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This brings to mind something pg wrote about New York: "New York tells you, above all: you should make more money. There are other messages too, of course. You
by hexis 16y ago
This brings to mind something pg wrote about New York:
"New York tells you, above all: you should make more money. There are other messages too, of course. You should be hipper. You should be better looking. But the clearest message is that you should be richer."
- http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html
Of course, founders can make plenty of money. But New York does seem to be unusual in how much it lionizes people who already have lots of money (or least, people who allocate lots of it). I don't expect to see the phenomenon discussed in this blog post change anytime soon.
- elblanco 16y agoWell it is after all a city largely driven by the finance sector.
- MediaSquirrel 16y agoI think that hugely ambitious companies that achieve insane exits (pref IPO) could make a dent.
- anamax 16y ago> I think that hugely ambitious companies that achieve insane exits (pref IPO) could make a dent. Why? The existence of finance people who have made tons of money and their lionization resulted in the lionization of finance folks who haven't made tons of money. In fact, there's probably a bit of the opposite, namely "you're in finance and haven't made it, so there must be something wrong with you". NYC lionizes AFTER you've made it. Even if it cares how (and it doesn't seem to), it doesn't lionize folks who haven't made it, regardless of how they're trying to make it.
- pw0ncakes 16y agoNew York is great in many ways, but it's also a city that tells you, once a month, that you're not a part of it and probably never will be. You can buy your way in, sure, but you're just a "guest worker", and you won't actually belong until you make a hundred million or so. The people who "belong" here are the ones whose parents bought real estate in the '70s when it was cheap, those who can actually afford a desirable, family-capable, apartment, and the token not-so-rich (upper-middle-class and extremely well-connected) who have rent control (an arrangement that is often better than ownership, because rent-controlled rents are often lower than the maintenance fees for owners). This is what NYC tells you: you don't belong here unless (or x1 x2 ... xn). The easiest of those xi to change is your income. Aside from that, it's not that materialist of a city.