5 ms·

Old people are organized and more social. I see it in my community. They run the newsletters and they host community events. "Oh that's because they're retired!

Old people are organized and more social. I see it in my community. They run the newsletters and they host community events. "Oh that's because they're retired!" No, many of them are not. Many still work. I want the gerontocracy to end, but I'm also worried what takes its place. Gen Xers like me seem to lack some of the abilities present in our older generations. We'll probably be more equitable and fair, but will we be as politically effective and organized towards achieving our goals? I sort of doubt it.

throwaway173738 5mo ago
Organization is a skill that can be passed on, and to the degree that old people are still doing it themselves they’re depriving us of opportunities to learn and to practice and to benefit from their experience. That’s why we’re not as good at it.
- lostapathy 5mo ago
  Relatedly, it's a skill that goes with positions that are clung to such that nobody else gets to practice and learn said skill.
  - WalterBright 5mo ago
    An awful lot of young people are starting businesses. Look at all the people under 30 becoming billionaires. This just didn't happen when I was young. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2025/12/22/why-there-are-suddenly-so-many-self-made-billionaires-under-30/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2025/12/22/why-there-...
    - estimator7292 5mo ago
      Yes it did. Billionaires are a relatively new thing, but successful businesses were led by young people across the entirety of human history. And you should not praise someone for simply being a billionaire. That's a bad thing to be.
      - WalterBright 5mo ago
        > Yes it did. I don't recall any. I remember when people were all agog when Gates became one. > successful businesses were led by young people across the entirety of human history. Sure. But billionaires? > And you should not praise someone for simply being a billionaire. If they're self-made, they earned the praise. > That's a bad thing to be. Creating value is not a bad thing. Being a self-made billionaire means they created a billion dollars of value. They didn't take it from you or anyone else. Creating SpaceX, Starlink, etc., are good things.
        cweagans 5mo ago
        > If they're self-made, they earned the praise. They aren’t and they didn’t. > Being a self-made billionaire means they created a billion dollars of value. They didn't take it from you or anyone else. Nobody is a “self made” billionaire. That value you’re talking about didn’t just spring into existence. It had to come from somewhere. There is always a source. Who flew the rocket? Who built the rocket? Who built the parts for the rocket? Who mixed the fuel? Building big ambitious things is a good thing. But consolidating an amount of money that nobody could ever reasonably spend into the hands of one person (especially when that money is just the excess value produced by the workers) is unethical and unneeded.
        WalterBright 5mo ago
        What you're referring to are called "expenses". The value created is what somebody is willing to pay for a piece of that action (i.e. an ownership share). Expenses reduce the value. For example, if you bake a cake the value you created is what you can sell the cake for minus the cost of the ingredients and the use of an oven. For SpaceX, the money spent to buy materials and pay employees takes away value. > that nobody could ever reasonably spend into the hands of one person (especially when that money is just the excess value produced by the workers) is unethical and unneeded. Musk doesn't spend much of his money. He invests it in creating more businesses. > is unethical and unneeded. You're arguing that Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, etc., are unethical and unneeded. None of those companies would exist without Musk investing his fortune into them. BTW, why don't you and your friends get together and start a rocket company and make yourselves billionaires?
    - armchairhacker 5mo ago
      > Fueled by AI, prediction markets and online gambling, there are more self-made billionaires under 30 than ever before, 13 up from a previous record of 7. Two of those examples are online gambling, which is controversial to the extent that it's partly outlawed in the US. But more importantly, 13 isn't an awful lot. Approximately how many young people today have started successful businesses whose valuation is under $1 billion?
      - WalterBright 5mo ago
        > Approximately how many young people today have started successful businesses whose valuation is under $1 billion? You can type such questions into google as well as I can. > 13 isn't an awful lot There aren't that many self-made billionaires of any age.
- 01100011 5mo ago
  Sure, and if I was so inclined I could go rub noses with them. They're eager to find young folks who are community minded. But I don't want that. I'm gen x and full of cynicism and antisocial attitudes. The only people I know who aren't that way in my generation are churchgoing types and a few influencers.
  - throwaway173738 5mo ago
    What I’ve seen where I’m at is many of the old people who organize don’t want to give anything up to a next generation. They want all the accolades for themselves. So they’re happy to have young people do the work but aren’t comfortable letting them lead while teaching them the skills.
- Aurornis 5mo ago
  > and to the degree that old people are still doing it themselves they’re depriving us of opportunities to learn and to practice and to benefit from their experience. Young people’s ability and motivation to organize and communicate is not dependent on anything other than themselves choosing to do it and get involved > That’s why we’re not as good at it. If you continue to believe that you’re dependent on older generations to teach you everything you’ll never get anywhere. What works for older generations isn’t going to be good advice for getting younger generations to organize and communicate. The age differences are large.
lenerdenator 5mo ago
They've had decades to save up the money that allows them to do the things alongside work. They also came up in a time and place that allowed them to build social relationships outside of work. Many Gen Xers and Millennials just... don't have that kind of personal time. I know several people in my circle of friends who don't want to do anything after work because they're exhausted. Bills gotta be paid, and there's more pressure to squeeze more productivity and consumption out of individuals than there was in 1980-1995. A lot of that pressure, oddly enough, comes from the necessity to keep shareholder returns high to keep the retirement accounts of the Boomers flush with cash. Gen X and Millennials are also less likely to have had kids than the Boomers, so the socialization that came along with having a child (extracurriculars, PTA meetings, etc.) just never happened. We incentivized, and eventually started requiring, economic output and consumption over building in-person social networks and hosting events outside of work. It was what we considered important.
- WalterBright 5mo ago
  I'm curious how you figure that pressure to increase profits has increased?
  - lenerdenator 5mo ago
    The US birth rate began to drop in the 1960s. [0] At the time we were a more self-contained economy. Since then, there are fewer births per capita, and we've opened up global markets for labor and resources. If you have fewer people aging into markets for goods and services as time goes on, you have to monetize them more intensely in order to maintain revenues. At the same time, other markets (China, India, etc.) offered relatively-high GDP growth (and thus return on investment) compared to the US [1], since their labor costs are lower and the needs of then-developing nations were cheaper to meet. The result is a worker that's expected to produce more profit to compete with those elsewhere, while also being more intensely monetized through their consumption habits. If they can't produce enough profit to compete with workers elsewhere, they just don't have the income necessary to be more intensely monetized, so their standard of living drops. [0] https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/birth-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/countrie... [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?name_desc=false https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?name_...
WalterBright 5mo ago
[flagged]
- r14c 5mo ago
  Could you expand on that? My concept of fairness is pretty congruent with equity.
  - WalterBright 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - hilariously 5mo ago
      Equity? You mean equality (and that's still about rights, not pay.) Equity is just a stake in the outcome at all.
      - WalterBright 5mo ago
        Equality: starting out at the same position, for example we have equal rights under the law Equity: winding up at the same position, for example when everybody in a race wins the same medal, regardless of how hard they trained or how talented they are. An apocryphal story about equity: https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
        hilariously 5mo ago
        There's no definition of equity that I can find that returns that result so we'll just have to agree to disagree.
        deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
      - Aurornis 5mo ago
CalRobert 5mo ago
Mixing work and hobbies is easy. Mixing kids and hobbies is not.

throwaway173738 5mo ago

Organization is a skill that can be passed on, and to the degree that old people are still doing it themselves they’re depriving us of opportunities to learn and to practice and to benefit from their experience. That’s why we’re not as good at it.

lostapathy 5mo ago
Relatedly, it's a skill that goes with positions that are clung to such that nobody else gets to practice and learn said skill.
- WalterBright 5mo ago
  An awful lot of young people are starting businesses. Look at all the people under 30 becoming billionaires. This just didn't happen when I was young. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2025/12/22/why-there-are-suddenly-so-many-self-made-billionaires-under-30/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2025/12/22/why-there-...
  - estimator7292 5mo ago
    Yes it did. Billionaires are a relatively new thing, but successful businesses were led by young people across the entirety of human history. And you should not praise someone for simply being a billionaire. That's a bad thing to be.
    - WalterBright 5mo ago
      > Yes it did. I don't recall any. I remember when people were all agog when Gates became one. > successful businesses were led by young people across the entirety of human history. Sure. But billionaires? > And you should not praise someone for simply being a billionaire. If they're self-made, they earned the praise. > That's a bad thing to be. Creating value is not a bad thing. Being a self-made billionaire means they created a billion dollars of value. They didn't take it from you or anyone else. Creating SpaceX, Starlink, etc., are good things.
      - cweagans 5mo ago
        > If they're self-made, they earned the praise. They aren’t and they didn’t. > Being a self-made billionaire means they created a billion dollars of value. They didn't take it from you or anyone else. Nobody is a “self made” billionaire. That value you’re talking about didn’t just spring into existence. It had to come from somewhere. There is always a source. Who flew the rocket? Who built the rocket? Who built the parts for the rocket? Who mixed the fuel? Building big ambitious things is a good thing. But consolidating an amount of money that nobody could ever reasonably spend into the hands of one person (especially when that money is just the excess value produced by the workers) is unethical and unneeded.
        WalterBright 5mo ago
        What you're referring to are called "expenses". The value created is what somebody is willing to pay for a piece of that action (i.e. an ownership share). Expenses reduce the value. For example, if you bake a cake the value you created is what you can sell the cake for minus the cost of the ingredients and the use of an oven. For SpaceX, the money spent to buy materials and pay employees takes away value. > that nobody could ever reasonably spend into the hands of one person (especially when that money is just the excess value produced by the workers) is unethical and unneeded. Musk doesn't spend much of his money. He invests it in creating more businesses. > is unethical and unneeded. You're arguing that Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, etc., are unethical and unneeded. None of those companies would exist without Musk investing his fortune into them. BTW, why don't you and your friends get together and start a rocket company and make yourselves billionaires?
  - armchairhacker 5mo ago
    > Fueled by AI, prediction markets and online gambling, there are more self-made billionaires under 30 than ever before, 13 up from a previous record of 7. Two of those examples are online gambling, which is controversial to the extent that it's partly outlawed in the US. But more importantly, 13 isn't an awful lot. Approximately how many young people today have started successful businesses whose valuation is under $1 billion?
    - WalterBright 5mo ago
      > Approximately how many young people today have started successful businesses whose valuation is under $1 billion? You can type such questions into google as well as I can. > 13 isn't an awful lot There aren't that many self-made billionaires of any age.
01100011 5mo ago
Sure, and if I was so inclined I could go rub noses with them. They're eager to find young folks who are community minded. But I don't want that. I'm gen x and full of cynicism and antisocial attitudes. The only people I know who aren't that way in my generation are churchgoing types and a few influencers.
- throwaway173738 5mo ago
  What I’ve seen where I’m at is many of the old people who organize don’t want to give anything up to a next generation. They want all the accolades for themselves. So they’re happy to have young people do the work but aren’t comfortable letting them lead while teaching them the skills.
Aurornis 5mo ago
> and to the degree that old people are still doing it themselves they’re depriving us of opportunities to learn and to practice and to benefit from their experience. Young people’s ability and motivation to organize and communicate is not dependent on anything other than themselves choosing to do it and get involved > That’s why we’re not as good at it. If you continue to believe that you’re dependent on older generations to teach you everything you’ll never get anywhere. What works for older generations isn’t going to be good advice for getting younger generations to organize and communicate. The age differences are large.

lenerdenator 5mo ago

They've had decades to save up the money that allows them to do the things alongside work. They also came up in a time and place that allowed them to build social relationships outside of work. Many Gen Xers and Millennials just... don't have that kind of personal time. I know several people in my circle of friends who don't want to do anything after work because they're exhausted. Bills gotta be paid, and there's more pressure to squeeze more productivity and consumption out of individuals than there was in 1980-1995. A lot of that pressure, oddly enough, comes from the necessity to keep shareholder returns high to keep the retirement accounts of the Boomers flush with cash. Gen X and Millennials are also less likely to have had kids than the Boomers, so the socialization that came along with having a child (extracurriculars, PTA meetings, etc.) just never happened. We incentivized, and eventually started requiring, economic output and consumption over building in-person social networks and hosting events outside of work. It was what we considered important.

WalterBright 5mo ago
I'm curious how you figure that pressure to increase profits has increased?
- lenerdenator 5mo ago
  The US birth rate began to drop in the 1960s. [0] At the time we were a more self-contained economy. Since then, there are fewer births per capita, and we've opened up global markets for labor and resources. If you have fewer people aging into markets for goods and services as time goes on, you have to monetize them more intensely in order to maintain revenues. At the same time, other markets (China, India, etc.) offered relatively-high GDP growth (and thus return on investment) compared to the US [1], since their labor costs are lower and the needs of then-developing nations were cheaper to meet. The result is a worker that's expected to produce more profit to compete with those elsewhere, while also being more intensely monetized through their consumption habits. If they can't produce enough profit to compete with workers elsewhere, they just don't have the income necessary to be more intensely monetized, so their standard of living drops. [0] https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/birth-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/datasets/global-metrics/countrie... [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?name_desc=false https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?name_...

WalterBright 5mo ago

[flagged]

r14c 5mo ago
Could you expand on that? My concept of fairness is pretty congruent with equity.
- WalterBright 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - hilariously 5mo ago
    Equity? You mean equality (and that's still about rights, not pay.) Equity is just a stake in the outcome at all.
    - WalterBright 5mo ago
      Equality: starting out at the same position, for example we have equal rights under the law Equity: winding up at the same position, for example when everybody in a race wins the same medal, regardless of how hard they trained or how talented they are. An apocryphal story about equity: https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html https://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
      - hilariously 5mo ago
        There's no definition of equity that I can find that returns that result so we'll just have to agree to disagree.
        deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
    - Aurornis 5mo ago

CalRobert 5mo ago

Mixing work and hobbies is easy. Mixing kids and hobbies is not.