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A friend started as a construction worker in the suburbs at 18 right out of high school. Now he is 40 and has a general contracting firm so large he grew out th

• SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  Can everyone run their own general contracting firm? Both of your examples require workers. Good for the outliers who are doing well, but if their employees can't keep up with the cost of living that's a problem, right?
  • coding123 3y ago
    have you seen the cost to build a building lately?
    • Scoundreller 3y ago
      In theory, the underlying land value should go down if only the cost of construction went up.
      • adql 3y ago
        Sounds like baseless theory
        • lotsofpulp 3y ago
          The theory requires appropriately high land value taxes. If land owners can simply hold onto land for cheap, and let the rest of society pay disproportionately more for their land’s security via cops and courts, then they are under no rush to sell.
  • Scoundreller 3y ago
    > but if their employees can't keep up with the cost of living that's a problem, right? The sad truth is that employees that can’t afford the cost of living have little leverage and might be replaceable by employees that will work for even less (because they have to, not because they want to).
    • SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
      Well, if you're either a victim or you own the company and make more victims I still think there's a problem.
      • Aerroon 3y ago
        You're not a victim though. That's just nature.
        • SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
          I'm using the words of the person I was originally responding to: "Or maybe just be a victim forever".
• KallDrexx 3y ago
  Those two data points are extremely anecdotal and have survivorship bias. According to data I can find online, in 2021 while 549 breweries opened, 319 closed. As the number of breweries has gone up each year, a significant amount of closures also occurred. Your neighbor could have easily been one of those. More than 50% of small businesses fail in the first year of business according to well published and cited industry data. These are all people who tried to "invent their own futures" and it did not work out. That also doesn't mean that the remaining percentage were successful. Many of them have their owners working much more than corporate full time for less money then they'd be working on a cushy 9-5 job. For an opposite anecdote to yours, a family opened up an ice cream shop around the corner. They had good business and made ok money, but closed after 2 years. Why? Not only was the end of the day profit not great, they were heavily sacrificing time with their own family in order to run the day to day operations. They could have hired more people to handle those day to day hurdles, but that would have meant almost no take home pay. We should encourage people to "invent their own futures" but we also have to be realistic, because we don't have good safety nets for what happens when inventing your future fails, which means you have to make your own safety net. It's also not always trivial to re-enter corporate gigs after you've been doing something else for years, especially if closing of your small business has burned you out. It takes much more than just a good idea to make a small business succeed.
  • inconceivable 3y ago
    "yeah but you might fail and then your life is destroyed" is not exactly a new take on the issue. this is in fact what 99% of people will tell you in real life if you try it. 10 years later those same people will either forget they said anything, or pretend they were on your side all along if you make it.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • DangitBobby 3y ago
      They were on your side all along, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered with the uncomfortable conversation about how they don't think your idea is going to be successful.
• ctvo 3y ago
  > Or maybe just be a victim forever but I don’t think that’s a good outcome. Alternatively, recognize that you have two anecdotes of people succeeding. It doesn't mean there aren't systemic issues, and people can both strive to succeed in the current system and push for its change. It's dull reading tl;dr: bootstrap yourself like my friends.
  • monero-xmr 3y ago
    Everything starts small and takes time. The moment someone gets successful there is some tendency to try and tear them down, find out why they were privileged, what connections they had, and worst case say they got lucky. If it weren’t for people trying to do something - anything - taking a risk - not knowing if it will succeed but not caring if it goes under or not - there wouldn’t even be anything. No art, no startups, no creative endeavors. Especially among the highly educated in our western system, people desire guaranteed paths. “Check these boxes and get this, get this credential and get that.” Everything in reality is hustle and sales. As another anecdote a former gym trainer is now a firefighter. She tried a long time to be a firefighter but couldn’t break into it despite passing all the tests - there is a whole application process following all the tests and credentials and it’s quite complex. So after a few years she started sniffing out where the firefighters hung out, their bars, and went out there and spoke to them, told them her story, made connections. She did get accepted following that because the people who could make it happen helped her, after she took the initiative to think outside the box and meet them in a unique way. All the successful people have a different story. And your definition of success can vary greatly. But to say society is making success impossible is simply untrue - I see so much opportunity and so many upcoming people all the time. Unless you are disabled or traumatized or have some other issue, I can’t take someone who blames society for their lack of “being where they want to be in life” seriously. Not in America at least.
    • lotsofpulp 3y ago
      > Especially among the highly educated in our western system, people desire guaranteed paths. Yes, guaranteed healthcare and land. Option 1) you can have a likelihood of being able to provide healthcare and decent home for your kids. Option 2) high likelihood of not being able to provide either for your kids. I am not referring to the 0.1% of people who have the option at tech startups paying generous pay and benefits.
• bugglebeetle 3y ago
  50% of small businesses fail within the first five years, so lovely anecdotes and all, but textbook survivorship bias.
  • HDThoreaun 3y ago
    That’s not a new phenomenon. Life has always been hard, the narrative that it’s gotten harder is much more of a survivorship bias.
    • bugglebeetle 3y ago
      Sorry, but statistics don’t care about your platitudes.
      • HDThoreaun 3y ago
        What statistics? All the stats I've seen are that there has never been less poverty in the world.
        • winphone1974 3y ago
          Many of the failures in the west are far above what global statistics define as poverty, so this doesn't make much sense
          • HDThoreaun 3y ago
            Do you have any statistics saying that the west is poorer than it used to be?
            • brnaftr361 3y ago
              Can you transmute qualitative data into quantitative data and reliably measure it?
        • bugglebeetle 3y ago
• hotpotamus 3y ago
  That's pretty unusual to graduate college at 18, and then to start as a construction worker with a college degree. But my anecdote would be my uncle who started as a diesel mechanic from a young age. He worked hard all his life but never made a lot of money and then died of cancer at 60.
  • monero-xmr 3y ago
    I meant high school, edited
• HEmanZ 3y ago
  1) there is lots of opportunity in the market 2) the opportunities in the market are less common and more difficult, in labor, luck, or expertise required than the past 3 generations experienced. How are these two contradictory things? Put another way, at the individual level, there is still lots of opportunity. But at the aggregate level there is a squeeze.
• bittercynic 3y ago
  I'm sincerely happy for their success, and it an important feature of the US that some sharp, driven people are able to create a substantial fortune for themselves. In some ways this is in direct conflict with working-class people being able to assemble a stable life where they can depend on being able to work diligently and have some stability in life. I think the total wealth of society could be greater if we adjusted some laws and the tax code to make it more possible for working class people to have a real shot at a stable life through diligent, hard, work.
  • pdonis 3y ago
    > make it more possible for working class people to have a real shot at a stable life through diligent, hard, work The problem with this is that, ultimately, if you view yourself as "working class", as opposed to being an entrepreneur, then your shot at a stable life through diligent, hard work is not dependent on the laws and the tax code, it's dependent on the overall business environment and what kinds of employers you can find. Which means, on luck. If you are a lucky working class person, you will be able to find an employer who (a) recognizes your diligence and hard work, (b) is able to manage the business risks of the company so that they can afford to reward you accordingly, and (c) does in fact reward you as you deserve, i.e., is willing to share the benefits of the business with you even though you're not an owner, you're just an employee. I'm not saying there are no such employers out there; but my description should make it evident that they will be rare. Far too rare for all diligent, hard-working working class people to benefit from them. The diligent, hard-working working class people who aren't lucky enough to find one of those employers will have to live with whatever they can get, which will range all the way from "okay but not great" down to "sweatshop". The only way to escape this crapshoot is to be an entrepreneur--i.e., to own at least a piece of whatever business your livelihood depends on (and in practice it has to be a large enough piece that your voice will carry weight in business decisions). In other words, dealing with unavoidable business risks due to the fact that the world is always changing and businesses have to adjust, is something that, all things considered, you are better off not outsourcing to an employer.
    • andrekandre 3y ago
• yieldcrv 3y ago
  > I think there is a failure to think outside the prescribed paths. because the prescribed paths work for a larger population. it doesn't need ingenuity, and less luck. hence why it is generic advice. economies cannot support everyone being an entrepreneur. if you want to be a go-getter that's fine. you're in like company here. but its dumb or at least disingenuous to think of this as a predictably available example for all.
• rnk 3y ago
  Great that these people had success. But how many breweries are there a town of 10k people, 1 or 2 maybe. These are the 1% success stories. The economics doesn't allow each of us to open businesses that succeed, there just isn't that much demand. Such as amazon wiping out many small stores, before that walmart killing small cities downtowns when they built one of the edge of town. That doesn't mean there were not some other new businesses to be formed, but there's a limit.
• diob 3y ago
  Aren't these just anecdotes though? What was their background? What time period did they do these things? Did they have support growing up? A strong network? How many other friends or neighbors do you have and what are their outcomes? Has anyone failed? Why? Sorry, but I'll trust the data around economic equality above random stranger anecdotes online. Yeah, I myself am doing wonderful as well, but I'm not so narcissistic as to imagine that's some special property of "not being a victim". What a bleak outlook to have of one's fellow man.
• austhrow743 3y ago
  Needing to invent your own future is things getting harder.
• XorNot 3y ago
  What do you do though? Why aren't you those people? Why don't you have their story?