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Claiming to be "self-made" isn't directly advocating that the poor need only pull harder on their bootstraps, but it's only a few steps apart. If someone belie

Claiming to be "self-made" isn't directly advocating that the poor need only pull harder on their bootstraps, but it's only a few steps apart. If someone believes you can be "self-made" without also necessarily also having a substantial amount of luck, that someone can't explain the gap between success and mere subsistence as anything but "lack of determination", often with a moralistic tone. The very successful shape our society with their influence, which they wield in advancement of their beliefs. If those beliefs are incomplete, or lack empathy, it affects all of us.

dnautics 5y ago
the anti-"self-made" rhetoric is eventually going to backfire. There are plenty of people who are only modestly privileged, or even hugely privileged that had to pull through a ton of bullshit or work hundred hour weeks, oftentimes succeeding in spite of what they had to endure, that bristle at the connotation that because they happened to grow up with some amount of privilege, everything they did is unearned. Even if they were wrong and "they would have made it anyways" devaluing someone's effort like what I see happening these days (and moreover, socially pressured to shut up about it) is not a sustainable strategy for ameliorating social disparity.
- zelon88 5y ago
  Let's look at this scientifically. Being successful takes 100 units of energy. If one monkey starts with 0 units of energy and another monkey starts with 90 units of energy, how many units must each monkey spend to become "successful?" Now imagine the monkey who spent 10 units of energy sitting on Ellen's couch telling the world about how hard he pulled on those bootstraps. Edit: Fixed a typo.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    > "scientifically" I'm sorry. I am actually a former scientist, and I pulled hundred hour workweeks in the lab. You do not know what that word means. Moreover, you completely missed the point.
  - username90 5y ago
    The median American has a pretty easy life growing up, they don't have any reasons why they can't succeed yet they almost never do anyway. And there is no reason to believe that the poor Americans would do better than the median Americans if they were given the resources of median Americans.
    - epicureanideal 5y ago
      > they don't have any reasons why they can't succeed yet they almost never do anyway This seems like a failure of imagination to me. Having adequate food and shelter is a long way from being able to start a profitable business, and it can even be the case that as society becomes more prosperous it becomes HARDER to start a business. Example: try starting a restaurant with the regulations today vs 1950.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    If the monkey with zero gains 5 and the monkey with ninety loses 5, the monkey with zero was more successful. It's not enough to look at where someone is, you have to look at where someone started. If you are a millionaire and your dad was a billionaire, you are probably one of the biggest losers on the planet.
    - alexanderdmitri 5y ago
      What if you had super rich parents and you decided to become a school teacher (~$60k/yr in the US)? Being raised rich taught you that wealth isn't everything, in fact it can be quite toxic and maddening. So you end up owning a house and some retirement investments after 40 years, but most of all feel proud of the work you've done and the lives you've bettered. To be called the biggest loser in the world seems like a stretch.
      - willcipriano 5y ago
        If your goal is to educate people, a billion dollars educates more people than your tireless efforts ever could. You could instead focus on some sort of personal goal, but if you are actually doing that you won't care how much money someone else has.
        alexanderdmitri 5y ago
        Your business mogul father had said the same thing to you. He seemed to believe money was the only thing that mattered. Luckily you were not that shallow or self-deceived and realized that living a humble life and taking the time to work with your students one-on-one was true value you could provide. Unlike your father, you will leave this world having given more than you took. You will have truly empowered the children to work for a better world than the one they were born into.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  I don't see how A comes to B. How does telling people that they're not as self-made as they think they are some how excaerbate social disparity? - Fwiw, I don't believe in being self-made because everyone's idea of "a ton of bullshit" is different. I feel like by American standards I'm "self-made". I taught myself how to program as a kid and made a career for myself that pays extremely well (I work at a "FAANG-adjacent" company, equitable pay). My parents didn't co sign any loans, I didn't even go to college. No connections ever involved in getting a job, no friends of parents for summer jobs or anything. Just mind numbing famounts of hours spent single mindedly working on things from childhood to adulthood. Struggling to teach myself, struggling against everyone telling my I was wasting my time (in their defense, I almost didn't graduate high school over how focused I was on projects that ultimately didn't become anything), sacrificing a lot of what most people experience growing up because I was convinced this was what mattered. - But then you have my parents. My dad grew up with a father who was a non-functioning alcoholic in a 3rd world country. He'd farm for yams to get a few cents to pay for school uniforms. He'd walk a mile out to his friend's house in the middle of the night to be able to read by a lantern because they didn't have one. My mother's father died and a young age and she had to grow up with relatives who didn't hide their disdain for her. As I've grown older I've realized she downplays how bad her situation was growing up, but in the end she wanted to continue education and they forced her to be a seamstress, so she taught herself to type (in the days of typewriters not computers) and joined the police as a secretary in her country. Today my dad has a PhD and my mother has her doctorate. Compared to them I might as well have been handed the world in a silver platter for the simple reason, at least I had time. I wasn't struggling to find food, I wasn't cleaning up after my father after he soiled himself in a drunken stupor. My parents might not have agreed with what I was doing, and it might have brought conflict between us, but they didn't hate me. Of course if you look around you'll find someone who would make their story look like they got a silver platter. After all, at the very least in their poverty they still had peace. They weren't dodging bullets, they weren't in a war-torn country or something. - That's why I have no problem with social pressure telling "modestly privileged, or even hugely privileged" people to shut up about how absolutely terrible the odds were and how they struggled. Everything is relative. Put a prince who's never lifted a finger to even wash his face in an upper middle class life and he'll cry real tears struggling to figure out how a 9-5 works. There's nothing wrong with giving him a shoulder to cry on, but there's nothing useful or teachable about his struggle (except maybe driving home the how deep his privilege was...) I'd much rather hear from what it took people with much less to get to where they are. There's often more to learn there.

dnautics 5y ago

the anti-"self-made" rhetoric is eventually going to backfire. There are plenty of people who are only modestly privileged, or even hugely privileged that had to pull through a ton of bullshit or work hundred hour weeks, oftentimes succeeding in spite of what they had to endure, that bristle at the connotation that because they happened to grow up with some amount of privilege, everything they did is unearned. Even if they were wrong and "they would have made it anyways" devaluing someone's effort like what I see happening these days (and moreover, socially pressured to shut up about it) is not a sustainable strategy for ameliorating social disparity.

zelon88 5y ago
Let's look at this scientifically. Being successful takes 100 units of energy. If one monkey starts with 0 units of energy and another monkey starts with 90 units of energy, how many units must each monkey spend to become "successful?" Now imagine the monkey who spent 10 units of energy sitting on Ellen's couch telling the world about how hard he pulled on those bootstraps. Edit: Fixed a typo.
- dnautics 5y ago
  > "scientifically" I'm sorry. I am actually a former scientist, and I pulled hundred hour workweeks in the lab. You do not know what that word means. Moreover, you completely missed the point.
- username90 5y ago
  The median American has a pretty easy life growing up, they don't have any reasons why they can't succeed yet they almost never do anyway. And there is no reason to believe that the poor Americans would do better than the median Americans if they were given the resources of median Americans.
  - epicureanideal 5y ago
    > they don't have any reasons why they can't succeed yet they almost never do anyway This seems like a failure of imagination to me. Having adequate food and shelter is a long way from being able to start a profitable business, and it can even be the case that as society becomes more prosperous it becomes HARDER to start a business. Example: try starting a restaurant with the regulations today vs 1950.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  If the monkey with zero gains 5 and the monkey with ninety loses 5, the monkey with zero was more successful. It's not enough to look at where someone is, you have to look at where someone started. If you are a millionaire and your dad was a billionaire, you are probably one of the biggest losers on the planet.
  - alexanderdmitri 5y ago
    What if you had super rich parents and you decided to become a school teacher (~$60k/yr in the US)? Being raised rich taught you that wealth isn't everything, in fact it can be quite toxic and maddening. So you end up owning a house and some retirement investments after 40 years, but most of all feel proud of the work you've done and the lives you've bettered. To be called the biggest loser in the world seems like a stretch.
    - willcipriano 5y ago
      If your goal is to educate people, a billion dollars educates more people than your tireless efforts ever could. You could instead focus on some sort of personal goal, but if you are actually doing that you won't care how much money someone else has.
      - alexanderdmitri 5y ago
        Your business mogul father had said the same thing to you. He seemed to believe money was the only thing that mattered. Luckily you were not that shallow or self-deceived and realized that living a humble life and taking the time to work with your students one-on-one was true value you could provide. Unlike your father, you will leave this world having given more than you took. You will have truly empowered the children to work for a better world than the one they were born into.
BoorishBears 5y ago
I don't see how A comes to B. How does telling people that they're not as self-made as they think they are some how excaerbate social disparity? - Fwiw, I don't believe in being self-made because everyone's idea of "a ton of bullshit" is different. I feel like by American standards I'm "self-made". I taught myself how to program as a kid and made a career for myself that pays extremely well (I work at a "FAANG-adjacent" company, equitable pay). My parents didn't co sign any loans, I didn't even go to college. No connections ever involved in getting a job, no friends of parents for summer jobs or anything. Just mind numbing famounts of hours spent single mindedly working on things from childhood to adulthood. Struggling to teach myself, struggling against everyone telling my I was wasting my time (in their defense, I almost didn't graduate high school over how focused I was on projects that ultimately didn't become anything), sacrificing a lot of what most people experience growing up because I was convinced this was what mattered. - But then you have my parents. My dad grew up with a father who was a non-functioning alcoholic in a 3rd world country. He'd farm for yams to get a few cents to pay for school uniforms. He'd walk a mile out to his friend's house in the middle of the night to be able to read by a lantern because they didn't have one. My mother's father died and a young age and she had to grow up with relatives who didn't hide their disdain for her. As I've grown older I've realized she downplays how bad her situation was growing up, but in the end she wanted to continue education and they forced her to be a seamstress, so she taught herself to type (in the days of typewriters not computers) and joined the police as a secretary in her country. Today my dad has a PhD and my mother has her doctorate. Compared to them I might as well have been handed the world in a silver platter for the simple reason, at least I had time. I wasn't struggling to find food, I wasn't cleaning up after my father after he soiled himself in a drunken stupor. My parents might not have agreed with what I was doing, and it might have brought conflict between us, but they didn't hate me. Of course if you look around you'll find someone who would make their story look like they got a silver platter. After all, at the very least in their poverty they still had peace. They weren't dodging bullets, they weren't in a war-torn country or something. - That's why I have no problem with social pressure telling "modestly privileged, or even hugely privileged" people to shut up about how absolutely terrible the odds were and how they struggled. Everything is relative. Put a prince who's never lifted a finger to even wash his face in an upper middle class life and he'll cry real tears struggling to figure out how a 9-5 works. There's nothing wrong with giving him a shoulder to cry on, but there's nothing useful or teachable about his struggle (except maybe driving home the how deep his privilege was...) I'd much rather hear from what it took people with much less to get to where they are. There's often more to learn there.