5 ms·

The apocryphal story here is as that of the successful plumber. He works hard, learns his trade, and eventually starts his own plumbing business. This busines

by mises 8y ago

The apocryphal story here is as that of the successful plumber. He works hard, learns his trade, and eventually starts his own plumbing business. This business employs two other plumbers. He also has a wife and three children. As they age, his business grows. By the time his children are 17, he employs twelve other plumbers and is worth over two million dollars. He speaks to his sons about joining his business. All three decline. They want to go to the fancy, expensive college that will wipe out a substantial chunk of the two million dollars their father has worked for. He offers to give them paying jobs, right away, and promises they will eventually take over the business and help grow it to make more money. The four of them, he tells them, can grow the business to the point where they can all easily make an excellent living. The three sons persist. So he gives in, and his three sons attend college. The first majors in poetry, the second in art history, and the third in dance. They go on to make a spotty living, as compared to the steady income of their father. The father, as he grows older, wishes to pass some of his responsibility to a subordinate. By this point, his business employs fifty plumbers. With no son to inherit his business, he chooses his most loyal employee. He dies some years later, leaving his sons each five hundred thousand dollars. All three spend it on an increased standard of living; it lasts each around seven years. After which they are again broke. The plumber's subordinate, meanwhile, has grown the business to over one hundred employees. He was worth over fifteen million dollars, and was exploring the sale of the company to another, a deal that would likely net him roughly twenty million dollars personally. He lived happily ever after.

paganel 8y ago
Some people just want to spend their time learning about Gothic art or about Persian poetry instead of fixing other people's plumbing, there's nothing wrong with that, quite the contrary. And to add a further non-apocryphal anecdote: I'm probably never going to be reach (I'm approaching 40 and you kind of feel this sort of things) but were I to die tomorrow one of my best memories/things that happened in my life would be the fact that I got to appreciate the poetry of Hafez [1] because of my dad. He had a book of his in our library, I knew my dad liked his poetry so one day I just picked the book and I liked his poetry, too. It became a sort of a new bond between me and my dad that I can still feel now, 20+ years after I had first read Hafez's poems. More to the point, not everything in life is about money. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez
- mises 8y ago
  Not a ding on poetry or art. More the fact that I have heard many accounts of boys giving up the family business to go pursue such things as a career. More seriously, I've also heard of similar situations where the boy majors in management or something to that effect, gets out, and can't find a job (this was more common in 08-12). Tradesmen pretty much always have work.
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    08-13 was fucking brutal for folks in construction in most parts of the country. But then, us tech folks forget the dot com bubble when things are good too.
jonnycoder 8y ago
I'm the last person to defend colleges, but in this story the father did a poor job of being a good long term role model if all three sons failed at life relative to their father's work ethic, financial habits, or positive encouragement. It wasn't the fault of the college. Someone other than the father "sold" the worthless-degree college route and/or kept the sons brainwashed well after college.
- mises 8y ago
  Possibly. I have sadly known many teens that made poor choices as much to spite their parents or to "be themselves"/"develop their own identity" as much as anything else. I didn't blame the college, the boys were responsible for their own decisions. I believe this is known as the second-generation problem: the first generation is very successful due to their family's recent immigration. The second is often much less so (or even less successful) due to their taking everything for granted. And it's not just a theory; I've seen more examples than I could count of this.
analog31 8y ago
During the course of your story, the worker-to-owner ratio has grown from 1:1, to 100:1. So the chance of the three children actually improving their lot as plumbers has actually gone down, not up. And your story doesn't mention the recession, or the replacement of plumbing labor by technological innovations. A similar story is happening in farming. But it's a good lesson, as it teaches the relative productivity of capital and labor.
- mises 8y ago
  Perhaps their chances as plumbers are slightly lower. But as businessmen and owners of the 100-person company, they have excellent odds of improving their future. It grew to 100:1 with one owner. In a well-run business, each boy could work on expanding the business and hopefully balance that ratio back out as time progressed. And yes, technological innovations might be a concern. But the job of middle management might well disappear before the job of a plumber. Ask yourself which is easier to automate. Farming has been on such a course for a very long time. Quite evident if you look at the tiny percentage of the population that produces America's food today, compared with everyone growing their own only a few thousand years ago. On this and your point about productivity of capital vs labor, do you have a solution? Quite frankly, I've heard a lot of issues raised around this point, but few good solutions, let alone solutions that don't involve the government.
opportune 8y ago
Since we're just making these things up, how about a story where the dad is a deadbeat HVAC repairman who fucks up his back and gets addicted to pain pills while his three kids study medicine, law, and computer science and go on to be a general surgeon, judge, and tech billionaire
- mises 8y ago
  That's ridiculous; it's more of a parable than it is "just making these things up". I have, if not in those exact words, heard of such things happening with some regularity. What I wrote is supposed to make the point that you can be successful as a tradesman and that college is not absolutely necessary. What you wrote makes no point about the importance of college education vs trade school (the topic at hand, if you will recall), but rather seems like the baseless writing of someone with a chip on his shoulder.
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    The lesson in BOTH parables is "work hard on things that matter". Having them side by side is useful because many people draw the wrong conclusion if you only show them one.
pkaye 8y ago
Since we are just making things up, was can also say they father is in crippling back pain past his middle age due to all the plumbing work he did before. (This was from a plumber who was lamenting to me while repairing my water heater.)
munin 8y ago
We could tell my story instead. My uncle was an electrician, I didn't take high school that seriously, so my parents wanted me to apprentice for my uncle. I said no thanks, got a low level tech job, worked my way through undergrad and then PhD school, and now I have a cushy, well paid job where I sit indoors in a private office for eight hours a day and think for a living. My uncle had to crawl through attics on hot summer days, fight with rodents and snakes, and deal with live electrical wires and people who don't pay their bills. On top of that, he wound up dead from mesothelioma, probably from spending most of his days just breathing in insulation fibers. So, thanks but no thanks, basically. You can romanticize the trades all you want but from my experience watching my family and friends from back home, "the trades" are exchanging the better years of your life in time and health to rich people in exchange for an early and painful death.

by mises 8y ago

paganel 8y ago

Some people just want to spend their time learning about Gothic art or about Persian poetry instead of fixing other people's plumbing, there's nothing wrong with that, quite the contrary. And to add a further non-apocryphal anecdote: I'm probably never going to be reach (I'm approaching 40 and you kind of feel this sort of things) but were I to die tomorrow one of my best memories/things that happened in my life would be the fact that I got to appreciate the poetry of Hafez [1] because of my dad. He had a book of his in our library, I knew my dad liked his poetry so one day I just picked the book and I liked his poetry, too. It became a sort of a new bond between me and my dad that I can still feel now, 20+ years after I had first read Hafez's poems. More to the point, not everything in life is about money. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez

mises 8y ago
Not a ding on poetry or art. More the fact that I have heard many accounts of boys giving up the family business to go pursue such things as a career. More seriously, I've also heard of similar situations where the boy majors in management or something to that effect, gets out, and can't find a job (this was more common in 08-12). Tradesmen pretty much always have work.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  08-13 was fucking brutal for folks in construction in most parts of the country. But then, us tech folks forget the dot com bubble when things are good too.

jonnycoder 8y ago

I'm the last person to defend colleges, but in this story the father did a poor job of being a good long term role model if all three sons failed at life relative to their father's work ethic, financial habits, or positive encouragement. It wasn't the fault of the college. Someone other than the father "sold" the worthless-degree college route and/or kept the sons brainwashed well after college.

mises 8y ago
Possibly. I have sadly known many teens that made poor choices as much to spite their parents or to "be themselves"/"develop their own identity" as much as anything else. I didn't blame the college, the boys were responsible for their own decisions. I believe this is known as the second-generation problem: the first generation is very successful due to their family's recent immigration. The second is often much less so (or even less successful) due to their taking everything for granted. And it's not just a theory; I've seen more examples than I could count of this.

analog31 8y ago

During the course of your story, the worker-to-owner ratio has grown from 1:1, to 100:1. So the chance of the three children actually improving their lot as plumbers has actually gone down, not up. And your story doesn't mention the recession, or the replacement of plumbing labor by technological innovations. A similar story is happening in farming. But it's a good lesson, as it teaches the relative productivity of capital and labor.

mises 8y ago
Perhaps their chances as plumbers are slightly lower. But as businessmen and owners of the 100-person company, they have excellent odds of improving their future. It grew to 100:1 with one owner. In a well-run business, each boy could work on expanding the business and hopefully balance that ratio back out as time progressed. And yes, technological innovations might be a concern. But the job of middle management might well disappear before the job of a plumber. Ask yourself which is easier to automate. Farming has been on such a course for a very long time. Quite evident if you look at the tiny percentage of the population that produces America's food today, compared with everyone growing their own only a few thousand years ago. On this and your point about productivity of capital vs labor, do you have a solution? Quite frankly, I've heard a lot of issues raised around this point, but few good solutions, let alone solutions that don't involve the government.

opportune 8y ago

Since we're just making these things up, how about a story where the dad is a deadbeat HVAC repairman who fucks up his back and gets addicted to pain pills while his three kids study medicine, law, and computer science and go on to be a general surgeon, judge, and tech billionaire

mises 8y ago
That's ridiculous; it's more of a parable than it is "just making these things up". I have, if not in those exact words, heard of such things happening with some regularity. What I wrote is supposed to make the point that you can be successful as a tradesman and that college is not absolutely necessary. What you wrote makes no point about the importance of college education vs trade school (the topic at hand, if you will recall), but rather seems like the baseless writing of someone with a chip on his shoulder.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  The lesson in BOTH parables is "work hard on things that matter". Having them side by side is useful because many people draw the wrong conclusion if you only show them one.

pkaye 8y ago

Since we are just making things up, was can also say they father is in crippling back pain past his middle age due to all the plumbing work he did before. (This was from a plumber who was lamenting to me while repairing my water heater.)

munin 8y ago

We could tell my story instead. My uncle was an electrician, I didn't take high school that seriously, so my parents wanted me to apprentice for my uncle. I said no thanks, got a low level tech job, worked my way through undergrad and then PhD school, and now I have a cushy, well paid job where I sit indoors in a private office for eight hours a day and think for a living. My uncle had to crawl through attics on hot summer days, fight with rodents and snakes, and deal with live electrical wires and people who don't pay their bills. On top of that, he wound up dead from mesothelioma, probably from spending most of his days just breathing in insulation fibers. So, thanks but no thanks, basically. You can romanticize the trades all you want but from my experience watching my family and friends from back home, "the trades" are exchanging the better years of your life in time and health to rich people in exchange for an early and painful death.