ll discuss two of them. The first problem with it is that BIG cannot be accurately characterized as something for nothing. All societies impose many rules on every individual. Consider the discussion of homelessness above. Why can’t homeless people build their own shelter and their own latrine? Why can’t they drink out of a clean river? Why can’t they hunt, gather, or plant and harvest their own food? They cannot do these things because the state has made rules saying they don’t have the right to do these things. The state has imposed rules saying that almost all the resources of the Earth belong to someone else. Those of us who benefit from the rules by which our society distributes ownership of the Earth’s natural resources benefit every day from the state’s interference with the propertyless, and we pay them no compensation. A state without BIG is the state that has something for nothing.
BIG is (and should be seen) not as something for nothing but as the just compensation for all the rules of property and property regulations society imposes on individuals."
I think of it as more closely associated with libertarians than Marxists, though I assume American libertarians have since disowned it. Its most prominent 20th-century advocates were Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, who viewed it as the most economically efficient way to add a basic safety net to an otherwise un-meddled-with market economy. Marxists generally want a more fundamental change in the economy, not a Hayekian economy, not even a Western-Europe-style social market economy (it would be a surprise to Scandinavians, for example, to find out that they were on the USSR side of the Cold War!).
Friedman wasn't a Basic Income proponent. He was a proponent of negative taxation. He was only interested in being consistent with the way we treat income tax and welfare. He felt that the welfare manager's job of determining exactly how to administer relief to recipients was something that couldn't be done properly. He preferred just giving cash based upon income levels on a sliding scale.
Given the abuse of the Welfare system over the half century since Friedman supported negative taxation, I don't doubt that he would have different views and controls for such a system were he alive today.
A lot of ideas sounded good 50 or 100 years ago that we have tried but have failed. It doesn't mean we should keep trying them.
You're mistaken about Friedman not being for Basic Income. In an interview only 12 years ago, Friedman was asked about basic income as an "alternative" to the negative income tax, and Friedman replied that both were the same thing. Friedman wrote, "A basic or citizen's income is not an alternative to a negative income tax. It is simply another way to introduce a negative income tax if it is accompanied with a positive income tax with no exemption. A basic income of a thousand units with a 20 percent rate on earned income is equivalent to a negative income tax with an exemption of five thousand units and a 20 percent rate below and above five thousand units."
Didn't communists in the USSR find that when you give everyone a "right" to have all their basic needs met and when you took away their motivation to work hard to succeed, a lot of people decided not to work or they decided to work at things that the community didn't need?
Not the way that you assume, no. Huge strawman here.
> society does generally believe that you are entitled to at least a basic living (food/shelter/healthcare)
That and the OA "The market doesn’t care what you love" are why I'm very socialist very anti the attitude/mantra "free market solves everything!!!".
Markets should not dictate how our society operates. Society should not value efficiency and profit over all else. Society should provide everyone with minimum food/shelter/health/education and let them choose what else to do. Whether that's make assloads of money as investment banker or play drums at love ins.
The markets do not dictate the fact that we can't afford to just all sit around and be total hippies. It's the universe and ecosystem we live in. The natural state of being is such that if you just sit around and play in the stereotypical sense of the term, you will die. If you can just sit and do nothing, yet still be watered, fed, clothed, sheltered, and medically cared for, it is because someone is working for you to have those things. They don't just spontaneously burst into being. It isn't capitalism creating this reality, it's entropy and evolution.
Despite superficial appearances, we are not rich enough to just let everyone do as they please. Efficiency and profit aren't "just" evil things, they are the lifeblood that allows people to do something other than work. You decry them, yet without them, you have no foundation to stand on to create the world you say you want. Be careful, lest you get what you are asking for.
It is the capitalist system that has created enough wealth to allow you to become detached enough from this reality to even begin to think these thoughts. It is a rare anomaly in human history, not our natural state of being.
There is no "natural state of being" that we know of. Yours is just a prejudiced view of the ones "you have to sustain".
We do have the resources to provide a basic life for everyone (exactly what happens in nordic countries as posted elsewhere). Most people will want to do something with their lifes instead of sitting around, simply because it's boring not to.
There's a long, long road between everyone having food & shelter to the whole humanity fucking around. This reductionism is absurd.
Could you be more specific with respect to 'empirical evidence'?
In Germany, according to the Federal Statistical Office (https://www.destatis.de), more hours are spent for unpaid work (100 billion hours) than for paid work (60 billion hours) (as of 2009). This gap seems to keep increasing.
Also in Germany, numerous (sorry, can't find a citation right now) polls showed that about 80% of the people still want (and will) work more or less fulltime with a BIG. Funny enough, also about 80% of the people think that with a BIG the _other_ people won't continue to do so and instead become (or are already) lazy.
Suffice to say, countries don't last when ever more people rely on relative fewer producers. Greece and Spain tried and went too far: they just ran out of other people's money. Much of Europe is heading the same direction. Every communist country grids to a halt, with socialists tending the same. There is a glorious time of high living on other people's efforts, but greed and weariness win out.
So, you are saying that the majority (or, too many? how much is 'too many') of people in Greece and Spain are lazy? I don't understand 'pick up the tab', but the 'dwindling actual [german] workforce' will also become soon lazy? Why is the german workforce dwindling? Because of some 'lazyness' that's catching german workers?
And then these workers will cease doing unpaid work (which e.g. encompasses stuff like running theater groups, looking after the elderlies, ...)? Of course they'll do, because now they have to work on underpaid jobs to 'prove their worth' to society and get enough food on the table for their families.
It is widespread thinking here in Germany that those on welfare are 'keeping the welfare coming in and acquiring luxuries; they don't seem particularly motivated to work'.
It is 'supported' by numerous shows (for whom? for those on welfare?) on TV.
It is on the other hand clearly refuted by a huge range of studies from various disciplines (economics, social studies).
I guess it would have been nice if you just left your original text here and replied to my comment, pointing out how I misparsed a key point. Apart from that, (a) the Greece story is much more complex than how you try to frame it here (b) Greece and Spain are pretty different and shouldn't be thrown together. I also don't see a connection between communism and what has been discussed here under 'BIG' (I don't know of any communist country, actually -- mind you, 'communism' as it was/is meant!). And what 'socialist' countries grinding to halt do you think of?
As far as I understand most essays/reports from 'rather neutral' (yes, difficult to get an unbiased view) institutions here in Germany usually tell the story that nowadays a small minority lives on people's efforts, and this minority is well above welfare level.
Is there any 'proof' for your starting sentence? (countries don't last when ever more people rely on relative fewer producers). After all, automation levels increase ever more, and thus productivity, too. E.g. the number of people working in farming has shrunken dramatically (at least in first world countries), yet we have overall more than enough to eat ('overall'!). The fact that any country runs out of money is not an argument: Did Spain's productivity suddenly (or maybe also slowly) fell to zero? Did the people in Spain suddenly all lose their ability to work and think?
It was my mistake, not yours. Didn't elaborate the correction because writing essays on an iPod Touch is inconvenient.
The proof is obvious. If consumption exceeds production, necessities run out eventually. "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money." Of course Spain and Greece are more complex than this, but the short version is too many people rely on too few producers; it's not that productivity went to zero, it's that production minus consumption did. The USA is facing the same issue, and driving up hugely infeasible debts to forestall the inevitable.
The point of YCombinator is to work real hard on something clever and create a valuable business and reap the rewards; not motivating if those rewards are taken and given to those who do nothing for them.
If there were only investment bankers and drummers, it would almost make sense to force the bankers to support the drummers (in effect what you are proposing). But the reality is there are mostly people like me, working very hard to support a family, making less than 100k, and I find the idea very hard to swallow that I should be supporting a drummer because they'd rather play than work.
I agree it's fairly complex, but I think there is a lot more than some people working hard, providing value, and making money, while others are just "playing", not providing value and not making money. Ability to capture value is central, and not as easy in all valuable areas as others. One longstanding debate is over scientific research: patents are an attempt to allow it to be monetizable, so the market will ensure that scientists are able to capture some of the value of their discoveries. But they also have a lot of problems, and in addition tend only to allow near/medium-term value to be captured, so don't help much with basic research that will only be commercialized in terms longer than the patent term. That's one specific example, but I don't think entirely unique.
In the case of Denmark, taxes. The idea is that in a Western country with a reasonably high standard of living, it's possible to shift the playing field on which individuals compete so that it takes place between, say [$20k,inf] rather than [$0,inf]. The tradeoff is some percentage taken off the upside in return for a cap on the downside. Seems reasonably fair to me, and I don't mind paying taxes for that safety net to exist. One can make all sorts of arguments about exactly where to set the thresholds, but the American attitude that seems to be a kind of visceral anger baffles me. As someone well into the middle class, I don't feel some kind of moral indignation that I could be making 10% more money if only there wasn't this healthcare and housing for poor people.
Yeah, that's pretty much the point I was getting at - the price for "everyone should get [...]" comes from somewhere, and that somewhere is usually taxes.
What it says is basically that for a BIG of 800 Euro (per month per person) in Germany there are only 20 billion Euro's missing (per year), that's nothing compared to e.g. what's currently spent for banks and other fancy things without blinking an eye (or in other words: our society is already working with such a high productivity that a BIG is already possible) The tax system (and social welfare system) needs to be changed completely, but the level of taxation will stay the same.
As an ex aspiring classical musician, this is a topic near to my heart. I think the article is somewhat besides the point. You can agree with all of it, and yet still believe that you'll succeed in your chosen field because you're better. You think you'll be one of the few, who -- through superior talent, dedication, passion, etc... -- will make it. That's the delusion that kept me going for too long. Not any misconception that there was actually a market for classical flutists.
This. We need to stop sugar-coating things in this world. I'm an adjunct at a major Big Ten school and I see this all time with my students. The mentality is that if I just have enough education, the jobs will be waiting (law students anyone?) -- yet these sames students make little to know effort in school to do anything other than show up (occasionally) and squeak by with their 3.0.
The parents of my generation (born in 1984) have babied and protected their children to a fault. Reality is not always pleasant and life isn't fair--instead of telling our kids they can be anything, we need to give them the tools to choose marketable and worthwhile careers. Unfortunately, we can't all be astronauts and veterinarians.
For the parents of our generation, all you really needed to do was show up and squeak by with a 3.0. School was harder, college was harder, and there were more opportunities.
We need to stop pretending that there is one root cause to this problem. The real cause is the degradation in the quality of the American populace.
> The mentality is that if I just have enough education, the jobs will be waiting (law students anyone?)
Anyone who has this mentality is not following their dreams, they are following the crowd. Crowd-followers rarely do find success. That is what stood out to me in the article. The people who are being written about are not really doing what they want to do, they are doing what is expected of them (go to college and then get a good job).
I wonder if the results would be different if these people struck their own path?
I was just discussing the "do whatever you want" last night. "Want" is not picking a warm-fuzzy-inducing phrase off a list because you feel compelled to make a choice. "Want" is "get the he11 out of my way" compulsive drive which permeates your being.
To many faced with "you can be whatever you want" don't want to do anything; all they "want" is satisfaction of basic urges and amusements. Pressured to attend college or get a job, they perceive "do whatever you want" as picking a marginally satisfying term from a menu, and dutifully showing up for class and assuming a job will somehow follow.
Those who "do whatever you want" are going to do it regardless. I write software for a living because software is my life: I'm going to write software no matter what, I did it compulsively from an early age, and got good enough at it that someone wanted to pay me to do it. Michael Dell and Bill Gates and others dropped out of college because it got in their way of compulsively creating technology businesses. Eminem spends every spare moment writing lyrics, and if he has no paper he'll scrawl them on a wall.
"Be anything you want to be" only works for those who have a want, not for those who don't.
> "Want" is not picking a warm-fuzzy-inducing phrase off a list because you feel compelled to make a choice. "Want" is "get the he11 out of my way" compulsive drive which permeates your being.
To many faced with "you can be whatever you want" don't want to do anything; all they "want" is satisfaction of basic urges and amusements.
I think you're articulating perfectly the "delusions" that those in the "me" generation have.
There's a big difference between "wanting" to be, say, a famous singer because you want adoring fans, and "wanting" to be a famous singer because you truly love music to your very core, will sacrifice anything short of your own life to do it, and because you really have a unique point of view to share.
But, even for those in the latter camp, they have to have at least some sensitivity to their audience, and the market forces that enable them to pursue their passion as a livelihood.
Grrrr. Articles like this really irritate me. While he's sort of right, I think the whole article is somewhat misleading. In my experience, if you're the best at something, you'll probably be able to make a decent living doing it, unless it's underwater basket weaving levels of useless.
What people don't seem to understand is that passion and discipline are interlinked. Like any long-term relationship, your passions are going to have ups and downs, times where you don't want to push forward. Discipline and willpower are the only ways anyone can convert passion into marketable skill.
So yeah, you can do anything you want. You just have to be willing to be disciplined on top of being passionate.
The actual interesting phenomenon here is how this pablum makes it to the frontpage. It shows how philosophically and emotionally juvenile the readership here is. It exposes HN as a frat-like atmosphere full of blowhard meatheads obsessed with trite "Top N Ways to Succeed!"
Your comment is level-headed and insightful and it's a rehash of ancient understandings regarding the value and meaning of work and life. Passion, discipline, prudence temperance justice fortitude patience charity faith and hope.
These "link-bait" discussions were stale thousands of years ago. How very simple-minded the "smart" people here are, for all their delusions of high intellectualism.
Maybe if HNers took more humanities they wouldn't be so fascinated by these shallow articles.
I just want to say that what I've found is that you need a balance. Swing too far in the direction of "Do what you love" and you'll hate the fact that you're poor and can't get a job. Swing too far in the direction of "do what's practical" and you'll have all this money but you'll hate what you have to do to get it.
It's not either/or. The best thing to do is find a career that is exciting or interesting to you in some ways, but also has a good bit of practicality.
In other words, we shouldn't be asking kids "what do you want to be when you grow up?" The question should be -- "What are the top five things you could see yourself doing?" Because of those 5 things maybe 4 of them are impractical, and maybe the lucrative one isn't the top choice, but it's up there.
I don't think the author proves his thesis at all. All he ahows is that being whatever you want to be is going to take effort -- you're going to have to put your heart into it. It's not just a matter of sitting around and waiting for it. Did anyone really think it was? Is anyone really saying, "You can be anything you want to be -- just sit around and wait for it to show up"?
If so, that certainly would be a lie, but that's not the message I hear being said and it's certainly not the message I like to send.
If your dream is, to take a recently topical example, to compete in the Olympics, do you really think you can get there just by sitting in front of the TV thinking "I want to be in the Olympics"? Yeah, you might wind up in the Olympics as an usher :-) But if you want to compete as an athlete, you're going to have to work your ass off. Is there really anyone who doesn't know this???
Or, let's take the teacher example. If you dream of being a great teacher who truly inspires students to learn, you can absolutely have that. Maybe it will take the usual form of teaching in a school, or maybe you'll do something different, like Sal Khan. Either way, if you aspire to be a great teacher and you do the work required to become that, you will be able to do that and get paid for it somehow. There may be too many ordinary teachers, but there are never enough great ones.
That's true in any area.
On the other hand, if all you aspire to is mediocrity, that's not a passion -- it's the absence of a passion. If the only thoughts you have about what you want to be are, "yeah, it would be nice to be X", then I absolutely agree with the author: you're unlikely to get that. But it doesn't mean you can't; it just means you won't.
Most people can never compete in the Olympics. Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt have physical characteristics that you and I do not have. For most Olympic sports this is the case.
Why pretend otherwise? Acknowledging it doesn't mean you and I can't do great things in life. It just means there are particular great things that we will never be able to do, and should not waste our time trying to do.
Have you seen that guy competing with prosthetic legs? He completely blows your argument. He is at the bottom of the scale on "phisically disadvantaged".
Olympic athletes are not super heros. There are the exceptions, but 95% of them are "normal" people who just work really hard. Maybe you can't be the greatest sprinter ever (who knows?) but you could make it to the olympics. The brazilian judo gold winner was just a very poor girl with a wish 4 years ago.
That is a totally spurious argument for a number of reasons. 1) Pistorious is genetically predisposed, regardless, from the knees up, to a higher than average level of fitness, muscle density, metabolic efficiency, etc (all successful athletes are almost by definition, since to be successful, you have to compete with people who do have all the genetic advantages AND the will to win, either alone is not enough) 2) he actually has an advantage over "able-bodied" athletes in that if he twists his ankle he doesn't need to take 6 weeks off training to heal, he just swaps in a new one.
What Pistorius has done is redefine what disabled means. He's not actually disabled at all, he's superhuman, quite literally a cyborg. For the Olympics they slowed him down by reducing the springiness of his, err, springs, so the poor humans could keep up.
As for the others, you could train as hard as Phelps but guess what, it wasn't training that gave him his flipper-like feet or his extraordinary armspan.
I don't want to get in that discussion, the point is the guy had no legs, yet he just competed in the olympics. He was clearly in your "can't do it" group.
And forget Phelps, Bolt, etc. They are one in a billion, and the greatest athletes of all time in their field. What about the other 99%? What's the excuse for them?
> Is anyone really saying, "You can be anything you want to be -- just sit around and wait for it to show up"?
No, but I've met plenty that equate college degree in field that sounds interesting = qualified individual, good job. I used to be one of them. Only with experience do I realize how silly that was. I've also met plenty of friends / people who sling this around: "I got a CS degree; I wanted a programming job but no one would give me one. So now I do X." Many people dont want to seek out problems to solve, they just want checklists placed into their hands; when they don't get one, they falter. That is, imho, why the medical profession is so competitive - get into medical school, and you will be a 6-figure fully employed Physician. Just complete the curriculum.
idk, maybe education can't be entirely (or mostly) separated from on-the-job experience. Shadowing, Internships, etc. should (perhaps) be required for degrees in the first place?
I think "you must provide value" cuts both ways. Don't work for an employer who isn't providing you with value. Recognise that there will always be tradeoffs between your happiness at work and your pay, in both directions; know how much value you place on your own time, or on gaining experience, and act accordingly.
Some trivial professions are grossly overpaid, while many other beneficial professions are grossly underpaid.
I'd like to contest this. Overpaid and underpaid - by what standard?
The standard ought to be how much someone is willing to pay you for your goods or services (whether you're an employee or an entrepreneur).
I think this actually matches people's intuition a lot more than they realize.
Oftentimes, when it seems like someone intuitively ought to make more, it's actually because they are making significantly under what would be a true market rate, because their work is not actually being offered on a free market. Case in point: scientists and educators who work for the government.
The author fails to escape a nihilistic world view, but doesn't notice it. He is mistaking the action for the value of the action.
He speaks of these things too early in his life and I cringe at noticing this fact, being 24 myself.
"You can be anything you want to be" is simply true, because notice how it says "can" and not "will".
"You can be anything you want to be" is an invitation to self-creation and to not shutting the door on any dreams.
When you peel away one layer of life's veils, the next awaits you. Blog authors in general have a hard time adapting their stance and tone to this truth.
As a junior in high school, I think the notion that our generation is entitled or that we simply put in a perfunctory effort and coast through the education system expecting jobs on the other end is entirely fallacious. We're all fairly realistic about educational/occupational complex: work your ass off in high school, go to a college with, and get a degree with, a high ROI (even if it's not what you really want), work your ass off some more, and count yourself lucky if you can get an unpaid internship, much less a salaried job.
I find it absurd that people think students expect to be handed jobs on a silver platter. Everyone accepts that the job market is difficult even if you are talented, and I don't think many truly expect a job just because they have a degree. Most everyone realizes that "following your dreams" is financially untenable.
I think the point of the article was that it has nothing to do with how hard you work, or really even with entitlement. It has to do with finding product-market fit, where you are the product.
His argument was twofold. I think you're right in that he touches on the effects of supply and demand in relation to job availability. However, he also touches on the fact that you need to work hard and "make yourself valuable" in order to find employment. Therein he argues that most people don't put in the necessary effort because they believe that they are owed or are entitled to jobs.
I generally agree with the points of the article. I think a better title would be "What you need to know to be anything you want to be".
The economy is complex enough to provide room in just about any field someone would want to enter--but there is no golden ticket piece of paper that will open the door for you. No one wants to grow up to put plastic on the end of shoelaces, but many are not adaptable so they try to beat a dead horse even though technology has supplanted their job (a bad move as you rightly point out).
My point being, don't swing too far in the direction of "Life sucks, deal with it!" because that's not quite true either.
Yes, I also agree with the advice but not the conclusion.
I suspect the only people in their 30s who can honestly say they spent their entire 20s in full-time pursuit of a career in their passion and got nowhere are PhD graduates. This says more about PhDs and mistaken beliefs surrounding them than anything else.
I feel like I had more options for what to be (i.e. career) than I was aware of, it's just the "how" that was left out.
This is similar to a realization I had a few years ago about my own career and training. I got it in my head that my company should provide training to use the newest technologies for their benefit. It only took a few years of the "it's not broken so don't fix it" culture to realize they don't care how it works, as long as it works. And that I am responsible for my own growth. The cost is using my own free time and resources, the value (aside from learning) is that I get to choose what I will learn, hello JQuery/Ruby/MongoDB/Heroku.
TLDR: Growing on your own is more fun and enriching than being dependent on others.
This may be true. But, if you have a site running with older technology, I wouldn't want to use new technology just for the sake of using new technology.
When something works, why take the risk? Especially if it involves money.
I agree, that is why it's up to the developer to improve their skills if they don't want to keep writing Action classes and POJO JDBC classes for that legacy Struts 1.1 webapp.
Intelligence is key for compensation, money. Unfortunately it is at the eye of the beholder. It is perceived in you by the others with means to pay for your social value.
Even though I know a lot about basketball and have some skills, I can't make my basketball intelligence payoff for me in the NBA. I'm short and slow, while all the other players are tall and quick. My body is unfit for professional basketball, it reduces my intelligence, thus my ability to generate perceived value.
The NBA is an extreme (and tangible) example, but so is our current TI/Web industry. It requires a tricky mix of social/behavioral intelligence with technical intelligence that makes it very hard to the average professional to stand out. Maybe that's why there's so much frustration in the industry. People have the skills and the will to succeed, but something is always missing in their profile.
Howard Gardner's "multiple intelligences"[1] may help us understand what's going on. Our industry prefers some types of intelligence because they seem to be more aligned with business success than others. Some people have developed this intelligence during their childhood and early adult lives, thus are more attractive to some job positions than others. If your predominant intelligence is "logical-mathematical"[2], chances are you will be very motivated to work/study with CS; and expect just the contrary if you are "Bodily-kinesthetic"[3].
Well, my two cents. Just bringing in a different perspective.
I somehow doubt the people in rural Africa struggle because they just aren't working hard enough or aren't committed enough to reaching the "American dream". Though I do agree that some people miss out on opportunities as a result of not taking advantage of those qualities.
The gist still stands. There are likely many succesful people from the poorest countries who only achieved success because they believed and worked harder than anyone else. The threshold is just much higher.
The article isn't as bad as the link-bait title, but still I don't understand how some people can make it to 20, let alone 30 and not realize that "be anything you want" has some huge caveats:
1) it usually takes a lot of work, perseverance, and sacrifice
2) You may not get paid what you think you should
I thought this when I first read the article a few hours ago and decided to wait to see if anyone else posted (they haven't, so I may be wildly off with this) but "You must be entrepreneurial" sticks out to me as a mostly redundant combination of the preceding points. I wonder if the piece would be better or worse if that paragraph were replaced with a shorter one titled "Run Your Own Business" (IMO that would be even more out of place, but make the point more clearly), or simply removed altogether.
Taking on board what people have commented in this thread, I think it ought to be replaced with "insert your passion here". He has chosen entrepreneurship because that's his thing, but it seems to me idiosyncratic.
Great points. The only nuance I'd add is that, while it may be a little unfair, the truth is that SOME people can be whatever they want to be. They possess the smarts, confidence, resources, and whatever to barrel through that, with a little bit of luck thrown in they can get that crazy competitive job that combines money and fulfillment perfectly or have enough financial runway to keep fighting until their passion project works. But many can't. And they get burned when the feel good 'follow your dreams' advice can't be realized because of market dynamics and the fact that they lack many of the fundamentals that your article rightly shows are key.
We all profit in some way or another from people following their passions, often in the face of hardship. The Spotify or Rdio playlist you're probably listening to as you work is the result of untold legions of people following their dreams, and in many cases without much money to show for it. If every aspiring artist or musician took the kind of attitude so often espoused here to heart, and followed pragmatism over passion, we would live in a pretty bleak world.
I like the message in this post. The media loves to romanticize devoting your life to a passion. For instance, we idolize athletes. But it's EASY (relatively) to do what you're passionate about if it's in align with making a lot of money, and your unique gifts.
On the other hand, it's HARD to do stuff you dislike b/c your family depends on it. Why don't we give some attention to those people instead?
Personally, as an optimist, I don't like this because I feel like there is always an exception to the rule. Don't get me wrong, this article has good points, in general, but I just don't like the pessimistic view of the title -- "Why you can't be anything you want to be."
If the rule is everyone can be what they want to be, that doesn't bode well for those that end up as the exceptions. And as you say, there are always exceptions.
That is very true, but I also see it as being the lesser of two evils. I, personally, would much rather like the idea that if I work towards something with goals, hard-work, etc. that I can be the rule. Instead of just giving up before even trying because "I think I'll always just be an exception". If you follow what I mean? I guess it's somewhat of a catch 22.
Assuming you're referring to Marie's scolding of Megan, I think the quote is closer to "Not every little girl gets to do what she wants - the world could not support that many ballerinas." Which is even closer to what this article is saying.
Exactly the observations I (and I'm sure many others) have been trying to formulate for the past few years and preaching offline, but much better organized and well said by Sean Johnson.. Beautifully written! Kudos for being spot on!
While the main thesis isn't well-supported, the author makes a series of extremely good points. Being aware of these points is exactly what you need if you do want to really shoot for doing what you really want to do.
Please downvote this article. It has nothing to do with news, nor hackers, let alone hackernews. Unless such entries get downvotes, the top of HN will be infested with canned controversial opinion pieces.
I often find myself thinking similarly when such articles are posted, but I remind myself that "Hacker News" used to be "Startup News" and the change in name doesn't represent a change in subject.
i interpret that question different; "you can be what you want" to me is like "you can choose what you want to be". and very much believe that is true. so i've chosen to be "happy", "engaging", "kicking ass", "rich". some of my friends dont get it they choose to be "wanting to be rich/happy/etc". the thing is since i decide to be happy, im happy, and will always (try to) find proof for that. so... "you can be what you want", is quite true to me...
The article's essence: "All you pesky, silly little humanities students, go do something useful like we CS people/engineers. No really. Build an app. Become an entrepeneur. Fail horribly, sleep on somebody's couch, oh wait. Have instant success. Become rich. Be the new Zuckerberg. Or work in a bar. Forever. Serving drinks to us. Silly, silly non-engineers."
We've had dozens of these articles recently, and they all garner the exact same responses, lots of people here (rather unsurprisingly) agree (→ know your market), some disagree, both camps supply their position by dabbling in dazzling amounts of anecdotal evidence. Voilá, HN front page + discussion in a nut shell...
Alternative reading: Y'all just need to learn to code, so you too can be instantly successful...
Bonus points: Guess which camp I belong to, bash me for my post solely because of this, ignoring the HN critique