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On a much smaller scale, and very much closer to home for many, is the advice "Work like you don't need a job." Which is essentially do the Right thing, always,

On a much smaller scale, and very much closer to home for many, is the advice "Work like you don't need a job." Which is essentially do the Right thing, always, and if it gets you fired or you lose your job, that is okay because you were doing the right thing. You know how they say "Trying to explain privilege is like explaining water to a fish, they can't see it until they're out of it?" Now I understand that saying.

emiliobumachar 6y ago
People all across the privilege scale, up to and including people who would never need to work another day in their lives, fail to do the Right thing.
graeme 6y ago
A substantial portion of university graduates do not, in fact, need a job right away. Gap years are common. And with small income you can get by (ramen profitable). Obviously there’s privilege there. But it’s not top 1% or anything.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  I guess if you're talking about a subset of the 31% of graduates who don't have student debt, you might be right. [0] Sure, it's not top 1%, but it's certainly closer to the top 10% who have this luxury, as opposed to, say, the median college graduate. --- [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/20/how-much-the-average-student-loan-borrower-owes-when-they-graduate.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/20/how-much-the-average-student...
  - graeme 6y ago
    Yup. Even broader than that actually. When I left school to start a business, I had student debt. But the govt also had a low income loan assistance program, where you don’t have to pay till you’re above a certain income. I had some loan money still in my account, and mostly worked “like I didn’t need a job”. I did a bit of consulting work within my industry, but just enough to get by and avoided it where possible. I think I made about $11,000 in my first year. And it all worked. I didn’t increase my debt, and the business grew after that. There’s obviously privilege involved, but I try to push back because people write as if you need some insane level of privilege. I’m guessing 30-50% of college grads could try something like that without too much risk. (If I had had zero traction in the first 6-12 months I would have potentially stopped and gone back to school) Circumstances vary: I’m in Canada, so that accounted for loan repayment + not worrying about medical expenses. I could also stay on my school secondary health insurance (dental etc) through August of my first year.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      > There’s obviously privilege involved, but I try to push back because people write as if you need some insane level of privilege. I’m guessing 30-50% of college grads could try something like that without too much risk. But, your own story showcases a huge level of privilege that you don't seem to be acknowledging. I know you said you're Canadian, and that changes things a bit, but let's look at this from the perspective of an American college graduate. First of all, being an American college graduate puts you already in a rather privileged category. Only about 36% of Americans over 25 have at least a bachelor's degree. [0] Consider, too, that most people with college degrees probably grew up in homes where education was considered important, making this, at least partially, a form of hereditary privilege. [1] And, children of non-college educated parents who do go to school finish at lower rates than those who have a college-educated parent. [ibid] So, now that you're in roughly the top third of "people with privilege," let's just grant you that 30-50% of those people can afford to take a gap year, during which they will likely need significant parental support (remaining on insurance, probably still living at home, etc.) Leaving aside that simply having parents who can afford to float supporting a young, college graduate for an additional year beyond college itself, this puts you in an even higher tier. If we just multiply the numbers, it looks like you're still talking about, population wide, 10-20% of individuals who could even theoretically think about doing what you did. And, that's if your 30-50% number is correct, which I doubt. There is also no mention of luck in your story. I'm sure you were the recipient of several lucky breaks that year, some of which may have not come your way if you were not a college-educated individual who could afford to take a gap year. All of this is without layering on race, or any of the multiple other forms of luck and/or privilege that certainly got you where you are. Example: you were lucky enough to be born in a developed, Western country. If you were born a Dalit in India, you may have never even known that opportunities such as you have had even exist. [2] My own story, likewise, is riddled with privilege. I was born white and to parents who valued education. I got extremely lucky getting my first tech job. I got even luckier with my second and third tech jobs, to the extent that when I got that third job, I was making 2x as much as my first job, only a couple years earlier, and I'm currently making 3x as much as that first job. Right now, I could almost "work like I don't need a job," but, go back a couple of years, and that most likely would not have been the case. Go to the grocery store and observe all the people working there, and tell me if they can "work like they don't need a job." Even being able to say "work like you don't need a job" with a straight face to someone implies a certain level of privilege on the part of the speaker. --- [0]: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/educational-attainment.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/educatio... [1]: https://degree.lamar.edu/articles/undergraduate/parents-education-level-and-childrens-success/ https://degree.lamar.edu/articles/undergraduate/parents-educ... [2]: https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-03-05/even-harvard-pedigree-caste-follows-shadow https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-03-05/even-harvard-pedigree... Edit: Clarified my income growth.
sali0 6y ago
It makes me wonder what kind of safety nets are available to people who can afford to think like this. I wish I was able to do this.
- graeme 6y ago
  Anyone who lives below their means can do this. Not everyone can do that, but a substantial portion of people reading this comment on hacker news can do that. If someone earns $50,000, spends $40,000, in four years they will have a year’s salary saved up. With that in the bank you have a fair margin of safety. Most people don’t need a year to get a job, and can also reduce expenses in such a period. By doing so, you effectively buy freedom. I’m guessing you wrote this because you are not able to have such a margin of savings. But I’m leaving this comment for the many readers who could do so, but have not arranged their lives such that they have it.
  - zimpenfish 6y ago
    > in four years they will have a year’s salary saved up. That assumes no unexpected expenditure though? Any medical emergency (and even a lot of non-emergencies) in the US (from what I've seen) would blow those savings quickly. Also car problems, child problems, storm damaging the house/apartment, any number of things can swallow those savings quickly and you're back to square one.
    - graeme 6y ago
      Oh right. I’m Canadian, so I forget how tied to their jobs Americans are. Though the non medical ones you mention can generally be handled by insurance. That usually is not tied to work. If you have a year’s savings you can generally afford insurance.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Americans aren’t tied to their jobs because of health insurance. Anyone can purchase it on healthcare.gov. They’re tied to their jobs because healthcare costs so much. It’s unaffordable to pay $400+ per person per month plus up to $8k for out of pocket max which resets every calendar year ($16k for family) without having a job. The $400 per person is for a young person. It goes up to $1,000 per month as you get into 50s/60s. So if you’re being prudent and factoring in the probability of not having income in your 50s/60s (age discrimination, disability, obviated from automation, outsourced), then you also need to save to plan to pay at least $12k a year in today’s money plus out of pocket maximum.
ChuckMcM 6y ago
Language is a tricky thing, words are exact and meaning is inexact. One way to interpret this comment would be to imply the author of the quoted statement, having overwhelming advantages conferred upon them by circumstances out of their control, cannot possibly expect that their so-called "experiential wisdom" would have any applicability whatsoever to the masses for whom those same circumstances were not conferred. If that was your intent, I do not think it serves you well. I say that because attributing survival, much less success, to a vague notion of privilege is dismissive of an individual's agency. What is more, as a salve for the jealousy of the success for others, it really doesn't work all that well. I have met many people who have come from many backgrounds and with their own challenges. In that time, the quality of "success" was strongly correlated with fundamentals, not with where they started. There is a great saying, "Success makes you stupid, failure makes you smart" which speaks to the value of failing in order to better understand success, and why some succeed and others do not. In the majority (perhaps all but I really couldn't say that as a definite) the ability to fail, take ownership of the failure and then seek the understanding to not fail again, results in success. In contrast people who fail and then externalize the reason for failure to some aspect of the situation that was out of their control and do not seek out a better way, invariably continue to fail. Privilege exists, that is painfully obvious to me as a white male who is not habituated into getting nervous when a police officer approaches. Privilege exists in toxic organizations where friends of the boss are evaluated differently than everyone else. And privilege exists when people who conform to behavior, dress, and language norms of a group are treated differently than people who are different. In spite of that, it has been my experience that complaining about what other people have done more easily than you did, and attributing it to privilege, doesn't actually help. Not that I'm saying you would do that, I am saying that in my life I complained about a lot of things, one was a kid my age who was interviewed by the local news station for building a robot, FROM A KIT HIS PARENTS BOUGHT HIM, as if he was some genius robot builder. Was that privilege? Of course it was, his parents could afford it and mine were trying to make sure we had some money left over at the end of the month to save for those future problems that always took money. But it didn't help me get any better to focus on him having these advantages and me having none. I befriended the owner of the TV repair shop (yeah I'm that old :-)) who would give me broken TVs and radios to take apart and learn from. I built a complete Shortwave receiver out of a couple of otherwise non-working AM/FM radios and some additional tuning components scavenged from TVs and other radios. As a result, when I got into college on a scholarship as a EE candidate I already knew the basics of how electronic circuits worked and to analyze them. The kid with the kit robot may have entered college knowing no more than how to solder according to someone else's directions. My point is that one should not dismiss the power of one's own agency to make a better future for themselves. And I see complaining about privilege as a crutch to avoid doing the work, just like training wheels on a bike means you don't have to do the work of balancing. It is important to recognize privilege exists but it would be wrong to let it define you.
manquer 6y ago
Not really. It has nothing to do with privilege . While it is dramatic in the current context it is the same excuse half of Germany used in Nuremberg, if you didn't stand up to atrocities in front you are just as guilty no matter whether you gave the order or just "doing your job". People fight and die based on their moral convictions. At times they are not even fighting for their own lives, families or communities. If soldiers are ready to die half way across the world loose a limb in someone else's war without a second thought, anything less is insignificantly trivial. If you can die for your principles you can loose a job, go hungry or suffer any other pain too. It is as simple as what will cause you more pain, going hungry or doing something you don't agree with.

emiliobumachar 6y ago

People all across the privilege scale, up to and including people who would never need to work another day in their lives, fail to do the Right thing.

graeme 6y ago

A substantial portion of university graduates do not, in fact, need a job right away. Gap years are common. And with small income you can get by (ramen profitable). Obviously there’s privilege there. But it’s not top 1% or anything.

pmiller2 6y ago
I guess if you're talking about a subset of the 31% of graduates who don't have student debt, you might be right. [0] Sure, it's not top 1%, but it's certainly closer to the top 10% who have this luxury, as opposed to, say, the median college graduate. --- [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/20/how-much-the-average-student-loan-borrower-owes-when-they-graduate.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/20/how-much-the-average-student...
- graeme 6y ago
  Yup. Even broader than that actually. When I left school to start a business, I had student debt. But the govt also had a low income loan assistance program, where you don’t have to pay till you’re above a certain income. I had some loan money still in my account, and mostly worked “like I didn’t need a job”. I did a bit of consulting work within my industry, but just enough to get by and avoided it where possible. I think I made about $11,000 in my first year. And it all worked. I didn’t increase my debt, and the business grew after that. There’s obviously privilege involved, but I try to push back because people write as if you need some insane level of privilege. I’m guessing 30-50% of college grads could try something like that without too much risk. (If I had had zero traction in the first 6-12 months I would have potentially stopped and gone back to school) Circumstances vary: I’m in Canada, so that accounted for loan repayment + not worrying about medical expenses. I could also stay on my school secondary health insurance (dental etc) through August of my first year.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    > There’s obviously privilege involved, but I try to push back because people write as if you need some insane level of privilege. I’m guessing 30-50% of college grads could try something like that without too much risk. But, your own story showcases a huge level of privilege that you don't seem to be acknowledging. I know you said you're Canadian, and that changes things a bit, but let's look at this from the perspective of an American college graduate. First of all, being an American college graduate puts you already in a rather privileged category. Only about 36% of Americans over 25 have at least a bachelor's degree. [0] Consider, too, that most people with college degrees probably grew up in homes where education was considered important, making this, at least partially, a form of hereditary privilege. [1] And, children of non-college educated parents who do go to school finish at lower rates than those who have a college-educated parent. [ibid] So, now that you're in roughly the top third of "people with privilege," let's just grant you that 30-50% of those people can afford to take a gap year, during which they will likely need significant parental support (remaining on insurance, probably still living at home, etc.) Leaving aside that simply having parents who can afford to float supporting a young, college graduate for an additional year beyond college itself, this puts you in an even higher tier. If we just multiply the numbers, it looks like you're still talking about, population wide, 10-20% of individuals who could even theoretically think about doing what you did. And, that's if your 30-50% number is correct, which I doubt. There is also no mention of luck in your story. I'm sure you were the recipient of several lucky breaks that year, some of which may have not come your way if you were not a college-educated individual who could afford to take a gap year. All of this is without layering on race, or any of the multiple other forms of luck and/or privilege that certainly got you where you are. Example: you were lucky enough to be born in a developed, Western country. If you were born a Dalit in India, you may have never even known that opportunities such as you have had even exist. [2] My own story, likewise, is riddled with privilege. I was born white and to parents who valued education. I got extremely lucky getting my first tech job. I got even luckier with my second and third tech jobs, to the extent that when I got that third job, I was making 2x as much as my first job, only a couple years earlier, and I'm currently making 3x as much as that first job. Right now, I could almost "work like I don't need a job," but, go back a couple of years, and that most likely would not have been the case. Go to the grocery store and observe all the people working there, and tell me if they can "work like they don't need a job." Even being able to say "work like you don't need a job" with a straight face to someone implies a certain level of privilege on the part of the speaker. --- [0]: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/educational-attainment.html https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/educatio... [1]: https://degree.lamar.edu/articles/undergraduate/parents-education-level-and-childrens-success/ https://degree.lamar.edu/articles/undergraduate/parents-educ... [2]: https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-03-05/even-harvard-pedigree-caste-follows-shadow https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-03-05/even-harvard-pedigree... Edit: Clarified my income growth.

sali0 6y ago

It makes me wonder what kind of safety nets are available to people who can afford to think like this. I wish I was able to do this.

graeme 6y ago
Anyone who lives below their means can do this. Not everyone can do that, but a substantial portion of people reading this comment on hacker news can do that. If someone earns $50,000, spends $40,000, in four years they will have a year’s salary saved up. With that in the bank you have a fair margin of safety. Most people don’t need a year to get a job, and can also reduce expenses in such a period. By doing so, you effectively buy freedom. I’m guessing you wrote this because you are not able to have such a margin of savings. But I’m leaving this comment for the many readers who could do so, but have not arranged their lives such that they have it.
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  > in four years they will have a year’s salary saved up. That assumes no unexpected expenditure though? Any medical emergency (and even a lot of non-emergencies) in the US (from what I've seen) would blow those savings quickly. Also car problems, child problems, storm damaging the house/apartment, any number of things can swallow those savings quickly and you're back to square one.
  - graeme 6y ago
    Oh right. I’m Canadian, so I forget how tied to their jobs Americans are. Though the non medical ones you mention can generally be handled by insurance. That usually is not tied to work. If you have a year’s savings you can generally afford insurance.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Americans aren’t tied to their jobs because of health insurance. Anyone can purchase it on healthcare.gov. They’re tied to their jobs because healthcare costs so much. It’s unaffordable to pay $400+ per person per month plus up to $8k for out of pocket max which resets every calendar year ($16k for family) without having a job. The $400 per person is for a young person. It goes up to $1,000 per month as you get into 50s/60s. So if you’re being prudent and factoring in the probability of not having income in your 50s/60s (age discrimination, disability, obviated from automation, outsourced), then you also need to save to plan to pay at least $12k a year in today’s money plus out of pocket maximum.

ChuckMcM 6y ago

Language is a tricky thing, words are exact and meaning is inexact. One way to interpret this comment would be to imply the author of the quoted statement, having overwhelming advantages conferred upon them by circumstances out of their control, cannot possibly expect that their so-called "experiential wisdom" would have any applicability whatsoever to the masses for whom those same circumstances were not conferred. If that was your intent, I do not think it serves you well. I say that because attributing survival, much less success, to a vague notion of privilege is dismissive of an individual's agency. What is more, as a salve for the jealousy of the success for others, it really doesn't work all that well. I have met many people who have come from many backgrounds and with their own challenges. In that time, the quality of "success" was strongly correlated with fundamentals, not with where they started. There is a great saying, "Success makes you stupid, failure makes you smart" which speaks to the value of failing in order to better understand success, and why some succeed and others do not. In the majority (perhaps all but I really couldn't say that as a definite) the ability to fail, take ownership of the failure and then seek the understanding to not fail again, results in success. In contrast people who fail and then externalize the reason for failure to some aspect of the situation that was out of their control and do not seek out a better way, invariably continue to fail. Privilege exists, that is painfully obvious to me as a white male who is not habituated into getting nervous when a police officer approaches. Privilege exists in toxic organizations where friends of the boss are evaluated differently than everyone else. And privilege exists when people who conform to behavior, dress, and language norms of a group are treated differently than people who are different. In spite of that, it has been my experience that complaining about what other people have done more easily than you did, and attributing it to privilege, doesn't actually help. Not that I'm saying you would do that, I am saying that in my life I complained about a lot of things, one was a kid my age who was interviewed by the local news station for building a robot, FROM A KIT HIS PARENTS BOUGHT HIM, as if he was some genius robot builder. Was that privilege? Of course it was, his parents could afford it and mine were trying to make sure we had some money left over at the end of the month to save for those future problems that always took money. But it didn't help me get any better to focus on him having these advantages and me having none. I befriended the owner of the TV repair shop (yeah I'm that old :-)) who would give me broken TVs and radios to take apart and learn from. I built a complete Shortwave receiver out of a couple of otherwise non-working AM/FM radios and some additional tuning components scavenged from TVs and other radios. As a result, when I got into college on a scholarship as a EE candidate I already knew the basics of how electronic circuits worked and to analyze them. The kid with the kit robot may have entered college knowing no more than how to solder according to someone else's directions. My point is that one should not dismiss the power of one's own agency to make a better future for themselves. And I see complaining about privilege as a crutch to avoid doing the work, just like training wheels on a bike means you don't have to do the work of balancing. It is important to recognize privilege exists but it would be wrong to let it define you.

manquer 6y ago

Not really. It has nothing to do with privilege . While it is dramatic in the current context it is the same excuse half of Germany used in Nuremberg, if you didn't stand up to atrocities in front you are just as guilty no matter whether you gave the order or just "doing your job". People fight and die based on their moral convictions. At times they are not even fighting for their own lives, families or communities. If soldiers are ready to die half way across the world loose a limb in someone else's war without a second thought, anything less is insignificantly trivial. If you can die for your principles you can loose a job, go hungry or suffer any other pain too. It is as simple as what will cause you more pain, going hungry or doing something you don't agree with.