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Neither of the things you've listed sounds like diversity, it sounds like inequality. Why is half the country without proper education while the other ones are

Neither of the things you've listed sounds like diversity, it sounds like inequality. Why is half the country without proper education while the other ones are in the best research institutions in the world? And what does the people are those institutions spend their time on, if it's not helping the other half reaching the same position as themselves? The social experiment seems to be about how extreme you can really make inequality before people starts to riot. Wages are so low in some places that people simply walk out of their work because they can't survive on it, while it's so high in other places that you barely have to do anything and still pull in enough to put you in the 1% of the world population when it comes to income.

tick_tock_tick 5y ago
Inequality does create diversity as it gives people a vastly different life experiences.
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  While that is technically true, it doesn't create the type of diversity you can really tap into since some folks are too poor to realistically participate in society, and a lot of society is too segregated for different viewpoints to be in the same place.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  Just wow... I guess you would have different sentiment if you would be on the poor side of the inequality scale. Sentiment about poverty being good because it gives 'vastly different life experiences'? One of the things we can be actually proud here in Europe (mainly western part though), a rather strong middle class and tons of help to the poor (maybe too much according to some). I know its nice to find cheap poor folks desperate to work for peanuts, and you can pat yourself in the back how the environment gives everybody a chance to thrive, but that's not an American reality, just a self-perpetuating pipe dream. US is great for the ultra-rich, good for the rich, not-so-good for middle class and outright shit for the poor. But good luck trying to get this accepted in the US where folks are spoon-fed from the childhood how US is best in everything, rather than some healthy amount of critical thinking. Generally everybody, but in my humble experience Americans (and French) especially, profit greatly when (have been) living abroad for some time. Then we can have actual conversations what is great here and there and what outright sucks.
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    People love to make excuses for shitty behavior, such as calling the US an experiment
    - bumby 5y ago
      The claim that the US is an experiment has a long precedent. >No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. -Thomas Jefferson, 1804
      - Cybotron5000 5y ago
        Jefferson really did write beautifully. I’m not a US citizen, but I do find his writing to be very uplifting and inspiring.
      - netizen-936824 5y ago
        Okay so someone said it in a time when the "experiment" was slavery. I'm not sure what your point is.
        bumby 5y ago
        While your response is entirely predictable, it’s obvious why such a reaction misses the point because the scope is much wider than one issue. Yes, it was said during a time when slavery was the norm. But the “experiment” also included allowing systems that challenged that notion rather than maintaining the status quo. That’s the point.
        ABCLAW 5y ago
        I don't think this really addresses the core issue, being that experimentation is used as an excuse to not apply the results of the experiments after they've been performed. I don't think the idea is that experimentation is de facto bad. It's the use of experimentation as a tool to avoid implementation following experimentation that's being decried.
graphtrader 5y ago
I think you are just repeating things you have read about. People walking out of their jobs because wages are so low is obvious bullshit. The people I know in this situation are the hardest working people I have ever met and it is insulting to them to say such things.
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  I have no idea about your walk of life, but people leaving low paying jobs doesn’t feel irrational or lazy, or bullshitty in general. Why shouldn’t they ?
  - NateEag 5y ago
    "Walking out" of a job implies leaving the employer without warning in the middle of a workday, something many people in the US pride themselves on not doing (despite largely having the legal right to do so). It's related to strong senses of personal responsibility and pride in reliability and dependability, in my experience.
    - haswell 5y ago
      Let’s not split hairs about the manner in which some folks leave their jobs. “Walking out” can imply leaving without warning, or might better represent the worker’s state of mind when they make the decision to give notice. The underlying problem is that wages are so low in some places that it’s not possible to survive without: - multiple incomes in the household - multiple jobs - going into debt - living in a dangerous place Etc. These conditions leave the person without much choice but to leave.
    - mdarens 5y ago
      Anecdotally, I remember multiple instances of coworkers walking out in the middle of a shift when I worked as a cook in a chain restaurant due to the combination of high stress (including abuse from customers and management) and low wages.
      - 5y ago
op00to 5y ago
No one has ever quit a job because they can’t survive on it. If you’re really working paycheck to paycheck and barely scraping by, you don’t have the luxury of quitting. You would be homeless very quickly.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  It's a little more nuanced than that. Crappy "barely survive" paying jobs tend to have high turnover and that's a two way street. You lose your job being janitor at the airport for pissing hot and you might not even lose a day's wage because you could be sweeping floors at the hospital that night if you play your cards right. Jiffy Lube gives you crap jobs for the 3rd straight week and you're rolling your toolbox into Midas the next Monday maybe without a single working hour lost if the new employer sends someone to help you get your stuff and get set up. Unskilled and barely skilled onboarding is nowhere near as drawn out and cumbersome as the white collar onboarding most of HN takes for granted. I did stuff like that a few times back in the day (this century) when I was working those kinds of jobs.
  - throwaway316943 5y ago
    That’s hilarious that people are downvoting this. I imagine they don’t even know that daywork is a thing or that getting paid by the hour isn’t just a metric used for billing different clients.
  - Mindwipe 5y ago
    Because the lag from starting new positions to getting paid is, for people without savings, extremely problematic, and the assumption you can obtain unskilled or low skilled employment rapidly is fairly optimistic in general, ignores potential travel issues, and is pretty city centric and much less plausible in rural areas.
    - throwaway316943 5y ago
      Yeah the lag is tough but going without or being late on payments is part of life when you’re on minimum wage. It sucks, I’ve been there. It’s probably a lot worse if you have a family or live far out of town but that doesn’t mean people don’t quit shitty jobs. I’m not saying people don’t stay in shitty jobs either, they do, it just all depends on the person and the situation but most people I’ve known have walked out of jobs that were unbearable at one point or another.
gilbetron 5y ago
> Why is half the country without proper education Some of it is inequality, but some of it is willful diversity. There is a strong undercurrent that education is bad - a counterculture of ignorance. It is something that bewilders me, and that has only become clear to me in the past 5 years or so. It isn't that some people lack access to education that they want, but rather do not want access to that education because they believe that if you can figure things out without relying on the knowledge humanity has built up over the years. I see it in my own father, who one day told me, "I've been thinking about climate change recently, and I just don't think it's a problem." He didn't research on it, he didn't read on it, he didn't perform experimentations, he just thought about it and came to his ironclad conclusion. Likewise I see it in plenty of people, even people that are friends that I consider intelligent. They do not understand something, want to understand it, yet will do nothing to actually understand it. I had a friend that didn't understand an aspect of general relativity (he loves physics), which is totally understandable, it is complex stuff. He complained and argued with me about it for years. Finally I literally did a 1 minute search on youtube, found the first video on that specific topic and made him watch it. Then he finally got it. Ok, I'm on a weird tangent ;) Back to the topic. These people want to know and yet, for some reason, don't find the motivation to learn using the vast ocean of resources we have now. With the subculture of people in the US that think learning is offensive, an insult to their intellect, an assault on their freedom and independence, you have a problem of a whole other category. I don't know how prevalent it is in other countries, but I think it occurs in the US because of this new "independent thinker" attitude that is a warped version of the skeptic. They take great pride in believing something other than what they are told. As a skeptic and someone that likes to work things out for myself and who generally likes to examine the nuance of situations, I find this greatly frustrating.
- JeremyNT 5y ago
  > Some of it is inequality, but some of it is willful diversity. There is a strong undercurrent that education is bad - a counterculture of ignorance. This is, of course, self-fulfilling. In a society where education is poor, people will extrapolate from their own experience to conclude that all education is equally poor. Source: grew up in the rural South, attending public school, surrounded by people who (correctly) viewed their education as nearly useless.
hallway_monitor 5y ago
Freedom creates inequality. The freedom to excel comes with the freedom to do poorly at the game. Why should everyone be in the same position? They didn't put in the same effort. We do give away a lot of welfare to people who are doing poorly. It might be more effective to stop giving people money and use it instead to create programs to provide better jobs and skill training.
- madcows 5y ago
  > It might be more effective to stop giving people money and use it instead to create programs to provide better jobs and skill training. That's a false dichotomy. There's no actual lever for "provide better jobs and skill training." In reality, it's either more money directed at the poors, or more directed towards the rich. And that's how people vote. "Better jobs and skill training" means "give it to the rich so they can make the poors think they're doing something for them."
  - hallway_monitor 5y ago
    Maybe this is true but I hope not. I'm specifically thinking of trade schools etc where people can prepare for a career without the frills and cost of university. Honestly maybe a marketing campaign would be effective in letting people know that blue color work is honorable and needed and they can be productive and get a job that will support them and their family without having to go to Yale. I really like what Mike Rowe has to say about this issue.
    - madcows 5y ago
      > blue color work is honorable and needed and they can be productive and get a job that will support them and their family Honorable? Maybe. Able to support a family? Not without a secondary income from a spouse. And who's looking after the kids at that point? I hope you also have extended family that are willing and able to help, otherwise that's not much of a family.
      - 5y ago
quotemstr 5y ago
Why do you suppose that under conditions of perfect fairness we would see perfect equality? That's just not the case. Human talent is not sprinkled in the proportion in each person. You can achieve equality only through Harrison Bergeron measures. I'd rather have freedom.
- runarberg 5y ago
  You are more right about your former point then you realize. Even in a perfectly fair economy where all the players are equally skilled, statistically the wealth will gather in fewer and fewer hands after each fair and equal transaction. I disagree with your conclusion though “choose freedom”. In an unequal society, those that have will have control over those that have not. Meaning the freedom you speak of is only available to those that are lucky in their earlier transaction (or more realistically those that inherit the most).
- ABCLAW 5y ago
  >Why do you suppose that under conditions of perfect fairness we would see perfect equality? That's just not the case. Human talent is not sprinkled in the proportion in each person. You can achieve equality only through Harrison Bergeron measures. I'd rather have freedom. The assumption here that perfect fairness is a perfect information meritocracy is an intellectual leap, and even if true belies the fact that what constitutes merit is defined by those who have power. Is this perfect fairness outcome or opportunity based? Is the equality measured purely in terms of economic outcome or in terms of individual value maximization? There's too much swept under the rug to generalize a model about the direction of society.
- astrange 5y ago
  If you want inequality to be based on talent, you need "Harrison Bergeron" levels of redistribution, since you can't have generational wealth.
watwut 5y ago
> And what does the people are those institutions spend their time on, if it's not helping the other half reaching the same position as themselves? Elite universities are supposed to advance elite science - stuff like math, physics, technology, sociology, history. They also train people for work that requires such training. But, they dont create public education policy nor should they. They are not subject of public elections nor are they responsible for budget.
- solaceb 5y ago
  FWIW, I disagree with this in principle. I think institutions of higher ed should serve humanity; knowledge is beneficial to all people for the sake of knowledge itself. I am saddened that many take their intellect and direct their energy solely towards making as much money as possible. Think of all we could do if our best and brightest weren't so damn distracted with status and money
  - watwut 5y ago
    > Think of all we could do if our best and brightest weren't so damn distracted with status and money Working at university does not bring you much money nor all that much status. And who is the best depends on your definition of the "best". In any case "serving humanity" and "being in charge of public education, social system and economy" are massively different tasks. And the latter is currently settled through political system and activism, not through science or universities.
eli_gottlieb 5y ago
>The social experiment seems to be about how extreme you can really make inequality before people starts to riot. Well, the answer to that is obvious: people have long since started to riot, just about almost anything except economic inequality and exploitation.
- andrepd 5y ago
  Divide and conquer.
- astrange 5y ago
  That's because most people don't really care about those things. If you're poor and all your friends are poor you don't have greater expectations, nor is it really a problem since you can organize your society around it. What starts revolutions is disappointed elites - like if you promise your children good jobs and then they don't get them. Another kind is "revolution of rising expectations" where they do start getting good jobs and it causes them to expect even better ones faster than they get them.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  I think you'll find that all the people we see rioting (whatever side they're on) would cite economic inequality and exploitation as a source of their problem; their differences of opinion (and focuses) might be over who is getting exploited and by whom.

tick_tock_tick 5y ago

Inequality does create diversity as it gives people a vastly different life experiences.

Broken_Hippo 5y ago
While that is technically true, it doesn't create the type of diversity you can really tap into since some folks are too poor to realistically participate in society, and a lot of society is too segregated for different viewpoints to be in the same place.
saiya-jin 5y ago
Just wow... I guess you would have different sentiment if you would be on the poor side of the inequality scale. Sentiment about poverty being good because it gives 'vastly different life experiences'? One of the things we can be actually proud here in Europe (mainly western part though), a rather strong middle class and tons of help to the poor (maybe too much according to some). I know its nice to find cheap poor folks desperate to work for peanuts, and you can pat yourself in the back how the environment gives everybody a chance to thrive, but that's not an American reality, just a self-perpetuating pipe dream. US is great for the ultra-rich, good for the rich, not-so-good for middle class and outright shit for the poor. But good luck trying to get this accepted in the US where folks are spoon-fed from the childhood how US is best in everything, rather than some healthy amount of critical thinking. Generally everybody, but in my humble experience Americans (and French) especially, profit greatly when (have been) living abroad for some time. Then we can have actual conversations what is great here and there and what outright sucks.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  People love to make excuses for shitty behavior, such as calling the US an experiment
  - bumby 5y ago
    The claim that the US is an experiment has a long precedent. >No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. -Thomas Jefferson, 1804
    - Cybotron5000 5y ago
      Jefferson really did write beautifully. I’m not a US citizen, but I do find his writing to be very uplifting and inspiring.
    - netizen-936824 5y ago
      Okay so someone said it in a time when the "experiment" was slavery. I'm not sure what your point is.
      - bumby 5y ago
        While your response is entirely predictable, it’s obvious why such a reaction misses the point because the scope is much wider than one issue. Yes, it was said during a time when slavery was the norm. But the “experiment” also included allowing systems that challenged that notion rather than maintaining the status quo. That’s the point.
        ABCLAW 5y ago
        I don't think this really addresses the core issue, being that experimentation is used as an excuse to not apply the results of the experiments after they've been performed. I don't think the idea is that experimentation is de facto bad. It's the use of experimentation as a tool to avoid implementation following experimentation that's being decried.

graphtrader 5y ago

I think you are just repeating things you have read about. People walking out of their jobs because wages are so low is obvious bullshit. The people I know in this situation are the hardest working people I have ever met and it is insulting to them to say such things.

makeitdouble 5y ago
I have no idea about your walk of life, but people leaving low paying jobs doesn’t feel irrational or lazy, or bullshitty in general. Why shouldn’t they ?
- NateEag 5y ago
  "Walking out" of a job implies leaving the employer without warning in the middle of a workday, something many people in the US pride themselves on not doing (despite largely having the legal right to do so). It's related to strong senses of personal responsibility and pride in reliability and dependability, in my experience.
  - haswell 5y ago
    Let’s not split hairs about the manner in which some folks leave their jobs. “Walking out” can imply leaving without warning, or might better represent the worker’s state of mind when they make the decision to give notice. The underlying problem is that wages are so low in some places that it’s not possible to survive without: - multiple incomes in the household - multiple jobs - going into debt - living in a dangerous place Etc. These conditions leave the person without much choice but to leave.
  - mdarens 5y ago
    Anecdotally, I remember multiple instances of coworkers walking out in the middle of a shift when I worked as a cook in a chain restaurant due to the combination of high stress (including abuse from customers and management) and low wages.
    - 5y ago

op00to 5y ago

No one has ever quit a job because they can’t survive on it. If you’re really working paycheck to paycheck and barely scraping by, you don’t have the luxury of quitting. You would be homeless very quickly.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
It's a little more nuanced than that. Crappy "barely survive" paying jobs tend to have high turnover and that's a two way street. You lose your job being janitor at the airport for pissing hot and you might not even lose a day's wage because you could be sweeping floors at the hospital that night if you play your cards right. Jiffy Lube gives you crap jobs for the 3rd straight week and you're rolling your toolbox into Midas the next Monday maybe without a single working hour lost if the new employer sends someone to help you get your stuff and get set up. Unskilled and barely skilled onboarding is nowhere near as drawn out and cumbersome as the white collar onboarding most of HN takes for granted. I did stuff like that a few times back in the day (this century) when I was working those kinds of jobs.
- throwaway316943 5y ago
  That’s hilarious that people are downvoting this. I imagine they don’t even know that daywork is a thing or that getting paid by the hour isn’t just a metric used for billing different clients.
- Mindwipe 5y ago
  Because the lag from starting new positions to getting paid is, for people without savings, extremely problematic, and the assumption you can obtain unskilled or low skilled employment rapidly is fairly optimistic in general, ignores potential travel issues, and is pretty city centric and much less plausible in rural areas.
  - throwaway316943 5y ago
    Yeah the lag is tough but going without or being late on payments is part of life when you’re on minimum wage. It sucks, I’ve been there. It’s probably a lot worse if you have a family or live far out of town but that doesn’t mean people don’t quit shitty jobs. I’m not saying people don’t stay in shitty jobs either, they do, it just all depends on the person and the situation but most people I’ve known have walked out of jobs that were unbearable at one point or another.

gilbetron 5y ago

> Why is half the country without proper education Some of it is inequality, but some of it is willful diversity. There is a strong undercurrent that education is bad - a counterculture of ignorance. It is something that bewilders me, and that has only become clear to me in the past 5 years or so. It isn't that some people lack access to education that they want, but rather do not want access to that education because they believe that if you can figure things out without relying on the knowledge humanity has built up over the years. I see it in my own father, who one day told me, "I've been thinking about climate change recently, and I just don't think it's a problem." He didn't research on it, he didn't read on it, he didn't perform experimentations, he just thought about it and came to his ironclad conclusion. Likewise I see it in plenty of people, even people that are friends that I consider intelligent. They do not understand something, want to understand it, yet will do nothing to actually understand it. I had a friend that didn't understand an aspect of general relativity (he loves physics), which is totally understandable, it is complex stuff. He complained and argued with me about it for years. Finally I literally did a 1 minute search on youtube, found the first video on that specific topic and made him watch it. Then he finally got it. Ok, I'm on a weird tangent ;) Back to the topic. These people want to know and yet, for some reason, don't find the motivation to learn using the vast ocean of resources we have now. With the subculture of people in the US that think learning is offensive, an insult to their intellect, an assault on their freedom and independence, you have a problem of a whole other category. I don't know how prevalent it is in other countries, but I think it occurs in the US because of this new "independent thinker" attitude that is a warped version of the skeptic. They take great pride in believing something other than what they are told. As a skeptic and someone that likes to work things out for myself and who generally likes to examine the nuance of situations, I find this greatly frustrating.

JeremyNT 5y ago
> Some of it is inequality, but some of it is willful diversity. There is a strong undercurrent that education is bad - a counterculture of ignorance. This is, of course, self-fulfilling. In a society where education is poor, people will extrapolate from their own experience to conclude that all education is equally poor. Source: grew up in the rural South, attending public school, surrounded by people who (correctly) viewed their education as nearly useless.

hallway_monitor 5y ago

Freedom creates inequality. The freedom to excel comes with the freedom to do poorly at the game. Why should everyone be in the same position? They didn't put in the same effort. We do give away a lot of welfare to people who are doing poorly. It might be more effective to stop giving people money and use it instead to create programs to provide better jobs and skill training.

madcows 5y ago
> It might be more effective to stop giving people money and use it instead to create programs to provide better jobs and skill training. That's a false dichotomy. There's no actual lever for "provide better jobs and skill training." In reality, it's either more money directed at the poors, or more directed towards the rich. And that's how people vote. "Better jobs and skill training" means "give it to the rich so they can make the poors think they're doing something for them."
- hallway_monitor 5y ago
  Maybe this is true but I hope not. I'm specifically thinking of trade schools etc where people can prepare for a career without the frills and cost of university. Honestly maybe a marketing campaign would be effective in letting people know that blue color work is honorable and needed and they can be productive and get a job that will support them and their family without having to go to Yale. I really like what Mike Rowe has to say about this issue.
  - madcows 5y ago
    > blue color work is honorable and needed and they can be productive and get a job that will support them and their family Honorable? Maybe. Able to support a family? Not without a secondary income from a spouse. And who's looking after the kids at that point? I hope you also have extended family that are willing and able to help, otherwise that's not much of a family.
    - 5y ago

quotemstr 5y ago

Why do you suppose that under conditions of perfect fairness we would see perfect equality? That's just not the case. Human talent is not sprinkled in the proportion in each person. You can achieve equality only through Harrison Bergeron measures. I'd rather have freedom.

runarberg 5y ago
You are more right about your former point then you realize. Even in a perfectly fair economy where all the players are equally skilled, statistically the wealth will gather in fewer and fewer hands after each fair and equal transaction. I disagree with your conclusion though “choose freedom”. In an unequal society, those that have will have control over those that have not. Meaning the freedom you speak of is only available to those that are lucky in their earlier transaction (or more realistically those that inherit the most).
ABCLAW 5y ago
>Why do you suppose that under conditions of perfect fairness we would see perfect equality? That's just not the case. Human talent is not sprinkled in the proportion in each person. You can achieve equality only through Harrison Bergeron measures. I'd rather have freedom. The assumption here that perfect fairness is a perfect information meritocracy is an intellectual leap, and even if true belies the fact that what constitutes merit is defined by those who have power. Is this perfect fairness outcome or opportunity based? Is the equality measured purely in terms of economic outcome or in terms of individual value maximization? There's too much swept under the rug to generalize a model about the direction of society.
astrange 5y ago
If you want inequality to be based on talent, you need "Harrison Bergeron" levels of redistribution, since you can't have generational wealth.

watwut 5y ago

> And what does the people are those institutions spend their time on, if it's not helping the other half reaching the same position as themselves? Elite universities are supposed to advance elite science - stuff like math, physics, technology, sociology, history. They also train people for work that requires such training. But, they dont create public education policy nor should they. They are not subject of public elections nor are they responsible for budget.

solaceb 5y ago
FWIW, I disagree with this in principle. I think institutions of higher ed should serve humanity; knowledge is beneficial to all people for the sake of knowledge itself. I am saddened that many take their intellect and direct their energy solely towards making as much money as possible. Think of all we could do if our best and brightest weren't so damn distracted with status and money
- watwut 5y ago
  > Think of all we could do if our best and brightest weren't so damn distracted with status and money Working at university does not bring you much money nor all that much status. And who is the best depends on your definition of the "best". In any case "serving humanity" and "being in charge of public education, social system and economy" are massively different tasks. And the latter is currently settled through political system and activism, not through science or universities.

eli_gottlieb 5y ago

>The social experiment seems to be about how extreme you can really make inequality before people starts to riot. Well, the answer to that is obvious: people have long since started to riot, just about almost anything except economic inequality and exploitation.

andrepd 5y ago
Divide and conquer.
astrange 5y ago
That's because most people don't really care about those things. If you're poor and all your friends are poor you don't have greater expectations, nor is it really a problem since you can organize your society around it. What starts revolutions is disappointed elites - like if you promise your children good jobs and then they don't get them. Another kind is "revolution of rising expectations" where they do start getting good jobs and it causes them to expect even better ones faster than they get them.
InitialLastName 5y ago
I think you'll find that all the people we see rioting (whatever side they're on) would cite economic inequality and exploitation as a source of their problem; their differences of opinion (and focuses) might be over who is getting exploited and by whom.