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I started working fulltime at 15 (illegally) to pay for my family to have a place to live. I was not able to attend college and I technically can't prove I ever

I started working fulltime at 15 (illegally) to pay for my family to have a place to live. I was not able to attend college and I technically can't prove I ever graduated HS. I literally carried buckets of shit as a kid for my family of 7 we were so poor. My parents/family had taken the lions share of my earned money until they died in my early twenties. I am now in the 1% of global earnings, and every step has been truly awful degradation as I have had 0 negotiating leverage and just learned to do what others hate because you get paid more for it. I 100% guarantee that in the age of the internet there are more "self made" millionaire teenagers than at any point in history. And that puts the lie to the core feeling he puts out (which to be fair he does contradict multiple times) that there is less opportunity for agency now than previously, as always the sense of ones own childhood agency is still dependent on the quality/existence of your parents, the personality of the child and family/environmental wealth. This article has a true premise in its title, autonomy and agency do matter very much, but the authors inability to grasp that starting conditions are the sole determining factor for any organisms global boundaries of success/failure are telling and they clearly romanticize the stories of extreme outliers and disregard data for narrative. I 100% agree, this individual is romanticizing things he doesn't understand and the article has a lot of generally poor thinking. Base rate fallacy gets people every time, the idea that opportunities for agency have decreased is absurd. Also he apparently has a big thing for allowing kids to build full on buildings because he brings it up twice... which I don't think has ever been generally acceptable. He should read books like little house on the prairie to get a better idea of how poor childhood opportunity has been throughout history.

ctdonath 5y ago
do what others hate because you get paid more for it. So very true. I see top management, up close, spending much of their time handling stupid/obnoxious tasks nobody else wants. I see a friend reap considerable wealth by dealing, literally, in garbage. I see $minwage jobs filled & paid because nobody else wants to. I’d write software for free. It’s the absurd deadlines & requirements I get paid to deliver on. I see the “income inequality” issue as a matter of most people not willing to do - and those who do get paid well.

ctdonath 5y ago

do what others hate because you get paid more for it. So very true. I see top management, up close, spending much of their time handling stupid/obnoxious tasks nobody else wants. I see a friend reap considerable wealth by dealing, literally, in garbage. I see $minwage jobs filled & paid because nobody else wants to. I’d write software for free. It’s the absurd deadlines & requirements I get paid to deliver on. I see the “income inequality” issue as a matter of most people not willing to do - and those who do get paid well.