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I really liked how you challenged the assumption of the entire post. I was waiting for someone to do that. This post was partially motivated by some personal si
by wturner 13y ago
I really liked how you challenged the assumption of the entire post. I was waiting for someone to do that. This post was partially motivated by some personal situations but also because of an email exchange with an entrepreneur that was insisting his economic comfort was due to 'working his ass off'. When I mentioned that field workers work their ass off and are basically poor, he didn't respond. So I guess you had that one sussed.
- ACow_Adonis 13y agoThanks. I dropped out of my CS degree at university and did economics instead, and now i straddle both worlds :P I say with no ego or pride that I've heard just about every economic theory/justification there is from discussions with the rich and the poor. On the one hand its fascinating how most of the world is driven by relatively folksy beliefs. Its also fascinating to me how relatively devoid of economic knowledge most programmers, and indeed people, are. The "I work really hard" is a standard refrain in discussions with relatively wealthy individuals in justifying their wealth. I would place it almost at the level of a basic emotive response. Perhaps its trying to respond to an innate notion of fairness in the human psyche that needs addressing to explain obvious inequality. Either way, it keeps getting trotted out despite being obviously disprovable and also being not the way that entrepreneurs or businessmen pay their own staff, so it was a good bet from you were talking to someone in just such a scenario :P