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> The Man in Black grew up in Dyess, Arkansas, in a community of poor farmers working government land. Similar. I grew up in Arkansas for 6 years of my childho

> The Man in Black grew up in Dyess, Arkansas, in a community of poor farmers working government land. Similar. I grew up in Arkansas for 6 years of my childhood working on a turkey farm until I was 11~. Hard work ,7 days a week for 6 years working with turkeys and cattle. Something is lost today by most kids being removed from hard work, I think. Defiantly brings a different perspective going from that to working in the largest tech companies

ttymck 3y ago
Can you elaborate on what is lost? What is the difference in perspective?
- DaveSchmindel 3y ago
  I can, from the other side of life. I was raised in middle-class suburbia, in the North East U.S. My family wasn't wealthy, but wasn't hurting either. I did well in school, but didn't have to try very hard to maintain grades in Advanced Placement classes. Outside of school, I worked easy lawn-care gigs with my neighbor and we made decent cash with 20-30 hours of work per week. It afforded me a life of coasting, leisure, and throwing away my downtime. I am nearing 30 years old and just realizing that I'd consider my behavior to be bad habits I need to kick. I want to work harder, and I have to teach myself what that means.
  - mcculley 3y ago
    I would hope that there is some optimal balance. A lot of my childhood was spent doing manual labor for money. A lot of that was wasted opportunity to learn more and get experience that would have benefited me financially later on.
- ronnier 3y ago
  What was lost was hard work ethic and the perspective of how good life is now, respect for others, and we've gained some arrogance from never having to suffer. I had an odd life, I lived in the projects as a child until I was sent to my grandfathers farm for 6~ years, and after that, back to the violent city I had originally lived in. I was at a huge disadvantage compared to my peers but from the hard word I was subjected to in those 6 years (work ethic it taught me), pure luck of getting into computer science (thanks to John Carmack via doom/quake), and meeting the right people, I was able to work much harder than those around me and rise up quickly through the worlds biggest tech companies, make a ton of money to the point where I was able to retire at 40 (though I didn't and still work). To answer your question, in my view, that's what was lost -- a connection to brutal hard work that keeps the world moving forward.
  - jdewerd 3y ago
    My parents infected me with the same disease -- an intense conviction in the nobility and virtue of individual hard work -- and it led me to a terrible place, the physical sciences, where I received a harsh lesson in the nature of capitalism. It's not about creating value, it's about capturing value. In a low-leverage situation, when everyone works hard you are simply paid less. Surplus is captured through ownership and ownership is concentrated at the top. In low-leverage jobs, this system transforms hard work from a noble individual value to a collective curse. The explosive growth of the software industry over the last few decades has led to an abnormal situation where regular employees have enough leverage to capture a substantial fraction of their surplus. Most people are not so lucky. For most people, the system looks more like: You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store and having experienced work environments that were low leverage through no fault of the employees, I understand this, I respect this, and I did not forget it when I left for software, where we have it much easier not because we work harder but because we are in a growth industry. I too found it easy to climb. I too enjoy the "free" money from real estate investments and a stock portfolio. But I know where it comes from. I do not pound my throne and launch spittle as I demand for those beneath me to work harder for my benefit. You shouldn't either.
    - diob 3y ago
      Thank god, I'm also well off and work hard. But I know plenty who work hard and aren't. Luck is a big factor.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        Working at creating value is what matters, not just working hard.
        TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
        Can you explain this? Value for whom? The business owner, the customer, yourself? Can you please give an example?
hereonout2 3y ago
It sounds like your saying from the age of 5-11 years old you worked 7 days a week as a farm hand. Could you say more about what era this was and how many how's a day?
- ronnier 3y ago
  Yup, 7 days a week with my grandfather. I'm 44 now, he's 96 and still going strong but without the farm since he got too old to run it and simply retired. But yeah, 7 days a week I'd tend to the turkeys, cattle, dig potatoes, pick tomatoes (we grew a lot of vegetables) , cut hay, rake hay, fluff hay, etc. Being 7 years old on a tractor cutting hay all day was extremely fun. We'd also make the square bales of hay and being 7 or 8, I wasn't strong enough to lift them, so I'd drive the truck with a trailer and my grandfather would be behind loading the square bales. We'd do this for hours in the heat (I had the easy part), he had pure raw strength. We had almost 200 acres of land.
  - hereonout2 3y ago
    Thanks, sounds different and would certainly instill a certain work ethic. I'm similar age and have been in paid employment since the age of 13, a lot of different things through farming, manufacturing, retail and catering before I started in tech. I was always grateful for the work ethic but also important was the experience of being the most lowly employee being made to do the grunt work. I think that gave me the confidence to get on with the job without complaint or too much assistance, I feel that especially helped me progress early on in my tech career. Still, I'm not sure how I'd feel about my own kids working so young. And in all honesty, don't really think those opportunities would be there for them now anyway.
    - ekianjo 3y ago
      > And in all honesty, don't really think those opportunities would be there for them now anyway. Modern governments actively endure that working before 18 is like chilf exploitation or something which is ridiculous as you learn much more by doing than by watching videos or reading books
CapitalistCartr 3y ago
My mom grew up in Appalachia, in the same time as Johnny Cash, dirt farmers in a "holler". No indoor electric, plumbing, or phone. Wood stove cooking and heat. A spring house for water. Baths every Saturday night. Their livelihood was completely dependant on growing food and lumber. I find it unimaginable. Technically I know how it worked, but it's completely alien. In one generation.
- itronitron 3y ago
  My father had a similar childhood. Grew up in a 3 bedroom cabin that his father built, shared a bedroom with his 3 brothers, and spent a lot of his childhood running around the woods with a rifle and trapping animals to sell furs. Despite having a very successful career, he refers to this time in his life as 'when we were wealthy'.
  - foobarian 3y ago
    You're not kidding. Not even a billionaire's kids today could run around the woods with rifles and do the same.
    - rpmisms 3y ago
      They absolutely could, and still do in Appalachia. The real world still exists, you just have to look a little harder...
- freedomben 3y ago
  Same, my grandfather grew up the same way. Horses were their way of life, and the house was located in a spot where electricity and other utilities would never make it, and paving a road was unfeasible. The house was essentially abandoned once the kids were raised and the parents wanted to nice
dvngnt_ 3y ago
the children yearn for the mines
- itronitron 3y ago
  hence the popularity of minecraft?
  - fknorangesite 3y ago
    That's the joke, yes. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-children-yearn-for-the-mines https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-children-yearn-for-the-mi...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
bsder 3y ago
> Something is lost today by most kids being removed from hard work, I think. I'm not sure I agree. The work was hard and you didn't get anywhere. You worked the farm, the mill, the mine, etc. just like your father did and his father did. You didn't get rich. You didn't even get comfortable. You were still poor, and your children were going to remain poor. The window where labor unions made mill, mine, and factory jobs something livable was quite short--1960 to 1980, roughly. Yeah, shitty, excruciating work was a good way to beat you kid over the head with "go find ANYTHING else to do as a career." Worked for my dad. Worked for Joe Namath's dad. etc. Not sure I count that as anything "being lost" though.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  > The window where labor unions made mill, mine, and factory jobs something livable was quite short--1960 to 1980, roughly. I'm sorry, what? What do you think 2023 mills, mines, and factories look like in the United States? Here's a tour of a wheat mill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYP6AnNQjNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYP6AnNQjNo Here's a modern coal mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwo3slH1wsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwo3slH1wsk And here's a modern factory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr9kK0_7x08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr9kK0_7x08
  - bsder 3y ago
    However, those quite a bit better places only employ a small fraction of the number of people of yore and require quite a bit more education thanks to automation. For example: the Natrona Heights steel mill now employs roughly 100 people on a shift vs when it employed somewhere between 5000-10000 on a shift. Automation killed a ton of employment. Those are the kind of jobs I am talking about. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to bring all those jobs back. They were terrible jobs. However, claiming that working those kinds of jobs somehow makes people better is quite suspect, at best.
    - chrisco255 3y ago
      Ok, OP's argument was about workplace conditions, not low employment numbers, and they claimed that conditions stopped being good around 1980 with no evidence to back it up. We are at less than 4% unemployment so it's a very good thing we don't need 100x more workers to do things the way we did them 100 years ago. I will say, I'm a 100% knowledge worker, and work from a laptop, but hard labor is good for you (within reason). We have all sorts of illnesses and obesity in modern society because our bodies were built for stamina that we no longer make use of.
acjohnson55 3y ago
I don't think there's any evidence to indicate that the generations who worked through childhood are any better on average. There are folks who turned that into habits that unlocked productivity and happiness in life. There are others who just got exploited. To me, what's important is building the intuition for the connection between practice and achievement, which is a subtly different thing. It's not hard work for as a thing that's morally admirable. It's a means to an end. I would add to that a sense of collective responsibility, tempered with self-assertiveness. I think these things are the bright side of valuing "hard work", but without the dark sides of exploitation and workaholism.
- jmspring 3y ago
  I disagree to a point. We see millenials/Gen-Z expecting promotions and large salaries for little to no work history and at most normal productivity. There is definitely a connection missed between effort and reward.
  - trust_bt_verify 3y ago
    Can you show that this behavior did not exist in previous generations? I saw plenty of that with gen-x working its way through the lower rungs of the workforce.
    - jmspring 3y ago
      I don't disagree Gen-X has had part of that, as one myself. I think it's a matter of scale.
  - lemonberry 3y ago
    We also see CEOs getting paid a ridiculous amount of money. They get incredible bonuses even when their companies underperform. The golden parachute is real. It's easier to blame the kids, but they see many examples from the top. Not to mention how their children - the nepokids - are being rewarded by their proximity to power and a network they had no hand in building.
  - 3y ago
Loughla 3y ago
I can tell you, my children's lives are IMMENSELY better not having to do hard labor. My childhood was spent on a farm, we all worked or we didn't eat. It was fucking miserable. I wouldn't wish that on anyone who doesn't want it.
- mcmoor 3y ago
  Can it be argued that work is miserable for everyone, including children? Current trends doesn't only seek to abolish child worker, it aims to free it from everyone. Of course, whether it'd actually be better for everyone or it'd actually be stable is another can of worm entirely.
  - xeromal 3y ago
    I think humans are hard wired to work or to at least produce something to find value and I personally think relieving everyone from forced work would produce a lot of aimless and suicidal beings. Not every is going to appreciate the freedom and start producing pottery. I'm wholly aware that I am influenced by a Puritan work ethic
    - FpUser 3y ago
      >"forced work" Fuck that
    - Loughla 3y ago
      I think it's less about "work" and more about reason for being. Work is sort of the easiest, lowest friction way to find that. Post-scarcity and post-work society takes a formal effort for people to find purpose. It requires that we really try to find things that are valuable and that we enjoy. But I do not believe we will live, as a society, to see the end of scarcity or jobs. We'll kill ourselves way before we get to that point.
    - phone8675309 3y ago
      > Not every is going to appreciate the freedom and start producing pottery. You're right - some may "do nothing", but the kind of people that would "do nothing" if nobody were forced to work to live are the kind of people, by and large, that do just enough to get by. Even if we instituted a generous UBI, people would still have to work to live because landlords/real estate speculator aren't going to let all of those money slosh around freely - they want theirs too.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jhoechtl 3y ago
Observation once was an important scientific means. Even common sense ranked high. Alas that methods are no longer valued. Of course does hard work shape the mentality in a way that you value the amenities you gain, either in exchange or later in life.

ttymck 3y ago

Can you elaborate on what is lost? What is the difference in perspective?

DaveSchmindel 3y ago
I can, from the other side of life. I was raised in middle-class suburbia, in the North East U.S. My family wasn't wealthy, but wasn't hurting either. I did well in school, but didn't have to try very hard to maintain grades in Advanced Placement classes. Outside of school, I worked easy lawn-care gigs with my neighbor and we made decent cash with 20-30 hours of work per week. It afforded me a life of coasting, leisure, and throwing away my downtime. I am nearing 30 years old and just realizing that I'd consider my behavior to be bad habits I need to kick. I want to work harder, and I have to teach myself what that means.
- mcculley 3y ago
  I would hope that there is some optimal balance. A lot of my childhood was spent doing manual labor for money. A lot of that was wasted opportunity to learn more and get experience that would have benefited me financially later on.
ronnier 3y ago
What was lost was hard work ethic and the perspective of how good life is now, respect for others, and we've gained some arrogance from never having to suffer. I had an odd life, I lived in the projects as a child until I was sent to my grandfathers farm for 6~ years, and after that, back to the violent city I had originally lived in. I was at a huge disadvantage compared to my peers but from the hard word I was subjected to in those 6 years (work ethic it taught me), pure luck of getting into computer science (thanks to John Carmack via doom/quake), and meeting the right people, I was able to work much harder than those around me and rise up quickly through the worlds biggest tech companies, make a ton of money to the point where I was able to retire at 40 (though I didn't and still work). To answer your question, in my view, that's what was lost -- a connection to brutal hard work that keeps the world moving forward.
- jdewerd 3y ago
  My parents infected me with the same disease -- an intense conviction in the nobility and virtue of individual hard work -- and it led me to a terrible place, the physical sciences, where I received a harsh lesson in the nature of capitalism. It's not about creating value, it's about capturing value. In a low-leverage situation, when everyone works hard you are simply paid less. Surplus is captured through ownership and ownership is concentrated at the top. In low-leverage jobs, this system transforms hard work from a noble individual value to a collective curse. The explosive growth of the software industry over the last few decades has led to an abnormal situation where regular employees have enough leverage to capture a substantial fraction of their surplus. Most people are not so lucky. For most people, the system looks more like: You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me, 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store and having experienced work environments that were low leverage through no fault of the employees, I understand this, I respect this, and I did not forget it when I left for software, where we have it much easier not because we work harder but because we are in a growth industry. I too found it easy to climb. I too enjoy the "free" money from real estate investments and a stock portfolio. But I know where it comes from. I do not pound my throne and launch spittle as I demand for those beneath me to work harder for my benefit. You shouldn't either.
  - diob 3y ago
    Thank god, I'm also well off and work hard. But I know plenty who work hard and aren't. Luck is a big factor.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Working at creating value is what matters, not just working hard.
      - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
        Can you explain this? Value for whom? The business owner, the customer, yourself? Can you please give an example?

hereonout2 3y ago

It sounds like your saying from the age of 5-11 years old you worked 7 days a week as a farm hand. Could you say more about what era this was and how many how's a day?

ronnier 3y ago
Yup, 7 days a week with my grandfather. I'm 44 now, he's 96 and still going strong but without the farm since he got too old to run it and simply retired. But yeah, 7 days a week I'd tend to the turkeys, cattle, dig potatoes, pick tomatoes (we grew a lot of vegetables) , cut hay, rake hay, fluff hay, etc. Being 7 years old on a tractor cutting hay all day was extremely fun. We'd also make the square bales of hay and being 7 or 8, I wasn't strong enough to lift them, so I'd drive the truck with a trailer and my grandfather would be behind loading the square bales. We'd do this for hours in the heat (I had the easy part), he had pure raw strength. We had almost 200 acres of land.
- hereonout2 3y ago
  Thanks, sounds different and would certainly instill a certain work ethic. I'm similar age and have been in paid employment since the age of 13, a lot of different things through farming, manufacturing, retail and catering before I started in tech. I was always grateful for the work ethic but also important was the experience of being the most lowly employee being made to do the grunt work. I think that gave me the confidence to get on with the job without complaint or too much assistance, I feel that especially helped me progress early on in my tech career. Still, I'm not sure how I'd feel about my own kids working so young. And in all honesty, don't really think those opportunities would be there for them now anyway.
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    > And in all honesty, don't really think those opportunities would be there for them now anyway. Modern governments actively endure that working before 18 is like chilf exploitation or something which is ridiculous as you learn much more by doing than by watching videos or reading books

CapitalistCartr 3y ago

My mom grew up in Appalachia, in the same time as Johnny Cash, dirt farmers in a "holler". No indoor electric, plumbing, or phone. Wood stove cooking and heat. A spring house for water. Baths every Saturday night. Their livelihood was completely dependant on growing food and lumber. I find it unimaginable. Technically I know how it worked, but it's completely alien. In one generation.

itronitron 3y ago
My father had a similar childhood. Grew up in a 3 bedroom cabin that his father built, shared a bedroom with his 3 brothers, and spent a lot of his childhood running around the woods with a rifle and trapping animals to sell furs. Despite having a very successful career, he refers to this time in his life as 'when we were wealthy'.
- foobarian 3y ago
  You're not kidding. Not even a billionaire's kids today could run around the woods with rifles and do the same.
  - rpmisms 3y ago
    They absolutely could, and still do in Appalachia. The real world still exists, you just have to look a little harder...
freedomben 3y ago
Same, my grandfather grew up the same way. Horses were their way of life, and the house was located in a spot where electricity and other utilities would never make it, and paving a road was unfeasible. The house was essentially abandoned once the kids were raised and the parents wanted to nice

dvngnt_ 3y ago

the children yearn for the mines

itronitron 3y ago
hence the popularity of minecraft?
- fknorangesite 3y ago
  That's the joke, yes. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-children-yearn-for-the-mines https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-children-yearn-for-the-mi...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bsder 3y ago

> Something is lost today by most kids being removed from hard work, I think. I'm not sure I agree. The work was hard and you didn't get anywhere. You worked the farm, the mill, the mine, etc. just like your father did and his father did. You didn't get rich. You didn't even get comfortable. You were still poor, and your children were going to remain poor. The window where labor unions made mill, mine, and factory jobs something livable was quite short--1960 to 1980, roughly. Yeah, shitty, excruciating work was a good way to beat you kid over the head with "go find ANYTHING else to do as a career." Worked for my dad. Worked for Joe Namath's dad. etc. Not sure I count that as anything "being lost" though.

chrisco255 3y ago
> The window where labor unions made mill, mine, and factory jobs something livable was quite short--1960 to 1980, roughly. I'm sorry, what? What do you think 2023 mills, mines, and factories look like in the United States? Here's a tour of a wheat mill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYP6AnNQjNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYP6AnNQjNo Here's a modern coal mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwo3slH1wsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwo3slH1wsk And here's a modern factory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr9kK0_7x08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr9kK0_7x08
- bsder 3y ago
  However, those quite a bit better places only employ a small fraction of the number of people of yore and require quite a bit more education thanks to automation. For example: the Natrona Heights steel mill now employs roughly 100 people on a shift vs when it employed somewhere between 5000-10000 on a shift. Automation killed a ton of employment. Those are the kind of jobs I am talking about. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to bring all those jobs back. They were terrible jobs. However, claiming that working those kinds of jobs somehow makes people better is quite suspect, at best.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    Ok, OP's argument was about workplace conditions, not low employment numbers, and they claimed that conditions stopped being good around 1980 with no evidence to back it up. We are at less than 4% unemployment so it's a very good thing we don't need 100x more workers to do things the way we did them 100 years ago. I will say, I'm a 100% knowledge worker, and work from a laptop, but hard labor is good for you (within reason). We have all sorts of illnesses and obesity in modern society because our bodies were built for stamina that we no longer make use of.

acjohnson55 3y ago

I don't think there's any evidence to indicate that the generations who worked through childhood are any better on average. There are folks who turned that into habits that unlocked productivity and happiness in life. There are others who just got exploited. To me, what's important is building the intuition for the connection between practice and achievement, which is a subtly different thing. It's not hard work for as a thing that's morally admirable. It's a means to an end. I would add to that a sense of collective responsibility, tempered with self-assertiveness. I think these things are the bright side of valuing "hard work", but without the dark sides of exploitation and workaholism.

jmspring 3y ago
I disagree to a point. We see millenials/Gen-Z expecting promotions and large salaries for little to no work history and at most normal productivity. There is definitely a connection missed between effort and reward.
- trust_bt_verify 3y ago
  Can you show that this behavior did not exist in previous generations? I saw plenty of that with gen-x working its way through the lower rungs of the workforce.
  - jmspring 3y ago
    I don't disagree Gen-X has had part of that, as one myself. I think it's a matter of scale.
- lemonberry 3y ago
  We also see CEOs getting paid a ridiculous amount of money. They get incredible bonuses even when their companies underperform. The golden parachute is real. It's easier to blame the kids, but they see many examples from the top. Not to mention how their children - the nepokids - are being rewarded by their proximity to power and a network they had no hand in building.
- 3y ago

Loughla 3y ago

I can tell you, my children's lives are IMMENSELY better not having to do hard labor. My childhood was spent on a farm, we all worked or we didn't eat. It was fucking miserable. I wouldn't wish that on anyone who doesn't want it.

mcmoor 3y ago
Can it be argued that work is miserable for everyone, including children? Current trends doesn't only seek to abolish child worker, it aims to free it from everyone. Of course, whether it'd actually be better for everyone or it'd actually be stable is another can of worm entirely.
- xeromal 3y ago
  I think humans are hard wired to work or to at least produce something to find value and I personally think relieving everyone from forced work would produce a lot of aimless and suicidal beings. Not every is going to appreciate the freedom and start producing pottery. I'm wholly aware that I am influenced by a Puritan work ethic
  - FpUser 3y ago
    >"forced work" Fuck that
  - Loughla 3y ago
    I think it's less about "work" and more about reason for being. Work is sort of the easiest, lowest friction way to find that. Post-scarcity and post-work society takes a formal effort for people to find purpose. It requires that we really try to find things that are valuable and that we enjoy. But I do not believe we will live, as a society, to see the end of scarcity or jobs. We'll kill ourselves way before we get to that point.
  - phone8675309 3y ago
    > Not every is going to appreciate the freedom and start producing pottery. You're right - some may "do nothing", but the kind of people that would "do nothing" if nobody were forced to work to live are the kind of people, by and large, that do just enough to get by. Even if we instituted a generous UBI, people would still have to work to live because landlords/real estate speculator aren't going to let all of those money slosh around freely - they want theirs too.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jhoechtl 3y ago

Observation once was an important scientific means. Even common sense ranked high. Alas that methods are no longer valued. Of course does hard work shape the mentality in a way that you value the amenities you gain, either in exchange or later in life.