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> is still privilege The guy worked hard and earned his year off, don’t dismiss it by calling it privilege. He has the skills and intelligence and hard workin

> is still privilege The guy worked hard and earned his year off, don’t dismiss it by calling it privilege. He has the skills and intelligence and hard working habits to earn the year off, this is not privilege. Successful people aren’t successful because of privilege, that’s just a label for an excuse by those who aren’t successful. You get what you earn in life.

gchamonlive 5y ago
Can everybody earn a year off after working hard? No, because this is privilege. To be born in a rich country. To have family structure to study and go to college, to have a stable job and a successful career after graduation. To be lucky enough to choose a career that is in demand. Or to open a business that is successful. People underestimate A LOT how much of a role luck plays in successful careers. Sure hard work is necessary, but you can very well burn out and still be unsuccessful. If you can't see this, maybe this is your privilege that is blinding you from what most people go through in life.
- bluedevil2k 5y ago
  I think “privilege” is just the excuse used by people who aren’t willing to work hard, aren’t willing to put the extra time into learning a new skill, or aren’t willing to acknowledge that they didn’t get blessed genetically. It’s easier to create some label and blame everything on that. “Oh, I’m not rich at age 30. Must be privilege.” “Oh, I got passed over for that promotion. Must be their privilege”. People need to take some self ownership - the world isn’t a fair place. Stop blaming someone else and have a little introspection about why you aren’t the one taking a year off. I mean, your statement “To be lucky enough to choose a career that is in demand” just misses the mark so entirely. There’s NO LUCK INVOLVED!! People on HN didn’t pick their major/hobby out of a hat. The picked tech because they love it and it pays well, and they have the intelligence to do it well. If someone chooses to be a street musician, they can’t blame “privilege” when they can’t take a year off. “maybe this is your privilege that is blinding you” - no, maybe your rose colored glasses are blinding you here. Not everyone can take a year off, the world is unfair, and some people will live better lives than others. Deal with it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - violiner 5y ago
    > Not everyone can take a year off, the world is unfair, and some people will live better lives than others. This is literally what privilege means. It's not an insult.
  - skavi 5y ago
    There certainly is luck involved in choosing a hobby which turns into a lucrative skill. And privilege involved when that hobby is programming which involves having sufficient access to fairly expensive machines. I think "rose colored glasses" may not be the expression you were looking for. The person you are replying to is not ignoring inequity, they are acknowledging it. Sure people will always live better lives than others, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't work towards a more fair world. Recognizing that the playing field isn't level, and that outcomes aren't controlled only by the amount of hard work you put in makes it easier to push towards a better world.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - maigret 5y ago
    You should read Nassim Taleb, especially Fooled by Randomness
  - notreallyserio 5y ago
    > There’s NO LUCK INVOLVED!! People on HN didn’t pick their major/hobby out of a hat. The picked tech because they love it and it pays well, and they have the intelligence to do it well. I don't know about you but it was certainly luck for me. I was lucky to be born where, when, and to whom. Tweak any of those variables a bit and I'd be in a completely different career. A few hundred miles east and I'd be living on a farm instead of a suburb of Big Tech City. A decade prior and I wouldn't have had access to computers in school. Different parents and I might not have had the same encouragement to get into tech. It's an incredible amount of luck when you actually think about it and don't just jerk your knee when someone uses the term privilege.
- cm2012 5y ago
  Not to mention intelligence, willingness to work hard, etc are all highly heritable, aka genetic luck
  - axiosgunnar 5y ago
    So? Being smart sometimes has downsides, eg existential crises etc Life is not fair.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  This seems to me "glibly trivial". Of course most of us are relatively privileged to someone who was born blind and got cancer at the age of three, but it is a shallow observation. Luck is something that happens to a lot of people, including the unsuccessful ones, but few of us, successful or not, are willing to admit that we burnt some chance, or several of them. It is easier to blame someone else or something else (absence of necessary luck) for unsatisfactory results. It is easier to attribute certain satisfactory results in other people to their luck, without discussing the effort necessary to exploit that luck or even recognize a lucky set of circumstances and act on them (because these tend to be fleeting). We are more of a rationalizing species than a rational one, and we are really good at framing things in a way that strokes our egos.
sam0x17 5y ago
> don’t dismiss it by calling it privilege There are literally millions of people who deserve / have "earned" this privilege, but aren't given it. The word lucky comes to mind.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  If everyone in the world was just smart and hard working enough they could all take a year off together.
  - axiosgunnar 5y ago
    And at the same time!
41b696ef1113 5y ago
>that’s just a label for an excuse by those who aren’t successful. You get what you earn in life. To take an extreme example: how hard do the children of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, etc have to work to "earn" their fortunes and success?
quesera 5y ago
> Successful people aren’t successful because of privilege, that’s just a label for an excuse by those who aren’t successful. You get what you earn in life. I wish there were words to convince you of how profoundly incorrect you are about this. Unfortunately, it will probably require years and pain instead. Maybe your own pain, or if you're more fortunate you will develop empathy for others. In the meantime, some people say that reading Ayn Rand helps -- after the initial rush of affirmation, you grow to realize that she's just another writer of superhero comics. As that slowly percolates into your awareness, you start to understand humans and society are really quite complicated things, which can help you become a more tolerant person.
- gchamonlive 5y ago
  Thanks for reminding me of Ayn Rand, lot of what I understand comes from philosophers I carelessly brushed over. I have to take some time to really dig into their work.

gchamonlive 5y ago

Can everybody earn a year off after working hard? No, because this is privilege. To be born in a rich country. To have family structure to study and go to college, to have a stable job and a successful career after graduation. To be lucky enough to choose a career that is in demand. Or to open a business that is successful. People underestimate A LOT how much of a role luck plays in successful careers. Sure hard work is necessary, but you can very well burn out and still be unsuccessful. If you can't see this, maybe this is your privilege that is blinding you from what most people go through in life.

bluedevil2k 5y ago
I think “privilege” is just the excuse used by people who aren’t willing to work hard, aren’t willing to put the extra time into learning a new skill, or aren’t willing to acknowledge that they didn’t get blessed genetically. It’s easier to create some label and blame everything on that. “Oh, I’m not rich at age 30. Must be privilege.” “Oh, I got passed over for that promotion. Must be their privilege”. People need to take some self ownership - the world isn’t a fair place. Stop blaming someone else and have a little introspection about why you aren’t the one taking a year off. I mean, your statement “To be lucky enough to choose a career that is in demand” just misses the mark so entirely. There’s NO LUCK INVOLVED!! People on HN didn’t pick their major/hobby out of a hat. The picked tech because they love it and it pays well, and they have the intelligence to do it well. If someone chooses to be a street musician, they can’t blame “privilege” when they can’t take a year off. “maybe this is your privilege that is blinding you” - no, maybe your rose colored glasses are blinding you here. Not everyone can take a year off, the world is unfair, and some people will live better lives than others. Deal with it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- violiner 5y ago
  > Not everyone can take a year off, the world is unfair, and some people will live better lives than others. This is literally what privilege means. It's not an insult.
- skavi 5y ago
  There certainly is luck involved in choosing a hobby which turns into a lucrative skill. And privilege involved when that hobby is programming which involves having sufficient access to fairly expensive machines. I think "rose colored glasses" may not be the expression you were looking for. The person you are replying to is not ignoring inequity, they are acknowledging it. Sure people will always live better lives than others, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't work towards a more fair world. Recognizing that the playing field isn't level, and that outcomes aren't controlled only by the amount of hard work you put in makes it easier to push towards a better world.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- maigret 5y ago
  You should read Nassim Taleb, especially Fooled by Randomness
- notreallyserio 5y ago
  > There’s NO LUCK INVOLVED!! People on HN didn’t pick their major/hobby out of a hat. The picked tech because they love it and it pays well, and they have the intelligence to do it well. I don't know about you but it was certainly luck for me. I was lucky to be born where, when, and to whom. Tweak any of those variables a bit and I'd be in a completely different career. A few hundred miles east and I'd be living on a farm instead of a suburb of Big Tech City. A decade prior and I wouldn't have had access to computers in school. Different parents and I might not have had the same encouragement to get into tech. It's an incredible amount of luck when you actually think about it and don't just jerk your knee when someone uses the term privilege.
cm2012 5y ago
Not to mention intelligence, willingness to work hard, etc are all highly heritable, aka genetic luck
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  So? Being smart sometimes has downsides, eg existential crises etc Life is not fair.
inglor_cz 5y ago
This seems to me "glibly trivial". Of course most of us are relatively privileged to someone who was born blind and got cancer at the age of three, but it is a shallow observation. Luck is something that happens to a lot of people, including the unsuccessful ones, but few of us, successful or not, are willing to admit that we burnt some chance, or several of them. It is easier to blame someone else or something else (absence of necessary luck) for unsatisfactory results. It is easier to attribute certain satisfactory results in other people to their luck, without discussing the effort necessary to exploit that luck or even recognize a lucky set of circumstances and act on them (because these tend to be fleeting). We are more of a rationalizing species than a rational one, and we are really good at framing things in a way that strokes our egos.

sam0x17 5y ago

> don’t dismiss it by calling it privilege There are literally millions of people who deserve / have "earned" this privilege, but aren't given it. The word lucky comes to mind.

quickthrower2 5y ago
If everyone in the world was just smart and hard working enough they could all take a year off together.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  And at the same time!

41b696ef1113 5y ago

>that’s just a label for an excuse by those who aren’t successful. You get what you earn in life. To take an extreme example: how hard do the children of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, etc have to work to "earn" their fortunes and success?

quesera 5y ago

> Successful people aren’t successful because of privilege, that’s just a label for an excuse by those who aren’t successful. You get what you earn in life. I wish there were words to convince you of how profoundly incorrect you are about this. Unfortunately, it will probably require years and pain instead. Maybe your own pain, or if you're more fortunate you will develop empathy for others. In the meantime, some people say that reading Ayn Rand helps -- after the initial rush of affirmation, you grow to realize that she's just another writer of superhero comics. As that slowly percolates into your awareness, you start to understand humans and society are really quite complicated things, which can help you become a more tolerant person.

gchamonlive 5y ago
Thanks for reminding me of Ayn Rand, lot of what I understand comes from philosophers I carelessly brushed over. I have to take some time to really dig into their work.