6 ms·

This system can go fuck itself and burn in hell

98 points by SirensOfTitan 8mo ago

SirensOfTitan 8mo ago
A heartbreaking story about a man's attempt to break out of generational poverty that feels relevant as we consider how AI changes labor and who it empowers. A lot of us are excited about AI, but economic displacement can cause generations of trauma, and our safety net in the US is wholly inadequate toward that end.
- saidnooneever 8mo ago
  thank you for sharing this. Too many people around me i see this story in. EU here. I am a lucky one as i get to look at my friends suffer from my temporary comfort. The title could not be more on point.
  - Atomic_Torrfisk 8mo ago
    Are you actually EU? You know we are not one homogeneous state right? There are currently 27 nations, in which policy and circumstance varies between even at a regional level. There is immense poverty in some nations, notably Spain or Italy, but even Germany. I've seen it first hand, its heartbreaking. https://www.statista.com/chart/30411/share-of-people-at-risk-of-poverty-or-social-exclusion/ https://www.statista.com/chart/30411/share-of-people-at-risk... /rant Edit: Why downvote? debate me. Its so childish to suppress comments you do not agree with.
    - dh2022 8mo ago
      Thanks for sharing this chart. I am amazed how Poland has less poverty than Germany. Maybe is East Germany bringing the average down for the entire country? Even then, still very impressive.
    - saidnooneever 8mo ago
      I am from NL. i have friends in many other countries, mostly the same conditions. ofc, "lower class" if you want to say that. I did not downvote u btw. just so u know.
- happytoexplain 8mo ago
  I appreciate what you're saying holistically speaking, but whenever we talk about the societal consequences of AI in the US, I find it insidious that we focus on the inadequacy of our social safety nets. As if to say: Yes, C-suite, all you have to do is support UBI and you are free to obliterate what remains of the middle class in the United States of America.
  - karmakurtisaani 8mo ago
    I guess they can also do the same without supporting UBI, so there's that..
  - SirensOfTitan 8mo ago
    I totally agree actually, and I think that having ownership over one's labor is extremely important. Without that self-determinism, people do not have the agency to define their lives, and their political actions become limited by their economic realities. It is a likely outcome that the wealthy class offers the most meager basic income to avoid revolution but not much more than that. I think we all need to talk about our leverage as a class of people who work for a living, and I'm not seeing nearly enough discussion about it. When Amodei talks about displacement of labor, he doesn't acknowledge how much trauma that economic displacement can cause and how many years that bell can ring.
    - happytoexplain 8mo ago
      I'm not really sure how this one ends. I'm afraid there will be violence, but I'm much more afraid that there won't be.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
rayiner 8mo ago
What do you want the government to do when your parents decide to abandon civilization and then live out without plumbing in the Oregon wilderness and then your dad abandons the family to do drugs and alcohol? How can you blame “the system” for that? My wife is also from Oregon. Her grandma was “marry a random truck driver at 14 for a ticket out of town” poor. The guy abandoned the family and drank himself to an early death. And her dad was similarly situated to this guy—my wife lived part of her childhood in a converted barn. Her takeaway from her family history was the opposite: people are often incredibly self destructive and you can’t help those people. The problem isn’t that lawmakers were never poor. Many were. The problem is that all the ones who were were high-functioning enough to escape poverty. So our systems for helping poor people assume a level of competence and administrative capacity that’s simply beyond the capability of a lot of poor people. For example, a third of uninsured people are actually eligible for Medicaid. Someone in my wife’s family racked up 50,000 in medical bills because they didn’t sign up for Medicaid despite being eligible the whole time.
- Supermancho 8mo ago
  > my wife lived part of her childhood in a converted barn. So did my mom, in Oregon. Maybe no so ironically, my wife lived on a 2 trailer desert compound on a plot 2 miles from visible city infrastructure and 5 miles from any sort of built structure for most of her childhood.
- problynawt 8mo ago
  The system should not grind to a halt for a person because they did not fill out some paperwork That such a trivial thing destines someone to endless debt and health issues is just cruelty. That it doesn't account for terrible parents when they are a constant like gravity itself is nothing more than the result of willfully ignorant politicians parroting tropes of long dead, less educated, and more ignorant politicians Many politicians are intentionally in on the scam, erecting barriers so they can funnel wealth to rich corporations instead; look at this surplus from cutting education! Of course they don't say where the surplus came from so plainly. Mathematically air tight non-violent eugenics. Nevermind the meat suits engaged in such are useless themselves. Politicians are primarily just that, not also scientists and doctors. Just fuzzy VHS copies of historical story. The system as a whole can be blamed for ignoring reality and coddling non-contributors. Boomers and GenX did not invent anything we rely on. Art, music, technology...etc etc... are centuries old. But the contemporary elders act like reality itself is due to their existence. It's such a farcical concept. None of them are owed as none of them gave. They merely took the baton and redipped both ends in their own shit.
frizlab 8mo ago
I’m probably gonna be downvoted to hell but I was rebutted by the part where the guy just throws away food because it was not vegan (and stopped reading after that). He did mention health issue concerns, so maybe it was on good faith, but AFAIK if you’re hungry, and I mean really hungry, you don’t care. You just eat what you have as long as it is edible.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- xvxvx 8mo ago
  Amazing the amount of people who hate on him for this part of the story. He didn’t throw away food, he stuck to his morals and didn’t eat it. Hating on a poor person for having dignity? Keep up the good work.
  - watwut 8mo ago
    It is because that part does not track at all. It is not healthier to go hungry then to eat that food. It is not "simple life" to ge vegan, it is cranking the complexity and expenses up. Some part of the story are clear failures of the system. Some parts have nothing to do with the system (moms and dads decision). Some parts are system actually helping, maybe not enough but helping. And then there were genuinely confusing parts as in someone with a seemingly normal job and three houses feeling like they dont have secure housing.
    - aziaziazi 8mo ago
      If someone makes a decision base on wrong information, what’s to blame: the informations he got or his judgement ability? Two dimensions to interpret this: - article author judgement on what’s healthy based solely on its personal nutritional knowledge at the moment. - the judgement of his decision, solely on the details of this post. IMHO the only fault here is to omit more information he was basing his decision. But reading between the lines: he repeat being "hungry" but never saying "staving". That’s a huge difference: being hungry isn’t a health hasard.
candiddevmike 8mo ago
The irony of living in poverty and then owning a house that you list on Airbnb "for extra income". And deluding yourself into the key to financial success is being a bag holder for rich people, yikes. This guy sounds like another "everything sucks but I got mine and everyone else should figure out how to get theirs". I get the struggle but I didn't really see him demonstrate empathy for others in his situation.
- dijit 8mo ago
  nah he’s right. You might think it unethical but you have to play the same games the elites play if you want to be free of elites. I’m surprised he managed to get there though considering he previously mentioned he was unable to build any wealth
- rpcope1 8mo ago
  Yeah I struggled reading through the whole thing...too much delusion and narcissism for me.
  - robocat 8mo ago
    > delusion and narcissism "internet psychology diagnosis" is unwelcome on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38589525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38589525 edit: the ban has nothing to do with how accurate your words might be. Personally I try to avoid most psych words even in personal conversations because I hate using labels or psych talk with anybody. I certainly hate anyone applying them to me. And sometimes I just end up avoiding anyone that overuses them. If really necessary I'll talk about a behaviour (which doesn't make talking any easier, but at least one may avoid judgmental words).
- vgeek 8mo ago
  This same story made it to #1 on HN like a year ago and got featured on Forbes/CNBC type sites. I think the author created a new account to argue with people in the comments if that provides any additional context.
  - 8mo ago
xvxvx 8mo ago
An excellent essay. Very grim but honest and likely resonates with most people on some level. America has been a cruel place to be poor since day one. I encourage everyone to read Howard Zinn’s ‘A People's History of the United States’ as it shows a more grounded history of this country. The US needs a workforce of starving, ill, desperate people in order to work. That’s how the system was built: on the backs of African slaves and the European poor. The unspoken rule of this society is that everyone should rely on their family for help and not the government. This is why life is especially cruel for those with little to no family. Those who embrace and celebrate AI when there’s a chance it could lead to mass unemployment and suffering should take a long hard look in the mirror.
- fragmede 8mo ago
  Any longer or harder than someone using a car, knowing full well the depravity for war caused by a lust for oil, and the chance to get into a car crash every time they get behind the wheel? Or every smartphone user for the use of slavery to procure cobalt the device is dependent on to function? There's also a chance it could lead to something better. If everyone should rely on their family for help, then if you have the skills to take advantage of the AI boom, then you have a duty to make as much money as possible in order to better be able to provide for said family as times change.
renewiltord 8mo ago
I think a lot of people who are eager for The System to die will have a rough reckoning to face when The System dies. In fact, The System doesn't even exist in most of the world in any meaningful way. The majority of the world's population does not live under conditions of great peace and rule of law. And even grasping that concept is alien to the majority of Americans: one of the 3M P100 filter cartridges of which he has two on his mask would provide a family in many places with food for a month. I'm not saying "be happy for what you have; it could be worse". I'm specifically saying "when you're advocating for what you have to end; go see what it looks like in the world that doesn't have it". Having moved to the US, I see a lot of people here have this strange Every Man Is An Island mentality combined with a view that Society Has Failed Me. For these people it is actually harder to cram 3 people to a room and just grind it out than to go buy a van and deck it out so you live by yourself and so on. Something I realize is a superpower a lot of successful people have is that they can do the things that are tough for them but nonetheless blockers to their success. They don't indulge their instincts like this (as he finds out after doing it that it doesn't save him much). People don't like to hear this kind of thing because it seems like punching down. But don't imitate the guys who tried and failed if you want to succeed. Imitate the guys who tried and succeeded. You can look at the ones who failed to see what not to do. There's a lot there of trying to get one over everyone. "I'm going to do X and then I'm set for life" kind of reasoning. If you play that specific game you have to face the fact that loss is possible. It's a gamble. If I just buy the right crypto coin, I'll make it. I'm done. Then you post the loss porn on /r/wallstreetbets or whatever and everyone gives you props and upvote karma or whatever and then what. No money. They forget you. Next guy. If you read the book Evicted you'll see this. The characters do all sorts of crap. One gets a windfall of a few hundred dollars. Chance to delay rent and eviction for a while. What does she do? "I deserve a treat after all this". When I moved here to the Bay, 3 men to a room, beds against the wall, rice and eggs every day, milk in the morning. Cheap. A few hours at min wage if necessary. I only realized many years later why people say "It's a marathon not a sprint". Neither metaphor made sense to me until I saw the guys who failed. Always with a scheme. "once I pull this one off, I'm done. I've made it". So that's what a sprint looks like. Success for them is 3 houses, one Airbnb'd, one for the mum, one for myself, leveraged 5x 3 times over. Live there by myself. Made it. Grinder. Hustler. Success. Actually, the majority of people who are successful are the opposite. Did the hard thing. 3 men to a room, rice and eggs, milk in the morning. Not resoundingly successful. No 3 houses. No Airbnb. But kids one rung higher on the ladder. Those kids, 2 to a room, rice and eggs sometimes pork, milk in the morning. Not resoundingly successful. No 3 houses. No Airbnb. But kids one rung higher on the ladder. Those kids, 1 to a room, good food. Other guy sees that "born with a silver spoon in your mouth; born on third base think you hit a homer" etc. etc. Truth? If you're not this one, you have the chance to be the first guy. Your kids be the guy envied by the other guy. But if Every Man Is An Island then you can't do something for the ones who come after. You never step on the ladder. Just scheme at the bottom to invent trampoline to the top. Then complain when you bounce and land on ground instead of top of ladder.
ZPrimed 8mo ago
I don't disagree with much of what the author wrote here, except for the part about "I'm starving, but I'm vegan so I won't eat SPAM and I won't eat the peanut butter because it is 'processed' and has 'chemicals.'" Humans are omnivores, veganism is a choice. You don't get to complain about how rough it is when you yourself have chosen to play with hard mode turned on. Obviously if there are health issues that require an altered diet that's a different story, but if that was mentioned I missed it somehow. Everything else about the story has merit though, the rich are too rich and the US's "safety nets" are awful. Nobody should go bankrupt due to health problems they can't control.
- armchairhacker 8mo ago
  I mean, if it’s eat meat or die you eat meat or die…but being vegan is a basic privilege. Especially because AFAIK vegan foods require less resources per calorie to produce, so would be cheaper except for logistics. Avoiding hyper-processed food may be smart if it would lead to health problems later. One jar or peanut butter probably isn’t an issue. But at the macro level, countries spend much more on ER treatment than they could on preventative care, like free or subsidized healthy food.
  - tim333 8mo ago
    I looked peanut butter and it's mushed roasted peanuts, sometime with vegetable oil added. Not much hyper processing or weird ingredients there.
    - ndsipa_pomu 8mo ago
      Depends on the brand, but a lot of peanut butter uses palm oil which has a bad reputation due to deforestation (often illegal) to produce it. Cheap brands often include xylitol which is toxic for dogs.
      - IAmBroom 8mo ago
        You're shifting the goalposts. The complaint was about ultra-processed food, not the ecological implications of farming.
999900000999 8mo ago
Confusing. You own 3 houses, including an airbnb and your conclusion is how unfair society is ? Your doing better than most people. The weird moral grandstanding against Peanut Butter had to be the strangest part. Anything less than organic whole foods produce is simply barbaric. This isn't to say the system is good, our criminal justice system is a nightmare of indefinite detentions and human rights abuses. But I'm not seeing much struggle in this post. OP kept that making weird choices. At a point you need to sort yourself out.
- duxup 8mo ago
  I grew up in a poor single parent household. I'm doing better than most now. I don't have any more or less moral high ground because of my past as far as what I do now goes. I kinda hate how that stuff like people's past is used like a tool, source of credibility, or weapon/sheild ... Everyone got experiences.
- TimorousBestie 8mo ago
  > The weird moral grandstanding against Peanut Butter had to be the strangest part. I suppose you’re not aware that peanut butter manufacturers (and many other food manufacturers) in the states were allowed to cut their product with partially hydrogenated oil because it’s cheaper and doesn’t go rancid as fast. GRAS strikes again. Unfortunately partially hydrogenated oil is pretty bad for most humans: raises LDL, lowers HDL, correlates with colon cancer, etc etc. FDA didn’t ban it until c. 2020. One of the few things actual nutrition scientists agree with RFK Jr. on.
  - 999900000999 8mo ago
    I'm sure him eating once would of been fine. If you exclude all processed foods with preservatives and say if not for Certified Organic foods you'll just not eat, you don't really come off a struggling. It's just an absolutely weird thing for the author of focus on.
    - TimorousBestie 8mo ago
petermcneeley 8mo ago
The author probably does not understand how radicalizing this text is.
- duxup 8mo ago
  What does that mean?
mmh0000 8mo ago
Wow. It’s scary to think this person votes. A dude makes a series of terrible decisions. Decides to not learn from any them. Then blames society. Okay. But my early story is eerily similar to his. Expect instead of just my dad dropping out to do drug, so did my mom. I grew up constantly moving between women’s shelters, random peoples couches and storage units. And while he was in rural Oregon, I was in rural Idaho. I ditched my parents as soon as I could. I worked basic non-silicon valley tech jobs. Moved from help desk ticket closer to actual IT career. No college, no money or time for it. Did alright. Yeah life would have been a fuckton easier if I had supportive parents. But I’m in a good place and what I did wasn’t magic or luck. It was simply get basic job. Get shit apartment. Get slightly better job. Repeat. This dude is deep in incel territory, which you can tell from the incel words he drops throughout his rant. This dude says he never expected or needed any hand outs but several paragraphs earlier was complaining that the food bank didn’t provide vegan food. Ooohhh Kay. I have a lot of thoughts about both those statements. But dang dude. Maybe if you’re starving you should take any food you can get and deal with the rich people virtue signaling once you can afford to eat. (To clarify on the above, being vegan is fucking great. It’s good to not kill animals… but you gotta take care of yourself before you take care of a cow.) Yeah parts of the system are screw up. Yeah some people get a really unfair hand. But this guy was in generally good health, should have had health insurance through these crap jobs he was complaining about for his skateboard thing. (Which is another wtf that shows total lack of risk analysis. Who choses skateboarding as a hobby when you can’t afford a doctor. Jeez. Take up running.)
- uqual 8mo ago
  You, especially as someone who has "been there", nailed it. And congrats on taking personal responsibility rather than blaming others and society for your bad decisions (and I'm betting that you, like most of us, have made some bad decisions from time to time - but try to learn from them rather than wallow in them).
- queenkjuul 8mo ago
  You were absolutely lucky. And nobody had health insurance at a $10/hr job in 2004
dial9-1 8mo ago
the OP probably is not telling the whole story and must have some kind of drug addiction going on that sucks up all of his wealth, because how do you even end up on a van when you split rent with a girlfriend/roommates? also the part where he refuses non-vegan food. yikes. and skateboarding as a hobby sounds great when you are uninsured
- IAmBroom 8mo ago
  > and skateboarding as a hobby sounds great when you are uninsured OK, THAT is clearly a failure of the system. Broken and sick people deserve top-quality medical care; it's what a high-functioning society would do.
kaycey2022 8mo ago
This was rough to read. No wonder a growing number of people in your country hate immigrants so much. Although, rationally speaking they are not be the cause of so much misfortune. People should do whatever they can to get ahead. No one should accept poverty. As long as you don’t cut the throat of other innocents, it’s all fine. One thing I would say is don’t put yourself down - like good things aren’t for you. I wouldn’t frame it as you don’t deserve. Everyone deserves a good life. Deserve takes you down a self destructive path. But because of the circumstance if your birth, you can’t have it - now.
insane_dreamer 8mo ago
I didn't have time to read the article, but the last paragraph caught my eye: > There is enough room for everyone to have shelter. There is enough food and water for everyone to eat, without needing to increase shareholder value. This is a pretty good summary of how I feel about the way our society has "devolved", to where we are continually pushed to work harder, to be more productive, to improve efficiency, to consolidate businesses, to "grow", for the primary purpose of making some rich people richer.
gos9 8mo ago
I find it strange how individuals lament the lack of support from “the system” while actively harming the same system by leaving food bank items on the curb or stealing To me this reads as a person with no understanding of mutual support networks because they have never felt the need to provide to others in the way they would like to be provided for. Inherently asocial, and weird.
- readthenotes1 8mo ago
  And mom leaving the entirety of their liquid net wealth at a store? There's something deeply flawed with the whole story that reeks of dissociation from reality.
stego-tech 8mo ago
Man, I'm disappointed by the comments. Like, moreso than usual. The cherry-picking of points to support your preconceived conclusions about the author ("he owns three houses he's better off than everyone else" did ya'll not read any of the context?), the judging of someone refusing to compromise personal values for temporary comfort, the denial on display that the country and life he lived is somehow invalid or fake simply because you personally haven't experienced it... Just, fuck, ya'll. And you wonder why polarization is spreading even on sites like HN or Slashdot, in what used to be tech-centric circles. This is why: you cannot comprehend the lived experiences of others and their personal value systems, you refuse to acknowledge the immense role that luck plays in life for a huge swath of the planet, and you apply your personal narrative to total strangers while also crowing about how people need to be more entrepreneurial, or take more risks, or sacrifice more. One personal snippet about how he placed his veganism as a personal principle in life, and suddenly so many feel comfortable saying he doesn't deserve help. One mention of his work renovating homes to try and pull in reliable income while also caring for his mother, and somehow he's just as bad as Blackstone or Bezos, nevermind the admission he lives in an off-grid trailer himself. Do ya'll even hear yourselves think before posting? "He needs to be entrepreneurial, but only in the methods I personally accept," "He went to college, it's his own fault for taking on that debt", "he complains about being hungry but chooses to be vegan." Fucking christ. I just...I have no words for how disgustingly self-centered and willfully ignorant so many of you are. Always looking for the tiniest nitpick to unravel a personal narrative to suit your own ends, rather than earnestly listening to the message being shared and the plea being made. The notion that the only perspectives worth listening to come from folks who made all the right decisions you would've obviously made, and that any human mistake is solely personal responsibility regardless of systemic influence. Ya'll need to learn to listen more, and judge less.

98 points by SirensOfTitan 8mo ago

A heartbreaking story about a man's attempt to break out of generational poverty that feels relevant as we consider how AI changes labor and who it empowers. A lot of us are excited about AI, but economic displacement can cause generations of trauma, and our safety net in the US is wholly inadequate toward that end.

saidnooneever 8mo ago
thank you for sharing this. Too many people around me i see this story in. EU here. I am a lucky one as i get to look at my friends suffer from my temporary comfort. The title could not be more on point.
- Atomic_Torrfisk 8mo ago
  Are you actually EU? You know we are not one homogeneous state right? There are currently 27 nations, in which policy and circumstance varies between even at a regional level. There is immense poverty in some nations, notably Spain or Italy, but even Germany. I've seen it first hand, its heartbreaking. https://www.statista.com/chart/30411/share-of-people-at-risk-of-poverty-or-social-exclusion/ https://www.statista.com/chart/30411/share-of-people-at-risk... /rant Edit: Why downvote? debate me. Its so childish to suppress comments you do not agree with.
  - dh2022 8mo ago
    Thanks for sharing this chart. I am amazed how Poland has less poverty than Germany. Maybe is East Germany bringing the average down for the entire country? Even then, still very impressive.
  - saidnooneever 8mo ago
    I am from NL. i have friends in many other countries, mostly the same conditions. ofc, "lower class" if you want to say that. I did not downvote u btw. just so u know.
happytoexplain 8mo ago
I appreciate what you're saying holistically speaking, but whenever we talk about the societal consequences of AI in the US, I find it insidious that we focus on the inadequacy of our social safety nets. As if to say: Yes, C-suite, all you have to do is support UBI and you are free to obliterate what remains of the middle class in the United States of America.
- karmakurtisaani 8mo ago
  I guess they can also do the same without supporting UBI, so there's that..
- SirensOfTitan 8mo ago
  I totally agree actually, and I think that having ownership over one's labor is extremely important. Without that self-determinism, people do not have the agency to define their lives, and their political actions become limited by their economic realities. It is a likely outcome that the wealthy class offers the most meager basic income to avoid revolution but not much more than that. I think we all need to talk about our leverage as a class of people who work for a living, and I'm not seeing nearly enough discussion about it. When Amodei talks about displacement of labor, he doesn't acknowledge how much trauma that economic displacement can cause and how many years that bell can ring.
  - happytoexplain 8mo ago
    I'm not really sure how this one ends. I'm afraid there will be violence, but I'm much more afraid that there won't be.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]

rayiner 8mo ago

What do you want the government to do when your parents decide to abandon civilization and then live out without plumbing in the Oregon wilderness and then your dad abandons the family to do drugs and alcohol? How can you blame “the system” for that? My wife is also from Oregon. Her grandma was “marry a random truck driver at 14 for a ticket out of town” poor. The guy abandoned the family and drank himself to an early death. And her dad was similarly situated to this guy—my wife lived part of her childhood in a converted barn. Her takeaway from her family history was the opposite: people are often incredibly self destructive and you can’t help those people. The problem isn’t that lawmakers were never poor. Many were. The problem is that all the ones who were were high-functioning enough to escape poverty. So our systems for helping poor people assume a level of competence and administrative capacity that’s simply beyond the capability of a lot of poor people. For example, a third of uninsured people are actually eligible for Medicaid. Someone in my wife’s family racked up 50,000 in medical bills because they didn’t sign up for Medicaid despite being eligible the whole time.

Supermancho 8mo ago
> my wife lived part of her childhood in a converted barn. So did my mom, in Oregon. Maybe no so ironically, my wife lived on a 2 trailer desert compound on a plot 2 miles from visible city infrastructure and 5 miles from any sort of built structure for most of her childhood.
problynawt 8mo ago
The system should not grind to a halt for a person because they did not fill out some paperwork That such a trivial thing destines someone to endless debt and health issues is just cruelty. That it doesn't account for terrible parents when they are a constant like gravity itself is nothing more than the result of willfully ignorant politicians parroting tropes of long dead, less educated, and more ignorant politicians Many politicians are intentionally in on the scam, erecting barriers so they can funnel wealth to rich corporations instead; look at this surplus from cutting education! Of course they don't say where the surplus came from so plainly. Mathematically air tight non-violent eugenics. Nevermind the meat suits engaged in such are useless themselves. Politicians are primarily just that, not also scientists and doctors. Just fuzzy VHS copies of historical story. The system as a whole can be blamed for ignoring reality and coddling non-contributors. Boomers and GenX did not invent anything we rely on. Art, music, technology...etc etc... are centuries old. But the contemporary elders act like reality itself is due to their existence. It's such a farcical concept. None of them are owed as none of them gave. They merely took the baton and redipped both ends in their own shit.

frizlab 8mo ago

I’m probably gonna be downvoted to hell but I was rebutted by the part where the guy just throws away food because it was not vegan (and stopped reading after that). He did mention health issue concerns, so maybe it was on good faith, but AFAIK if you’re hungry, and I mean really hungry, you don’t care. You just eat what you have as long as it is edible.

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
xvxvx 8mo ago
Amazing the amount of people who hate on him for this part of the story. He didn’t throw away food, he stuck to his morals and didn’t eat it. Hating on a poor person for having dignity? Keep up the good work.
- watwut 8mo ago
  It is because that part does not track at all. It is not healthier to go hungry then to eat that food. It is not "simple life" to ge vegan, it is cranking the complexity and expenses up. Some part of the story are clear failures of the system. Some parts have nothing to do with the system (moms and dads decision). Some parts are system actually helping, maybe not enough but helping. And then there were genuinely confusing parts as in someone with a seemingly normal job and three houses feeling like they dont have secure housing.
  - aziaziazi 8mo ago
    If someone makes a decision base on wrong information, what’s to blame: the informations he got or his judgement ability? Two dimensions to interpret this: - article author judgement on what’s healthy based solely on its personal nutritional knowledge at the moment. - the judgement of his decision, solely on the details of this post. IMHO the only fault here is to omit more information he was basing his decision. But reading between the lines: he repeat being "hungry" but never saying "staving". That’s a huge difference: being hungry isn’t a health hasard.

candiddevmike 8mo ago

The irony of living in poverty and then owning a house that you list on Airbnb "for extra income". And deluding yourself into the key to financial success is being a bag holder for rich people, yikes. This guy sounds like another "everything sucks but I got mine and everyone else should figure out how to get theirs". I get the struggle but I didn't really see him demonstrate empathy for others in his situation.

dijit 8mo ago
nah he’s right. You might think it unethical but you have to play the same games the elites play if you want to be free of elites. I’m surprised he managed to get there though considering he previously mentioned he was unable to build any wealth
rpcope1 8mo ago
Yeah I struggled reading through the whole thing...too much delusion and narcissism for me.
- robocat 8mo ago
  > delusion and narcissism "internet psychology diagnosis" is unwelcome on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38589525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38589525 edit: the ban has nothing to do with how accurate your words might be. Personally I try to avoid most psych words even in personal conversations because I hate using labels or psych talk with anybody. I certainly hate anyone applying them to me. And sometimes I just end up avoiding anyone that overuses them. If really necessary I'll talk about a behaviour (which doesn't make talking any easier, but at least one may avoid judgmental words).
vgeek 8mo ago
This same story made it to #1 on HN like a year ago and got featured on Forbes/CNBC type sites. I think the author created a new account to argue with people in the comments if that provides any additional context.
- 8mo ago

xvxvx 8mo ago

An excellent essay. Very grim but honest and likely resonates with most people on some level. America has been a cruel place to be poor since day one. I encourage everyone to read Howard Zinn’s ‘A People's History of the United States’ as it shows a more grounded history of this country. The US needs a workforce of starving, ill, desperate people in order to work. That’s how the system was built: on the backs of African slaves and the European poor. The unspoken rule of this society is that everyone should rely on their family for help and not the government. This is why life is especially cruel for those with little to no family. Those who embrace and celebrate AI when there’s a chance it could lead to mass unemployment and suffering should take a long hard look in the mirror.

fragmede 8mo ago
Any longer or harder than someone using a car, knowing full well the depravity for war caused by a lust for oil, and the chance to get into a car crash every time they get behind the wheel? Or every smartphone user for the use of slavery to procure cobalt the device is dependent on to function? There's also a chance it could lead to something better. If everyone should rely on their family for help, then if you have the skills to take advantage of the AI boom, then you have a duty to make as much money as possible in order to better be able to provide for said family as times change.

renewiltord 8mo ago

I think a lot of people who are eager for The System to die will have a rough reckoning to face when The System dies. In fact, The System doesn't even exist in most of the world in any meaningful way. The majority of the world's population does not live under conditions of great peace and rule of law. And even grasping that concept is alien to the majority of Americans: one of the 3M P100 filter cartridges of which he has two on his mask would provide a family in many places with food for a month. I'm not saying "be happy for what you have; it could be worse". I'm specifically saying "when you're advocating for what you have to end; go see what it looks like in the world that doesn't have it". Having moved to the US, I see a lot of people here have this strange Every Man Is An Island mentality combined with a view that Society Has Failed Me. For these people it is actually harder to cram 3 people to a room and just grind it out than to go buy a van and deck it out so you live by yourself and so on. Something I realize is a superpower a lot of successful people have is that they can do the things that are tough for them but nonetheless blockers to their success. They don't indulge their instincts like this (as he finds out after doing it that it doesn't save him much). People don't like to hear this kind of thing because it seems like punching down. But don't imitate the guys who tried and failed if you want to succeed. Imitate the guys who tried and succeeded. You can look at the ones who failed to see what not to do. There's a lot there of trying to get one over everyone. "I'm going to do X and then I'm set for life" kind of reasoning. If you play that specific game you have to face the fact that loss is possible. It's a gamble. If I just buy the right crypto coin, I'll make it. I'm done. Then you post the loss porn on /r/wallstreetbets or whatever and everyone gives you props and upvote karma or whatever and then what. No money. They forget you. Next guy. If you read the book Evicted you'll see this. The characters do all sorts of crap. One gets a windfall of a few hundred dollars. Chance to delay rent and eviction for a while. What does she do? "I deserve a treat after all this". When I moved here to the Bay, 3 men to a room, beds against the wall, rice and eggs every day, milk in the morning. Cheap. A few hours at min wage if necessary. I only realized many years later why people say "It's a marathon not a sprint". Neither metaphor made sense to me until I saw the guys who failed. Always with a scheme. "once I pull this one off, I'm done. I've made it". So that's what a sprint looks like. Success for them is 3 houses, one Airbnb'd, one for the mum, one for myself, leveraged 5x 3 times over. Live there by myself. Made it. Grinder. Hustler. Success. Actually, the majority of people who are successful are the opposite. Did the hard thing. 3 men to a room, rice and eggs, milk in the morning. Not resoundingly successful. No 3 houses. No Airbnb. But kids one rung higher on the ladder. Those kids, 2 to a room, rice and eggs sometimes pork, milk in the morning. Not resoundingly successful. No 3 houses. No Airbnb. But kids one rung higher on the ladder. Those kids, 1 to a room, good food. Other guy sees that "born with a silver spoon in your mouth; born on third base think you hit a homer" etc. etc. Truth? If you're not this one, you have the chance to be the first guy. Your kids be the guy envied by the other guy. But if Every Man Is An Island then you can't do something for the ones who come after. You never step on the ladder. Just scheme at the bottom to invent trampoline to the top. Then complain when you bounce and land on ground instead of top of ladder.

ZPrimed 8mo ago

I don't disagree with much of what the author wrote here, except for the part about "I'm starving, but I'm vegan so I won't eat SPAM and I won't eat the peanut butter because it is 'processed' and has 'chemicals.'" Humans are omnivores, veganism is a choice. You don't get to complain about how rough it is when you yourself have chosen to play with hard mode turned on. Obviously if there are health issues that require an altered diet that's a different story, but if that was mentioned I missed it somehow. Everything else about the story has merit though, the rich are too rich and the US's "safety nets" are awful. Nobody should go bankrupt due to health problems they can't control.

armchairhacker 8mo ago
I mean, if it’s eat meat or die you eat meat or die…but being vegan is a basic privilege. Especially because AFAIK vegan foods require less resources per calorie to produce, so would be cheaper except for logistics. Avoiding hyper-processed food may be smart if it would lead to health problems later. One jar or peanut butter probably isn’t an issue. But at the macro level, countries spend much more on ER treatment than they could on preventative care, like free or subsidized healthy food.
- tim333 8mo ago
  I looked peanut butter and it's mushed roasted peanuts, sometime with vegetable oil added. Not much hyper processing or weird ingredients there.
  - ndsipa_pomu 8mo ago
    Depends on the brand, but a lot of peanut butter uses palm oil which has a bad reputation due to deforestation (often illegal) to produce it. Cheap brands often include xylitol which is toxic for dogs.
    - IAmBroom 8mo ago
      You're shifting the goalposts. The complaint was about ultra-processed food, not the ecological implications of farming.

999900000999 8mo ago

Confusing. You own 3 houses, including an airbnb and your conclusion is how unfair society is ? Your doing better than most people. The weird moral grandstanding against Peanut Butter had to be the strangest part. Anything less than organic whole foods produce is simply barbaric. This isn't to say the system is good, our criminal justice system is a nightmare of indefinite detentions and human rights abuses. But I'm not seeing much struggle in this post. OP kept that making weird choices. At a point you need to sort yourself out.

duxup 8mo ago
I grew up in a poor single parent household. I'm doing better than most now. I don't have any more or less moral high ground because of my past as far as what I do now goes. I kinda hate how that stuff like people's past is used like a tool, source of credibility, or weapon/sheild ... Everyone got experiences.
TimorousBestie 8mo ago
> The weird moral grandstanding against Peanut Butter had to be the strangest part. I suppose you’re not aware that peanut butter manufacturers (and many other food manufacturers) in the states were allowed to cut their product with partially hydrogenated oil because it’s cheaper and doesn’t go rancid as fast. GRAS strikes again. Unfortunately partially hydrogenated oil is pretty bad for most humans: raises LDL, lowers HDL, correlates with colon cancer, etc etc. FDA didn’t ban it until c. 2020. One of the few things actual nutrition scientists agree with RFK Jr. on.
- 999900000999 8mo ago
  I'm sure him eating once would of been fine. If you exclude all processed foods with preservatives and say if not for Certified Organic foods you'll just not eat, you don't really come off a struggling. It's just an absolutely weird thing for the author of focus on.
  - TimorousBestie 8mo ago

petermcneeley 8mo ago

The author probably does not understand how radicalizing this text is.

duxup 8mo ago
What does that mean?

mmh0000 8mo ago

Wow. It’s scary to think this person votes. A dude makes a series of terrible decisions. Decides to not learn from any them. Then blames society. Okay. But my early story is eerily similar to his. Expect instead of just my dad dropping out to do drug, so did my mom. I grew up constantly moving between women’s shelters, random peoples couches and storage units. And while he was in rural Oregon, I was in rural Idaho. I ditched my parents as soon as I could. I worked basic non-silicon valley tech jobs. Moved from help desk ticket closer to actual IT career. No college, no money or time for it. Did alright. Yeah life would have been a fuckton easier if I had supportive parents. But I’m in a good place and what I did wasn’t magic or luck. It was simply get basic job. Get shit apartment. Get slightly better job. Repeat. This dude is deep in incel territory, which you can tell from the incel words he drops throughout his rant. This dude says he never expected or needed any hand outs but several paragraphs earlier was complaining that the food bank didn’t provide vegan food. Ooohhh Kay. I have a lot of thoughts about both those statements. But dang dude. Maybe if you’re starving you should take any food you can get and deal with the rich people virtue signaling once you can afford to eat. (To clarify on the above, being vegan is fucking great. It’s good to not kill animals… but you gotta take care of yourself before you take care of a cow.) Yeah parts of the system are screw up. Yeah some people get a really unfair hand. But this guy was in generally good health, should have had health insurance through these crap jobs he was complaining about for his skateboard thing. (Which is another wtf that shows total lack of risk analysis. Who choses skateboarding as a hobby when you can’t afford a doctor. Jeez. Take up running.)

uqual 8mo ago
You, especially as someone who has "been there", nailed it. And congrats on taking personal responsibility rather than blaming others and society for your bad decisions (and I'm betting that you, like most of us, have made some bad decisions from time to time - but try to learn from them rather than wallow in them).
queenkjuul 8mo ago
You were absolutely lucky. And nobody had health insurance at a $10/hr job in 2004

dial9-1 8mo ago

the OP probably is not telling the whole story and must have some kind of drug addiction going on that sucks up all of his wealth, because how do you even end up on a van when you split rent with a girlfriend/roommates? also the part where he refuses non-vegan food. yikes. and skateboarding as a hobby sounds great when you are uninsured

IAmBroom 8mo ago
> and skateboarding as a hobby sounds great when you are uninsured OK, THAT is clearly a failure of the system. Broken and sick people deserve top-quality medical care; it's what a high-functioning society would do.

kaycey2022 8mo ago

This was rough to read. No wonder a growing number of people in your country hate immigrants so much. Although, rationally speaking they are not be the cause of so much misfortune. People should do whatever they can to get ahead. No one should accept poverty. As long as you don’t cut the throat of other innocents, it’s all fine. One thing I would say is don’t put yourself down - like good things aren’t for you. I wouldn’t frame it as you don’t deserve. Everyone deserves a good life. Deserve takes you down a self destructive path. But because of the circumstance if your birth, you can’t have it - now.

insane_dreamer 8mo ago

I didn't have time to read the article, but the last paragraph caught my eye: > There is enough room for everyone to have shelter. There is enough food and water for everyone to eat, without needing to increase shareholder value. This is a pretty good summary of how I feel about the way our society has "devolved", to where we are continually pushed to work harder, to be more productive, to improve efficiency, to consolidate businesses, to "grow", for the primary purpose of making some rich people richer.

gos9 8mo ago

I find it strange how individuals lament the lack of support from “the system” while actively harming the same system by leaving food bank items on the curb or stealing To me this reads as a person with no understanding of mutual support networks because they have never felt the need to provide to others in the way they would like to be provided for. Inherently asocial, and weird.

readthenotes1 8mo ago
And mom leaving the entirety of their liquid net wealth at a store? There's something deeply flawed with the whole story that reeks of dissociation from reality.

stego-tech 8mo ago

Man, I'm disappointed by the comments. Like, moreso than usual. The cherry-picking of points to support your preconceived conclusions about the author ("he owns three houses he's better off than everyone else" did ya'll not read any of the context?), the judging of someone refusing to compromise personal values for temporary comfort, the denial on display that the country and life he lived is somehow invalid or fake simply because you personally haven't experienced it... Just, fuck, ya'll. And you wonder why polarization is spreading even on sites like HN or Slashdot, in what used to be tech-centric circles. This is why: you cannot comprehend the lived experiences of others and their personal value systems, you refuse to acknowledge the immense role that luck plays in life for a huge swath of the planet, and you apply your personal narrative to total strangers while also crowing about how people need to be more entrepreneurial, or take more risks, or sacrifice more. One personal snippet about how he placed his veganism as a personal principle in life, and suddenly so many feel comfortable saying he doesn't deserve help. One mention of his work renovating homes to try and pull in reliable income while also caring for his mother, and somehow he's just as bad as Blackstone or Bezos, nevermind the admission he lives in an off-grid trailer himself. Do ya'll even hear yourselves think before posting? "He needs to be entrepreneurial, but only in the methods I personally accept," "He went to college, it's his own fault for taking on that debt", "he complains about being hungry but chooses to be vegan." Fucking christ. I just...I have no words for how disgustingly self-centered and willfully ignorant so many of you are. Always looking for the tiniest nitpick to unravel a personal narrative to suit your own ends, rather than earnestly listening to the message being shared and the plea being made. The notion that the only perspectives worth listening to come from folks who made all the right decisions you would've obviously made, and that any human mistake is solely personal responsibility regardless of systemic influence. Ya'll need to learn to listen more, and judge less.