3 ms·

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 coll

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.

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.