7 ms·

I find the Harvard angst interesting. I’ve never once felt someone else going to Harvard impacted my life in any way whatsoever. I’ve advanced further than ever

I find the Harvard angst interesting. I’ve never once felt someone else going to Harvard impacted my life in any way whatsoever. I’ve advanced further than everyone I know that went to Harvard in my career and not once did someone wink at the Harvard guy and pass me over. I’m sure it happens, and I’m sure there are secret clubs I don’t get invited to (well the Harvard club is pretty nice and I was invited there by a great uncle who went to Harvard - they have these really great puffy dinner rolls). But it’s never caused me a moment of anxiety, suffering, doubt, or jealousy. The fascination has never made sense to me.

behnamoh 3y ago
their dropouts impact your life tho.
merth 3y ago
probably nobody felt Salomon Brothers impacted their life but he changed your life more than Michael Jordan, the iPod and YouTube put together. -Big Short
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Given I’ve spent a long time on Wall Street that quote doesn’t quite jibe with me ;-) I’d also say it’s false for almost anyway - YouTube directly impacts most people considerably more than Wall Street shenanigans, and that I lived the plot of the big short and know what actually happened for a first hand fact, I can assure you the big short is extraordinarily short of accuracy.
  - kevinventullo 3y ago
    Maybe this is veering off-topic, but as someone outside of that industry who understands the basic ideas around repackaging loans, etc., I’m very curious to hear which aspects you think are inaccurate!
    - fnordpiglet 3y ago
      The big short basically painted it as a naked cash grab by cackling Wall Street traders. My experience was it was fairly prosaic at the banks, essentially trying to construct products our customers wanted to buy. There was a lot of stuff that was going wrong, a lot of it was at: At the micro level: * local and regional banks stuffing mortgage pipelines with garbage, colluding with appraisers and others to make outrageous loans with fabricated or otherwise fraudulent docs * loan officers effectively tricking ill equipped borrowers into unsuitable products against suitability requirements At the macro level: * rating agencies were ill equipped and were rating structured products AAA despite them paying junk bond returns - we tried to show them models demonstrating their ratings were too rosy but they kept us at arms length - as they should - but we felt it was really important they reassess. They wouldn’t. * Large institutional investors seeking juiced returns but were restricted to AAA investments were eager for the junk returns, and were aware that these products were very risky despite the rating The banks weren’t angels in this, but it’s been sold as a Wall Street issue. It was far greater than the street. Also, “the big short” was taken on because Goldman stopped using theoretic models for valuing CDO’s and used fundamental models that showed they were extremely long subprime mortgage risk. As market makers they have risk limits on their books by internal policy and were required by their risk officers to short subprime to bring them within neutral risk with respect to their subprime mortgage exposure. It wasn’t a nefarious plot to screw the American mortgage holder - it was the bank functioning properly with proper risk management, the problem wasn’t the “big short” - it was the “big long.” Market makers are not speculators - their whole purpose is to stay neutral in the market and facilitate anyone who wants to trade long or short by quoting both sides.
      - kevinventullo 3y ago
        So, I think I agree with everything you said except the first sentence! My takeaway from the movie was pretty much what you wrote in the bullets. Specifically, that the set of folks who ultimately profited from betting against the mortgages were the only ones not asleep at the wheel. Moreover, if more people had correctly clocked the risk earlier on (especially the rating agencies), we wouldn’t have ended up in that situation in the first place. I thought the movie mostly portrayed the bankers sympathetically, e.g. the scene with Brad Pitt: “Just... Stop f**in' dancing.”
curiousllama 3y ago
Most of those university clubs are kinda dumb anyway. It's a country club; you can just join a different one and get the exact same benefit.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Yeah but those dinner rolls are really tasty. But yes, it’s something I place no value on being able to go to whenever I want. I’d rather join a makerspace, and the people there are a lot more interesting.
Barrin92 3y ago
>I’ve never once felt someone else going to Harvard impacted my life in any way whatsoever Eight of the nine current sitting Supreme Court Judges are either Yale or Harvard Law graduates. It's pretty likely Harvard has had an impact on your life in a lot of ways because a lot of people who govern you went there. Degrees from those schools are basically licenses to occupy the highest positions in the country's administration, it matters a pretty big deal who gets funneled through those institutions.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  > It's pretty likely Harvard has had an impact on your life in a lot of ways because a lot of people who govern you went there. And, in addition, because at least presently, anyone who didn't do Ivy+ is essentially never going to be a SCOTUS judge. The obvious objection is that given there are only 9 justices at a time, essentially nobody is ever going to be a SCOTUS judge anyway. But that misses the important gating function (as TFA puts it) which begins with Ivy+ schools. Yes, the chance that you or your neighbor will ever be a SCOTUS justice is essentially zero. But the 9 have to come from somewhere, and the current process essentially guarantees that they must have passed through Ivy+. It's far from clear that this is desirable. Now notice that the same issue applies to the other fields showing massive Ivy+ over-representation. As TFA says, maybe a gating function is required (sometimes), but the justification for it operating at 18 and not later (22, or later still) is weak to non-existent.
  - torstenvl 3y ago
    What law schools are admitting 18yos? I don't know if it's intentional but you're conflating mutually exclusive lines of thought. The argument that such decisions should be made at age 22 instead of age 18 doesn't support — in fact contradicts — your argument that trajectories toward SCOTUS should not be related to law school admissions (which do indeed happen at age 22 instead of age 18).
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      The argument is not about Harvard Law, it's about Harvard. Yes, 8 of the 9 went to Harvard or Yale Law. But 6 of the nine went to Harvard, Yale or Princeton as undergrads.
waynesonfire 3y ago
That's the right attitude to have. We can still do better. Trchnology like chatgpt can help close the equity gap. It's still left to be seen how much the elites will plunder it.
anonymoushn 3y ago
One may as well comment that they don't see what the big deal is with racism or with having one citizenship instead of another
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  I think that’s fairly extreme. I don’t think structural racism and Harvard are analogous, I grew up in eastern Tennessee in a time of extreme racial strife and saw things with my own eyes and felt the reality of things you likely only saw on tv or read about. Comparing rich kids going to rich kid schools and living rich kid lives to people being terrorized in their homes for being born and watching their friends hung from trees isn’t the same thing at all.
  - lwelyk 3y ago
    Agreed, but the current class of rich people exist only within the context of those terrible racist things happening. Generational wealth was impossible to achieve for entire races of people, redlining isn't even that old. It's related.
samvher 3y ago
I have worked in an environment where it really did seem to matter. An organization set up by Harvard folks where other Harvard folks seemed to have advantages in (a) getting in and (b) getting ahead. It wasn't ever really addressed explicitly (though "credentialism" was occasionally mentioned by others as well, I wasn't the only one who noticed). It definitely played a role in my leaving that organization. Edit - I do feel like I should mention that the organization was improving on this front when I left.
- blitzar 3y ago
  I live in a non US country so we can for once have the counterfactual, as for us harvard does not exist. I have worked in an environment where {maths degrees} really did seem to matter. An organization set up by people with {maths degrees} where other people with {maths degrees} seemed to have advantages in (a) getting in and (b) getting ahead. It wasn't ever really addressed explicitly (though "credentialism" was occasionally mentioned by others as well, I wasn't the only one who noticed). It definitely played zero role in my leaving that organization. Maybe the problem is that maths degrees exist.
  - samvher 3y ago
    I'm from a non US country, so the concept of a Harvard is foreign to me as well. And yes, I've also worked for selective employers where maths degrees mattered a lot. It never bothered me. Not sure what you're trying to say. Hiring people based on individual merit and skills is not the same thing as hiring people based on an exclusive network. The Harvard employer favored Harvard folks over others who otherwise had the same (or better) skills.
    - blitzar 3y ago
      I doubt anyone anywhere ever has been the "best" hire - even / especially the greatest hires of all time, there was someone who had the same (or better) skills. There are ~8 billion others, rounded to the nearest meaningful number ~8 billion people never saw the job ad or applied for it or were eligable because of the exclusive network of "countries". Unless there is an epidemic of Harvard Art Majors being made Head of Brain Surgery upon graduation on the back of their credentials, their merit and skill is still contributing something.
metabagel 3y ago
It seems like if something doesn’t affect you personally, you don’t have any overriding sense of fairness regarding what’s clearly a separate academic and career track for elites.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  That’s right. I live my life only, and will never live another life. My energy is applied to my life, family, friends, community in the present and the fact someone else’s life is easier than mine doesn’t bother me much. There are plenty of things I think are unfair or unjust, and the existence of Harvard is so far down that list it’s not even funny. War, poverty, the destruction of the environment, racism, sexism, and many other things that are absolute negatives for people bother me more than a positive someone else has.
  - toastercat 3y ago
    > That’s right. I live my life only, and will never live another life. My energy is applied to my life, family, friends, community in the present and the fact someone else’s life is easier than mine doesn’t bother me much. Yes, ignorance is bliss. > There are plenty of things I think are unfair or unjust, and the existence of Harvard is so far down that list it’s not even funny. War, poverty, the destruction of the environment, racism, sexism, and many other things that are absolute negatives for people bother me more than a positive someone else has. What if the same mechanisms that cause the destruction of the environment/poverty/racism/sexism/etc. negatives are the same mechanisms that allow an institution like Harvard to exist? Do you think those who combat poverty/racism/sexism don't see them as an overarching socio-political problems that permeate all parts of our society? Harvard does not exist in a vacuum.
    - sixstringtheory 3y ago
      > ignorance is bliss Sounds more like acceptance of something they are not ignorant of. > What if the same mechanisms Ok but are they? This hypothetical isn’t useful if they aren’t, and I’m not convinced they are.
ryandrake 3y ago
The existence of billionaires and millionaires negatively affects everyone else's standard of living via gentrification. Imagine you live in a community of 1000 middle class people, all making, say, $30K/yr to $60K/yr. You make $45K/year so you're about average. You can all afford homes, goods, and so on. Suddenly, 10 millionaires move in. Housing prices start to rise a little bit, grocery stores get a little more upscale and more expensive, car dealers see $$$ and jack up their prices. Then, a billionaire moves in. The market responds again. Suddenly, you're not doing so good anymore, despite earning the same as you were before the millionaires moved in. Now scale that up country-wide or world-wide. The more wealthy people there are, the higher the average cost of everything.
- endisneigh 3y ago
  that is not how it works at all, lol.
- TheRealPomax 3y ago
  Downvotes notwithstanding, if you make $45k but you can afford an actual house, you're pretty much a unicorn at this point in time in the western world (US, Europe, doesn't matter, everywhere's pretty much unaffordable now). Or you gave up on civilization and you bought a property out in the sticks of course. Either way, you're not going to get 10 millionaires just moving into an area with houses that are so cheap they ignore them as "too cheap" on a realty listing. Even if you're talking about an investment purchase and then they don't move in, themselves. You might have a property developer though, looking to create the next HOA hellscape. This really isn't a good hypothetical.
- culturestate 3y ago
  > Imagine you live in a community of 1000 middle class people … Suddenly, 10 millionaires move in. I’m not an economist and there are countless reasons for that, but I can’t imagine that 10 millionaires in a community of 1,000 people would materially change life for the other 990 in the way that you’re suggesting. Gentrification and unbalanced income strata are real things and real problems, but the 1% aren’t causing them simply by existing.
earthboundkid 3y ago
I think it depends on where you live and what you do. In high school, I considered the Ivies priggish and didn't apply. My high school colleagues who went didn't disabuse me of my prejudice, and looking back after 20 years on Facebook, they aren't especially more accomplished than the rest of us. (Our most famous alum went to NYU and made it in Hollywood.) That said, in DC, Boston, and parts of NY, going to an Ivy is an unwritten requirement for a lot of jobs, so it generates a lot of ill will from those who didn't go. I think the solution is to just not live on the Northeast Corridor, and you can totally ignore it.
Balgair 3y ago
These articles tend to show a divide in the HN community (speaking in broad terms here, HN is incredibly diverse). One one hand, there are people that love coding, or are not from the US, or have made themselves successful, or generally don't care about fitting into molds, etc. Think those Kevin-Kelly greybeards in the back sever rooms that know everything and don't really care about the pata-gucci. The guys that used to go to Def-Con and Burning Man when it had guns. On the other hand, you have people that really really care about FICO scores, about planning for the future, about daycare ratings, about where to put the active cell in an excel sheet when you send it to a client, etc. These are the people in the front of the office who network like crazy and will jump to another company at a whiff of an extra 1/2 percent of bonus. They are the guys that see the eggshell white with Romani type, and think it's really something. The world needs both types of people, full stop. We need scaffolders and detailers. But it's the second type of person that really cares about what Harvard is doing. It's okay to let those people hack away in a comments section and not have a clue as to what they are 'wasting' their time on. It's their boat, they row it like they want to.
rayiner 3y ago
Okay but the Supreme Court has just one person who didn’t not Harvard or Yale. The majority of Biden’s cabinet went to Harvard or Yale. You might not believe that Harvard acts as a gatekeeper in practice, but it does.
laidoffamazon 3y ago
> I’ve advanced further than everyone I know that went to Harvard in my career and not once did someone wink at the Harvard guy and pass me over. I'm only 27 and I definitely have - basically every Harvard CS grad from the year I graduated from my state school makes at least $200k more than me a year if they're in the workforce instead of academia and has a significantly higher net worth as a result!
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Harvard is a pretty mediocre CS school. I would expect MIT, CMU, Stanford, Berkeley, UIUC, and the other (last I looked) 30 better schools for CS to do better on average. I don’t mean this as unkind, but Harvard is very hard to get into and very selective and state schools generally are neither. This often means the people that get in, other than legacy, are very capable people. State schools also have very capable people, but as a percentage it’s the vast majority of Harvard and the vast minority of state school students are equally as capable. This gives a leg up on the first jobs for sure - one, they’re likely to be more capable in general, and they have an achievement on their resume to prove it. Admission to Harvard IS an achievement in life. But these advantages disappear quickly if you’re as capable or more, especially if you’re aggressive in locking in achievements and seeking better opportunities. After maybe 10 years into your career what school you went to matters almost not at all, and it’s entirely based on what you did with that opportunity. Many Harvard grads start strong due to the achievement on their resume then top out quickly in their careers because they’re just not very commercial, and many rely on their brand too much. But you should -still- expect someone capable of getting into Harvard to be just as capable in their careers. That’s simply life. If it weren’t for Harvard, they would find other ways to differentiate. The truth is, labor markets are not egalitarian. They reward people differently for different reasons, and their ability to compensate based on contribution is highly inefficient. That rewards people with achievements like a top school early when nothing else differentiates resumes. But it fades quickly, and it’s up to you to make a stronger resume if it matters to you. But I think it shouldn’t matter. That was my point. Someone else doing better than you shouldn’t matter. What should matter is if you’re happy with what you’re doing yourself ignoring all other people. Anything else is petty, unhelpful, and at odds with how life and reality actually is.

behnamoh 3y ago

their dropouts impact your life tho.

merth 3y ago

probably nobody felt Salomon Brothers impacted their life but he changed your life more than Michael Jordan, the iPod and YouTube put together. -Big Short

fnordpiglet 3y ago
Given I’ve spent a long time on Wall Street that quote doesn’t quite jibe with me ;-) I’d also say it’s false for almost anyway - YouTube directly impacts most people considerably more than Wall Street shenanigans, and that I lived the plot of the big short and know what actually happened for a first hand fact, I can assure you the big short is extraordinarily short of accuracy.
- kevinventullo 3y ago
  Maybe this is veering off-topic, but as someone outside of that industry who understands the basic ideas around repackaging loans, etc., I’m very curious to hear which aspects you think are inaccurate!
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    The big short basically painted it as a naked cash grab by cackling Wall Street traders. My experience was it was fairly prosaic at the banks, essentially trying to construct products our customers wanted to buy. There was a lot of stuff that was going wrong, a lot of it was at: At the micro level: * local and regional banks stuffing mortgage pipelines with garbage, colluding with appraisers and others to make outrageous loans with fabricated or otherwise fraudulent docs * loan officers effectively tricking ill equipped borrowers into unsuitable products against suitability requirements At the macro level: * rating agencies were ill equipped and were rating structured products AAA despite them paying junk bond returns - we tried to show them models demonstrating their ratings were too rosy but they kept us at arms length - as they should - but we felt it was really important they reassess. They wouldn’t. * Large institutional investors seeking juiced returns but were restricted to AAA investments were eager for the junk returns, and were aware that these products were very risky despite the rating The banks weren’t angels in this, but it’s been sold as a Wall Street issue. It was far greater than the street. Also, “the big short” was taken on because Goldman stopped using theoretic models for valuing CDO’s and used fundamental models that showed they were extremely long subprime mortgage risk. As market makers they have risk limits on their books by internal policy and were required by their risk officers to short subprime to bring them within neutral risk with respect to their subprime mortgage exposure. It wasn’t a nefarious plot to screw the American mortgage holder - it was the bank functioning properly with proper risk management, the problem wasn’t the “big short” - it was the “big long.” Market makers are not speculators - their whole purpose is to stay neutral in the market and facilitate anyone who wants to trade long or short by quoting both sides.
    - kevinventullo 3y ago
      So, I think I agree with everything you said except the first sentence! My takeaway from the movie was pretty much what you wrote in the bullets. Specifically, that the set of folks who ultimately profited from betting against the mortgages were the only ones not asleep at the wheel. Moreover, if more people had correctly clocked the risk earlier on (especially the rating agencies), we wouldn’t have ended up in that situation in the first place. I thought the movie mostly portrayed the bankers sympathetically, e.g. the scene with Brad Pitt: “Just... Stop f**in' dancing.”

curiousllama 3y ago

Most of those university clubs are kinda dumb anyway. It's a country club; you can just join a different one and get the exact same benefit.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
Yeah but those dinner rolls are really tasty. But yes, it’s something I place no value on being able to go to whenever I want. I’d rather join a makerspace, and the people there are a lot more interesting.

Barrin92 3y ago

>I’ve never once felt someone else going to Harvard impacted my life in any way whatsoever Eight of the nine current sitting Supreme Court Judges are either Yale or Harvard Law graduates. It's pretty likely Harvard has had an impact on your life in a lot of ways because a lot of people who govern you went there. Degrees from those schools are basically licenses to occupy the highest positions in the country's administration, it matters a pretty big deal who gets funneled through those institutions.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> It's pretty likely Harvard has had an impact on your life in a lot of ways because a lot of people who govern you went there. And, in addition, because at least presently, anyone who didn't do Ivy+ is essentially never going to be a SCOTUS judge. The obvious objection is that given there are only 9 justices at a time, essentially nobody is ever going to be a SCOTUS judge anyway. But that misses the important gating function (as TFA puts it) which begins with Ivy+ schools. Yes, the chance that you or your neighbor will ever be a SCOTUS justice is essentially zero. But the 9 have to come from somewhere, and the current process essentially guarantees that they must have passed through Ivy+. It's far from clear that this is desirable. Now notice that the same issue applies to the other fields showing massive Ivy+ over-representation. As TFA says, maybe a gating function is required (sometimes), but the justification for it operating at 18 and not later (22, or later still) is weak to non-existent.
- torstenvl 3y ago
  What law schools are admitting 18yos? I don't know if it's intentional but you're conflating mutually exclusive lines of thought. The argument that such decisions should be made at age 22 instead of age 18 doesn't support — in fact contradicts — your argument that trajectories toward SCOTUS should not be related to law school admissions (which do indeed happen at age 22 instead of age 18).
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    The argument is not about Harvard Law, it's about Harvard. Yes, 8 of the 9 went to Harvard or Yale Law. But 6 of the nine went to Harvard, Yale or Princeton as undergrads.

waynesonfire 3y ago

That's the right attitude to have. We can still do better. Trchnology like chatgpt can help close the equity gap. It's still left to be seen how much the elites will plunder it.

anonymoushn 3y ago

One may as well comment that they don't see what the big deal is with racism or with having one citizenship instead of another

fnordpiglet 3y ago
I think that’s fairly extreme. I don’t think structural racism and Harvard are analogous, I grew up in eastern Tennessee in a time of extreme racial strife and saw things with my own eyes and felt the reality of things you likely only saw on tv or read about. Comparing rich kids going to rich kid schools and living rich kid lives to people being terrorized in their homes for being born and watching their friends hung from trees isn’t the same thing at all.
- lwelyk 3y ago
  Agreed, but the current class of rich people exist only within the context of those terrible racist things happening. Generational wealth was impossible to achieve for entire races of people, redlining isn't even that old. It's related.

samvher 3y ago

I have worked in an environment where it really did seem to matter. An organization set up by Harvard folks where other Harvard folks seemed to have advantages in (a) getting in and (b) getting ahead. It wasn't ever really addressed explicitly (though "credentialism" was occasionally mentioned by others as well, I wasn't the only one who noticed). It definitely played a role in my leaving that organization. Edit - I do feel like I should mention that the organization was improving on this front when I left.

blitzar 3y ago
I live in a non US country so we can for once have the counterfactual, as for us harvard does not exist. I have worked in an environment where {maths degrees} really did seem to matter. An organization set up by people with {maths degrees} where other people with {maths degrees} seemed to have advantages in (a) getting in and (b) getting ahead. It wasn't ever really addressed explicitly (though "credentialism" was occasionally mentioned by others as well, I wasn't the only one who noticed). It definitely played zero role in my leaving that organization. Maybe the problem is that maths degrees exist.
- samvher 3y ago
  I'm from a non US country, so the concept of a Harvard is foreign to me as well. And yes, I've also worked for selective employers where maths degrees mattered a lot. It never bothered me. Not sure what you're trying to say. Hiring people based on individual merit and skills is not the same thing as hiring people based on an exclusive network. The Harvard employer favored Harvard folks over others who otherwise had the same (or better) skills.
  - blitzar 3y ago
    I doubt anyone anywhere ever has been the "best" hire - even / especially the greatest hires of all time, there was someone who had the same (or better) skills. There are ~8 billion others, rounded to the nearest meaningful number ~8 billion people never saw the job ad or applied for it or were eligable because of the exclusive network of "countries". Unless there is an epidemic of Harvard Art Majors being made Head of Brain Surgery upon graduation on the back of their credentials, their merit and skill is still contributing something.

metabagel 3y ago

It seems like if something doesn’t affect you personally, you don’t have any overriding sense of fairness regarding what’s clearly a separate academic and career track for elites.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
That’s right. I live my life only, and will never live another life. My energy is applied to my life, family, friends, community in the present and the fact someone else’s life is easier than mine doesn’t bother me much. There are plenty of things I think are unfair or unjust, and the existence of Harvard is so far down that list it’s not even funny. War, poverty, the destruction of the environment, racism, sexism, and many other things that are absolute negatives for people bother me more than a positive someone else has.
- toastercat 3y ago
  > That’s right. I live my life only, and will never live another life. My energy is applied to my life, family, friends, community in the present and the fact someone else’s life is easier than mine doesn’t bother me much. Yes, ignorance is bliss. > There are plenty of things I think are unfair or unjust, and the existence of Harvard is so far down that list it’s not even funny. War, poverty, the destruction of the environment, racism, sexism, and many other things that are absolute negatives for people bother me more than a positive someone else has. What if the same mechanisms that cause the destruction of the environment/poverty/racism/sexism/etc. negatives are the same mechanisms that allow an institution like Harvard to exist? Do you think those who combat poverty/racism/sexism don't see them as an overarching socio-political problems that permeate all parts of our society? Harvard does not exist in a vacuum.
  - sixstringtheory 3y ago
    > ignorance is bliss Sounds more like acceptance of something they are not ignorant of. > What if the same mechanisms Ok but are they? This hypothetical isn’t useful if they aren’t, and I’m not convinced they are.

ryandrake 3y ago

The existence of billionaires and millionaires negatively affects everyone else's standard of living via gentrification. Imagine you live in a community of 1000 middle class people, all making, say, $30K/yr to $60K/yr. You make $45K/year so you're about average. You can all afford homes, goods, and so on. Suddenly, 10 millionaires move in. Housing prices start to rise a little bit, grocery stores get a little more upscale and more expensive, car dealers see $$$ and jack up their prices. Then, a billionaire moves in. The market responds again. Suddenly, you're not doing so good anymore, despite earning the same as you were before the millionaires moved in. Now scale that up country-wide or world-wide. The more wealthy people there are, the higher the average cost of everything.

endisneigh 3y ago
that is not how it works at all, lol.
TheRealPomax 3y ago
Downvotes notwithstanding, if you make $45k but you can afford an actual house, you're pretty much a unicorn at this point in time in the western world (US, Europe, doesn't matter, everywhere's pretty much unaffordable now). Or you gave up on civilization and you bought a property out in the sticks of course. Either way, you're not going to get 10 millionaires just moving into an area with houses that are so cheap they ignore them as "too cheap" on a realty listing. Even if you're talking about an investment purchase and then they don't move in, themselves. You might have a property developer though, looking to create the next HOA hellscape. This really isn't a good hypothetical.
culturestate 3y ago
> Imagine you live in a community of 1000 middle class people … Suddenly, 10 millionaires move in. I’m not an economist and there are countless reasons for that, but I can’t imagine that 10 millionaires in a community of 1,000 people would materially change life for the other 990 in the way that you’re suggesting. Gentrification and unbalanced income strata are real things and real problems, but the 1% aren’t causing them simply by existing.

earthboundkid 3y ago

I think it depends on where you live and what you do. In high school, I considered the Ivies priggish and didn't apply. My high school colleagues who went didn't disabuse me of my prejudice, and looking back after 20 years on Facebook, they aren't especially more accomplished than the rest of us. (Our most famous alum went to NYU and made it in Hollywood.) That said, in DC, Boston, and parts of NY, going to an Ivy is an unwritten requirement for a lot of jobs, so it generates a lot of ill will from those who didn't go. I think the solution is to just not live on the Northeast Corridor, and you can totally ignore it.

Balgair 3y ago

These articles tend to show a divide in the HN community (speaking in broad terms here, HN is incredibly diverse). One one hand, there are people that love coding, or are not from the US, or have made themselves successful, or generally don't care about fitting into molds, etc. Think those Kevin-Kelly greybeards in the back sever rooms that know everything and don't really care about the pata-gucci. The guys that used to go to Def-Con and Burning Man when it had guns. On the other hand, you have people that really really care about FICO scores, about planning for the future, about daycare ratings, about where to put the active cell in an excel sheet when you send it to a client, etc. These are the people in the front of the office who network like crazy and will jump to another company at a whiff of an extra 1/2 percent of bonus. They are the guys that see the eggshell white with Romani type, and think it's really something. The world needs both types of people, full stop. We need scaffolders and detailers. But it's the second type of person that really cares about what Harvard is doing. It's okay to let those people hack away in a comments section and not have a clue as to what they are 'wasting' their time on. It's their boat, they row it like they want to.

rayiner 3y ago

Okay but the Supreme Court has just one person who didn’t not Harvard or Yale. The majority of Biden’s cabinet went to Harvard or Yale. You might not believe that Harvard acts as a gatekeeper in practice, but it does.

laidoffamazon 3y ago

> I’ve advanced further than everyone I know that went to Harvard in my career and not once did someone wink at the Harvard guy and pass me over. I'm only 27 and I definitely have - basically every Harvard CS grad from the year I graduated from my state school makes at least $200k more than me a year if they're in the workforce instead of academia and has a significantly higher net worth as a result!

fnordpiglet 3y ago
Harvard is a pretty mediocre CS school. I would expect MIT, CMU, Stanford, Berkeley, UIUC, and the other (last I looked) 30 better schools for CS to do better on average. I don’t mean this as unkind, but Harvard is very hard to get into and very selective and state schools generally are neither. This often means the people that get in, other than legacy, are very capable people. State schools also have very capable people, but as a percentage it’s the vast majority of Harvard and the vast minority of state school students are equally as capable. This gives a leg up on the first jobs for sure - one, they’re likely to be more capable in general, and they have an achievement on their resume to prove it. Admission to Harvard IS an achievement in life. But these advantages disappear quickly if you’re as capable or more, especially if you’re aggressive in locking in achievements and seeking better opportunities. After maybe 10 years into your career what school you went to matters almost not at all, and it’s entirely based on what you did with that opportunity. Many Harvard grads start strong due to the achievement on their resume then top out quickly in their careers because they’re just not very commercial, and many rely on their brand too much. But you should -still- expect someone capable of getting into Harvard to be just as capable in their careers. That’s simply life. If it weren’t for Harvard, they would find other ways to differentiate. The truth is, labor markets are not egalitarian. They reward people differently for different reasons, and their ability to compensate based on contribution is highly inefficient. That rewards people with achievements like a top school early when nothing else differentiates resumes. But it fades quickly, and it’s up to you to make a stronger resume if it matters to you. But I think it shouldn’t matter. That was my point. Someone else doing better than you shouldn’t matter. What should matter is if you’re happy with what you’re doing yourself ignoring all other people. Anything else is petty, unhelpful, and at odds with how life and reality actually is.