4 ms·

Why Everyone Should Be Upper Class

17 points by apsec112 14y ago

cheez 14y ago
> A big problem with many parts of Africa is that everyone is lower class. And the problem with many parts of North America is that everyone is a fat ass. Please be a little more thoughtful in your sweeping generalizations. Better yet, don't make any.
- apsec112 14y ago
  Obesity is obviously a problem in many parts of America. What's your point?
  - cheez 14y ago
    It's the easy way out. A good way for latte sipping hipsters to feel as if they understand the world's problems.
    - apsec112 14y ago
      http://rationalconspiracy.com/2012/07/08/the-fallacy-of-complexity/ http://rationalconspiracy.com/2012/07/08/the-fallacy-of-comp...
      - cheez 14y ago
        Author thinks author is justified in saying stuff that other people don't agree with. Film at 11. S/he is free to have their own opinion. I'm just saying that I think it betrays a certain lack of sophistication to make wholesale generalizations.
  - tokenizer 14y ago
    everyone is in the lower class. How do YOU define lower class in the case? I've heard of African billionaires. This is what he means by sweeping generalizations.
cousin_it 14y ago
Ctrl+F "status", no results. Ctrl+F "positional", no results. The post is not based on a full understanding of the problem.
tokenizer 14y ago
Wow. This article gets a lot of things wrong IMO. Their points on saving is stupid, when most people live paycheck to paycheck, and the idea that social class isn't about being in X% but the values you have? What a load of crap, here's someone who's in the upper class, who has GREAT values, link: http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-richest-woman-20120830,0,3323996.story http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-richest-woman.... Being in a certain economic class does not give you a certain set of ideal that others lack, nor does it negate you any insight. Everyone is different. Also, the idea that we don't have peasants and lord anymore, really makes me confused, considering I have and know many landlords, and that most people who live in rural areas contribute to the same function as Peasants did (see Farmers). Just because things become more complex doesn't mean you can ignore the fact that their are still owners (lords) and workers (peasants), or that the same idea still isn't absurd (everyone can be rich!!!)... This article contains sweeping generalizations and a gross amount of naivety.
- apsec112 14y ago
  "Their points on saving is stupid, when most people live paycheck to paycheck" The whole point is that a) people shouldn't live paycheck-to-paycheck, and b) it's entirely possible for people to not do so. Many fewer people lived paycheck-to-paycheck in the 19th century, even though society as a whole was far poorer. (If a farmer had no savings, how would he live through the winter every single year?) "What a load of crap, here's someone who's in the upper class, who has GREAT values, link: http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-richest-woman.... http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-richest-woman... First, obviously there will be assholes in every class (and indeed every social group). So what? That's always true. What does that prove? Second, that woman isn't even part of the upper class as I've defined it. She inherited her money - she never started or operated a business. She's part of the upper class in the old, medieval sense (inherited aristocracy), but such people are such a tiny fraction of our society that it doesn't seem useful to reserve the monkier "upper class" for them. "considering I have and know many landlords" Huh? Do you really think that a landlord who manages a building is the same kind of person as a medieval warlord who funds his castle's upkeep by raiding peasant villages and stealing their cows? That seems like a deliberate misunderstanding. "live in rural areas contribute to the same function as Peasants did" Peasant doesn't just mean "farmer", but "subsistence farmer who owes duties of obedience to a warlord". We don't have those in the US anymore.
languagehacker 14y ago
Rationalist is right. Offensive garbage like this is proof enough that a person can't just think on a problem and eventually solve it. This is why we moved to this thing called empiricism a few hundred years ago and haven't looked back. Try using evidence to motivate your obnoxious opinions next time.
Kaedon 14y ago
I agree with the basic premise - which seems to be not that everyone should be upper class but rather that everyone should become more entrepreneurial and take greater ownership in their careers and business. I disagree with one of the points the author makes. Here's a quote: "And yet, here we are, in a country with no peasants. (We also don’t depend on peasants in other countries – the US is a big food exporter, not importer.)" In one sense, that's true. The number of farmers has gone down dramatically with the advent of technology but there's still around 3-4 million migrant / seasonal workers in the US [1] that act as modern day peasants. If you expand the definition of peasant beyond farm hands, it could include things such as low-paid workers in China or the working poor in the US. This particular point doesn't ring true with me. [1] - www.ncfh.org/docs/fs-Migrant%20Demographics.pdf
- apsec112 14y ago
  Those aren't peasants, they're laborers. "Peasant" means subsistence farmer.
agpen 14y ago
Congrats, you've sort of discovered bizarro-marxism but phrased it in ridiculous terms based on a poor grasp of economic realities. 1)Peasants absolutely exist. There's an enormous invisible labor force in the US that is paid a fraction of minimum wage, let alone a living wage, and that's not even counting the literal prison slave labor employed in multiple states. Further, while the US may export a great deal of food, there are plenty of food types and a majority of manufactured products that are imported from places where they are made through the exploitation of third world laborers. 2) Your claim that business-ownership used to be a widespread individual experience is historically nonsense. 3) The article is full of tautologies like "If you have the human and social capital to start a business, it means you don’t have to worry so much about money." Yeah, if you're rich enough to not have to worry about the world crashing down around you tomorrow, you're rich enough to not have to worry about the world crashing down around you. Brilliant insight, and also not the lived experience of 99% of the world's population. Your suggestion that people simply "choose" to be this way is ridiculous. 4) The assertion that middle-class people spending a majority of their income as it comes in is "cultural" rather than a reality of saving being a LUXURY afforded to the few wealthy enough to afford it is both wrong and incredibly insulting. You're hardly the first person to perpetuate the "poor people just don't have good money sense" myth but it doesn't make it any less noxious. And that's just for starters! Wealth is a zero-sum game and capitalism is built at its very foundation on the upward mobility of wealth through exploitation of labor. You can't change that with fairy-tale ideas about everyone magically being able to afford the risks and costs of business ownership if they just want it bad enough.
- apsec112 14y ago
  1) "Peasant" does not just mean "every lower class person", it means "subsistence farmer". We don't have subsistence farmers in the US anymore. 2) What's your evidence? Look at any photo of a city street from pre-1930 or so. Almost every business you see will be owned by some individual or family. 3) "Human and social capital" doesn't mean "rich", it means "human and social capital". I know several people with huge amounts of human and social capital who were homeless. Some of them then got rich, which they could do because they had human and social capital. 4) We know that most people saved during the 19th century, despite being far poorer than anyone today. It's a basic historical fact - farmers need to save at least some of income (whether in the form of money, food, or other goods). How do you make it through the winter otherwise? Harvests only come once or twice a year. Wealth is not a zero-sum game, as anyone who knows basic economics can tell you. See http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
masterzora 14y ago
There are enough flaws here that I feel most people are going to focus in on one or two they found particularly egregious so I will do the same: The pitching of class as upper vs. middle while entirely ignoring lower is horrifically offensive in addition to being a major flaw in the argument. First because we would need to address the poor and how the massive wealth gap is harmful to all of society before we could even begin to act on any of the suggestions within. Second because the poor are, in many ways, the peasants described within or even worse off than the peasants were. Additionally, the piece portrays anyone who is not in the "upper class" as being so by their own fault, a viewpoint I got tired enough of in college after a few too many run-ins with people who could not even imagine what it would be like to be less than upper-middle class (by current socioeconomic definitions).
- apsec112 14y ago
  "portrays anyone who is not in the "upper class" as being so by their own fault" When did I say that, or even imply it? I made an analogy to medieval society, and no one thinks that it was the peasants' fault they were peasants.
  - masterzora 14y ago
    The apparent message of the entire piece is "Want to be upper class? Just start a business!" without any notion of either (a) how the average person could do so or (b) how we could begin to change our society/culture in a way to facilitate the average person being able to do so. Result: it comes across as something you believe everyone should be able to do as is. Also, be very careful about sentences like "The middle class has a culture of spending most money as soon as you earn it." There are certainly parts of the middle class that are like this. We all know the concept of keeping up with the Joneses and overextending credit in an attempt to do so. However, there are also large parts of the middle class (and, again, the lower class you so ignore) where it's not "culture" it's "necessity". Sure, maybe some could survive on 20% less but at the cost of things you might take for granted--living in a safe neighborhood, eating healthy food, or having health insurance. But, no, surely it's just a culture of unnecessary spending. It may not have been your intended message, but it's certainly the one that comes across.
Zigurd 14y ago
This is hilarious, and has been lampooned authoritatively by Steinbeck: ""I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist."
thejerz 14y ago
Instead of criticizing the OP, I am going to go out on a branch here and congratulate him for having the boldness and audacity to tackle a huge social issue: who gets to live the "sweet life," how come, and if we can change that. Okay, okay... there are endless points on which to critique the OP and his article -- just read any of the other comments; most of them are valid. But that's missing the forrest for the trees. Any true entrepreneur or hacker should appreciate the scale of the problem the OP is grappling with, and have respect for him. It's one thing to have an opinion on nodeJS or NOSQL -- and there's nothing wrong with that -- but here's someone who is tackling a truly meaningful and big life question. And for that, I respect him. If you're with me, upvote this.
- tayl0r 14y ago
  I definitely agree. His piece is flawed but it's interesting. I would say that the author is simply against huge corporations, and all the good and bad things that go with them. Would we be better off with only small businesses? I think not, but it's good discussion.
  - nooneelse 14y ago
    Well, there is at least one good thing about having only smaller businesses. They are more governable by nations, unlike transnational corporations. Since power-aggregations, like motors, tend to need a governor for stability of the overall system, that counts as a good thing.
- masterzora 14y ago
  Are we giving points for effort now? If OP added anything novel, included actual research rather than attempts at just logicking out an answer, supported pretty much any of the statements within, opened up a proper discussion, or any of another dozen things maybe points for effort would make sense. Instead, this is exactly the type of pontificating I heard far too often from classmates in college. It would have actually made a better post if OP had started with Descartes' overquoted, uncontexted `cogito ergo sum' and derived basic solipsism without passing through research or any of the other bits I mentioned or alluded to.
gatordan 14y ago
I will say that the premise is really interesting, "Everyone Should be Upper Class". That idea alone is probably why it made it to the front page of HN. But ultimately this is not well written. There were no citations or strong evidence besides a figure in the last paragraph. The writing meanders and doesn't support the argument well. And the argument isn't really made clearer until half way through - upper class means business owning and it is in our best interest to own or start businesses. I'm going to make a anecdotal generalization of my own and say that I see these problems in a number of blog posts that make it onto HN. My two cents: If you're going take on a tough or controversial premise then take the time to argue it well, don't gloss over details, please revise, revise, then revise some more, and finally have other people read it before it gets released to a wide audience like HN.

17 points by apsec112 14y ago

cheez 14y ago

> A big problem with many parts of Africa is that everyone is lower class. And the problem with many parts of North America is that everyone is a fat ass. Please be a little more thoughtful in your sweeping generalizations. Better yet, don't make any.

apsec112 14y ago
Obesity is obviously a problem in many parts of America. What's your point?
- cheez 14y ago
  It's the easy way out. A good way for latte sipping hipsters to feel as if they understand the world's problems.
  - apsec112 14y ago
    http://rationalconspiracy.com/2012/07/08/the-fallacy-of-complexity/ http://rationalconspiracy.com/2012/07/08/the-fallacy-of-comp...
    - cheez 14y ago
      Author thinks author is justified in saying stuff that other people don't agree with. Film at 11. S/he is free to have their own opinion. I'm just saying that I think it betrays a certain lack of sophistication to make wholesale generalizations.
- tokenizer 14y ago
  everyone is in the lower class. How do YOU define lower class in the case? I've heard of African billionaires. This is what he means by sweeping generalizations.

cousin_it 14y ago

Ctrl+F "status", no results. Ctrl+F "positional", no results. The post is not based on a full understanding of the problem.

tokenizer 14y ago

Wow. This article gets a lot of things wrong IMO. Their points on saving is stupid, when most people live paycheck to paycheck, and the idea that social class isn't about being in X% but the values you have? What a load of crap, here's someone who's in the upper class, who has GREAT values, link: http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-richest-woman-20120830,0,3323996.story http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-richest-woman.... Being in a certain economic class does not give you a certain set of ideal that others lack, nor does it negate you any insight. Everyone is different. Also, the idea that we don't have peasants and lord anymore, really makes me confused, considering I have and know many landlords, and that most people who live in rural areas contribute to the same function as Peasants did (see Farmers). Just because things become more complex doesn't mean you can ignore the fact that their are still owners (lords) and workers (peasants), or that the same idea still isn't absurd (everyone can be rich!!!)... This article contains sweeping generalizations and a gross amount of naivety.

apsec112 14y ago
"Their points on saving is stupid, when most people live paycheck to paycheck" The whole point is that a) people shouldn't live paycheck-to-paycheck, and b) it's entirely possible for people to not do so. Many fewer people lived paycheck-to-paycheck in the 19th century, even though society as a whole was far poorer. (If a farmer had no savings, how would he live through the winter every single year?) "What a load of crap, here's someone who's in the upper class, who has GREAT values, link: http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-richest-woman.... http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-richest-woman... First, obviously there will be assholes in every class (and indeed every social group). So what? That's always true. What does that prove? Second, that woman isn't even part of the upper class as I've defined it. She inherited her money - she never started or operated a business. She's part of the upper class in the old, medieval sense (inherited aristocracy), but such people are such a tiny fraction of our society that it doesn't seem useful to reserve the monkier "upper class" for them. "considering I have and know many landlords" Huh? Do you really think that a landlord who manages a building is the same kind of person as a medieval warlord who funds his castle's upkeep by raiding peasant villages and stealing their cows? That seems like a deliberate misunderstanding. "live in rural areas contribute to the same function as Peasants did" Peasant doesn't just mean "farmer", but "subsistence farmer who owes duties of obedience to a warlord". We don't have those in the US anymore.

languagehacker 14y ago

Rationalist is right. Offensive garbage like this is proof enough that a person can't just think on a problem and eventually solve it. This is why we moved to this thing called empiricism a few hundred years ago and haven't looked back. Try using evidence to motivate your obnoxious opinions next time.

Kaedon 14y ago

I agree with the basic premise - which seems to be not that everyone should be upper class but rather that everyone should become more entrepreneurial and take greater ownership in their careers and business. I disagree with one of the points the author makes. Here's a quote: "And yet, here we are, in a country with no peasants. (We also don’t depend on peasants in other countries – the US is a big food exporter, not importer.)" In one sense, that's true. The number of farmers has gone down dramatically with the advent of technology but there's still around 3-4 million migrant / seasonal workers in the US [1] that act as modern day peasants. If you expand the definition of peasant beyond farm hands, it could include things such as low-paid workers in China or the working poor in the US. This particular point doesn't ring true with me. [1] - www.ncfh.org/docs/fs-Migrant%20Demographics.pdf

apsec112 14y ago
Those aren't peasants, they're laborers. "Peasant" means subsistence farmer.

agpen 14y ago

Congrats, you've sort of discovered bizarro-marxism but phrased it in ridiculous terms based on a poor grasp of economic realities. 1)Peasants absolutely exist. There's an enormous invisible labor force in the US that is paid a fraction of minimum wage, let alone a living wage, and that's not even counting the literal prison slave labor employed in multiple states. Further, while the US may export a great deal of food, there are plenty of food types and a majority of manufactured products that are imported from places where they are made through the exploitation of third world laborers. 2) Your claim that business-ownership used to be a widespread individual experience is historically nonsense. 3) The article is full of tautologies like "If you have the human and social capital to start a business, it means you don’t have to worry so much about money." Yeah, if you're rich enough to not have to worry about the world crashing down around you tomorrow, you're rich enough to not have to worry about the world crashing down around you. Brilliant insight, and also not the lived experience of 99% of the world's population. Your suggestion that people simply "choose" to be this way is ridiculous. 4) The assertion that middle-class people spending a majority of their income as it comes in is "cultural" rather than a reality of saving being a LUXURY afforded to the few wealthy enough to afford it is both wrong and incredibly insulting. You're hardly the first person to perpetuate the "poor people just don't have good money sense" myth but it doesn't make it any less noxious. And that's just for starters! Wealth is a zero-sum game and capitalism is built at its very foundation on the upward mobility of wealth through exploitation of labor. You can't change that with fairy-tale ideas about everyone magically being able to afford the risks and costs of business ownership if they just want it bad enough.

apsec112 14y ago
1) "Peasant" does not just mean "every lower class person", it means "subsistence farmer". We don't have subsistence farmers in the US anymore. 2) What's your evidence? Look at any photo of a city street from pre-1930 or so. Almost every business you see will be owned by some individual or family. 3) "Human and social capital" doesn't mean "rich", it means "human and social capital". I know several people with huge amounts of human and social capital who were homeless. Some of them then got rich, which they could do because they had human and social capital. 4) We know that most people saved during the 19th century, despite being far poorer than anyone today. It's a basic historical fact - farmers need to save at least some of income (whether in the form of money, food, or other goods). How do you make it through the winter otherwise? Harvests only come once or twice a year. Wealth is not a zero-sum game, as anyone who knows basic economics can tell you. See http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

masterzora 14y ago

There are enough flaws here that I feel most people are going to focus in on one or two they found particularly egregious so I will do the same: The pitching of class as upper vs. middle while entirely ignoring lower is horrifically offensive in addition to being a major flaw in the argument. First because we would need to address the poor and how the massive wealth gap is harmful to all of society before we could even begin to act on any of the suggestions within. Second because the poor are, in many ways, the peasants described within or even worse off than the peasants were. Additionally, the piece portrays anyone who is not in the "upper class" as being so by their own fault, a viewpoint I got tired enough of in college after a few too many run-ins with people who could not even imagine what it would be like to be less than upper-middle class (by current socioeconomic definitions).

apsec112 14y ago
"portrays anyone who is not in the "upper class" as being so by their own fault" When did I say that, or even imply it? I made an analogy to medieval society, and no one thinks that it was the peasants' fault they were peasants.
- masterzora 14y ago
  The apparent message of the entire piece is "Want to be upper class? Just start a business!" without any notion of either (a) how the average person could do so or (b) how we could begin to change our society/culture in a way to facilitate the average person being able to do so. Result: it comes across as something you believe everyone should be able to do as is. Also, be very careful about sentences like "The middle class has a culture of spending most money as soon as you earn it." There are certainly parts of the middle class that are like this. We all know the concept of keeping up with the Joneses and overextending credit in an attempt to do so. However, there are also large parts of the middle class (and, again, the lower class you so ignore) where it's not "culture" it's "necessity". Sure, maybe some could survive on 20% less but at the cost of things you might take for granted--living in a safe neighborhood, eating healthy food, or having health insurance. But, no, surely it's just a culture of unnecessary spending. It may not have been your intended message, but it's certainly the one that comes across.

Zigurd 14y ago

This is hilarious, and has been lampooned authoritatively by Steinbeck: ""I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist."

thejerz 14y ago

Instead of criticizing the OP, I am going to go out on a branch here and congratulate him for having the boldness and audacity to tackle a huge social issue: who gets to live the "sweet life," how come, and if we can change that. Okay, okay... there are endless points on which to critique the OP and his article -- just read any of the other comments; most of them are valid. But that's missing the forrest for the trees. Any true entrepreneur or hacker should appreciate the scale of the problem the OP is grappling with, and have respect for him. It's one thing to have an opinion on nodeJS or NOSQL -- and there's nothing wrong with that -- but here's someone who is tackling a truly meaningful and big life question. And for that, I respect him. If you're with me, upvote this.

tayl0r 14y ago
I definitely agree. His piece is flawed but it's interesting. I would say that the author is simply against huge corporations, and all the good and bad things that go with them. Would we be better off with only small businesses? I think not, but it's good discussion.
- nooneelse 14y ago
  Well, there is at least one good thing about having only smaller businesses. They are more governable by nations, unlike transnational corporations. Since power-aggregations, like motors, tend to need a governor for stability of the overall system, that counts as a good thing.
masterzora 14y ago
Are we giving points for effort now? If OP added anything novel, included actual research rather than attempts at just logicking out an answer, supported pretty much any of the statements within, opened up a proper discussion, or any of another dozen things maybe points for effort would make sense. Instead, this is exactly the type of pontificating I heard far too often from classmates in college. It would have actually made a better post if OP had started with Descartes' overquoted, uncontexted `cogito ergo sum' and derived basic solipsism without passing through research or any of the other bits I mentioned or alluded to.

gatordan 14y ago

I will say that the premise is really interesting, "Everyone Should be Upper Class". That idea alone is probably why it made it to the front page of HN. But ultimately this is not well written. There were no citations or strong evidence besides a figure in the last paragraph. The writing meanders and doesn't support the argument well. And the argument isn't really made clearer until half way through - upper class means business owning and it is in our best interest to own or start businesses. I'm going to make a anecdotal generalization of my own and say that I see these problems in a number of blog posts that make it onto HN. My two cents: If you're going take on a tough or controversial premise then take the time to argue it well, don't gloss over details, please revise, revise, then revise some more, and finally have other people read it before it gets released to a wide audience like HN.