8 ms·

any person who succeeds does so by some combination of both individual grit, and support from society and loved ones And genetics, and the general culture, and

any person who succeeds does so by some combination of both individual grit, and support from society and loved ones And genetics, and the general culture, and luck, which is just a word we use for many factors we can't even name yet mixed with true randomness. And then there's a fair bit of interplay between all the factors. Why do some people work 60 hours a week when others barely crack 10? That "grit" doesn't come from nowhere. And surely there are more fundamental reasons for why some societies at some times are more supportive, or more successful, or richer, or saner, than others.

rayiner 12y ago
I work 60 hours a week because I was fortunate enough to be born with aptitudes that cause employers to want to pay me a lot of money for those hours. If my employers were fighting to keep me under 30 hours so they wouldn't have to pay benefits, and to pay $7.50 for each incremental hour, with zero upward mobility, my incentive to work those hours would vanish. Moreover, you shouldn't get credit for genetics. That's not a product of your exercise of free will.
- spindritf 12y ago
  you shouldn't get credit for genetics Why not? Seems like a completely arbitrary standard. And pretty hard on everyone else. Are you not viscerally impressed by beautiful women, high IQ speakers, and so on? Even if you somehow get people to agree, and at least partially implement it, how can you credit anything then? Is there a human quality we care about not heavily influenced by genetics? How do you disentangle von Neumann's ability from his achievements? How do you discount Brigitte Bardot's beauty or Michael Jordan's height?
  - rayiner 12y ago
    You may not agree with it, but its not arbitrary to say that the economy should strive to give people credit for what they choose to do, rather than what you luck into. Its a distinction based on a well-defined criterion. I'm not really interested in discussing outliers like Michael Jordan, or tiny segments of the economy like sports or entertainment. I'm talking about how we distribute the proceeds of our industrial economy, or at the very least, how we assign moral culpability to people based on things they have little control over. That is to say, it might be inevitable that pretty people or smart people will have advantages. But the only difference between attractiveness and intellect is that on places like HN, its socially acceptable to be smug about the latter.
    - waterlesscloud 12y ago
      The only difference? If you were stranded in the wilderness and needed to survive from scratch, would you rather be with a group of attractive people or a group of smart people?
      - rayiner 12y ago
        I'd rather be with a group of backwoods rednecks to be perfectly honest. But I digress. The economy isn't about heros fighting nature to save the day. Its about everyone working together to make an environment where creation is possible. You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth? No, he's useless without being plugged into the larger economy. That larger economy is made up of ordinary people. They are poorly compensated not because their contribution doesn't matter, collectively, but because they are fungible. Is fungsbility a fair criterion for structuring an economy?
        waterlesscloud 12y ago
        >You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth? If I were to bet on it, I'd bet very heavily on him creating wealth under those circumstances. As measured by creating a system for survival. Obviously not as well as someone trained in such things (as implied by your dodge), but better than someone who lacked his intelligence, and more importantly, his drive. Ordinary people are compensated ordinarily because their contributions to the economy are ordinary. That actually does seem quite fair to me. I appreciate the work cleaners do, but their jobs simply don't contribute to the economy as much as building a large company like Facebook does. That's not to say everyone who is highly compensated contributes highly to society, we all know that isn't true. But that's also not really what we're discussing.
        JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Maybe it only seems ordinary to you, because it doesn't interest you. Its upper-middle-class arrogance showing, that nobody's job is as important as jobs like mine. What makes cleaning 'ordinary'? Try firing your cleaner/garbage man/street sweeper for a month and see how that impacts you. And what on earth does it mean, to contribute to an economy wherein only 'non-ordinary' folks benefit? That's pretty circular reasoning. I'd argue that the esoteric jobs of building web gadgets are the fluff and foam of our economy, unimportant to real health and welfare, and way, way overcompensated.
rokhayakebe 12y ago
Why do some people work 60 hours a week when others barely crack 10? That "grit" doesn't come from nowhere. Are you suggesting the people "cracking" only 10 lack the ability to work 60 hours weekly?
- danielweber 12y ago
  I'm not sure what you are asking, but I directly observe that, when presented with the choice between doing something hard that pays off a lot, or doing something easy that pays off little or not at all, that there are a bunch of people in the first camp and a bunch in the second camp. This doesn't strictly break down by SES, either, although there are certainly trends. You can come up with all sorts of reasons for the second camp's behavior, and many of those reasons are likely true for some subset of that camp. But at some point you have to recognize people's agency in their own behavior, or else they are just children in your eyes.
  - rokhayakebe 12y ago
    when presented with the choice between .... bunch of people in the first camp and a bunch in the second camp. This is a VERY narrowed perspective. Unless these behaviors are constant across all areas of one's life, they only tell you what one's priorities are. Because someone may sacrifice short term for long term gain in their career, while at the same time sacrificing long term gain for short term satiation when it comes to food or health. So truly what can be said about this marvelous developer, and about his ability to hold on for long term outcomes, when she refused a Google buyout offer and took her company public, when at the same time she pushed back starting a family, eating healthy, and working out. My point is NO-ONE belongs to one camp and one camp only. You and I, and all others belong to both camps.

rayiner 12y ago

I work 60 hours a week because I was fortunate enough to be born with aptitudes that cause employers to want to pay me a lot of money for those hours. If my employers were fighting to keep me under 30 hours so they wouldn't have to pay benefits, and to pay $7.50 for each incremental hour, with zero upward mobility, my incentive to work those hours would vanish. Moreover, you shouldn't get credit for genetics. That's not a product of your exercise of free will.

spindritf 12y ago
you shouldn't get credit for genetics Why not? Seems like a completely arbitrary standard. And pretty hard on everyone else. Are you not viscerally impressed by beautiful women, high IQ speakers, and so on? Even if you somehow get people to agree, and at least partially implement it, how can you credit anything then? Is there a human quality we care about not heavily influenced by genetics? How do you disentangle von Neumann's ability from his achievements? How do you discount Brigitte Bardot's beauty or Michael Jordan's height?
- rayiner 12y ago
  You may not agree with it, but its not arbitrary to say that the economy should strive to give people credit for what they choose to do, rather than what you luck into. Its a distinction based on a well-defined criterion. I'm not really interested in discussing outliers like Michael Jordan, or tiny segments of the economy like sports or entertainment. I'm talking about how we distribute the proceeds of our industrial economy, or at the very least, how we assign moral culpability to people based on things they have little control over. That is to say, it might be inevitable that pretty people or smart people will have advantages. But the only difference between attractiveness and intellect is that on places like HN, its socially acceptable to be smug about the latter.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    The only difference? If you were stranded in the wilderness and needed to survive from scratch, would you rather be with a group of attractive people or a group of smart people?
    - rayiner 12y ago
      I'd rather be with a group of backwoods rednecks to be perfectly honest. But I digress. The economy isn't about heros fighting nature to save the day. Its about everyone working together to make an environment where creation is possible. You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth? No, he's useless without being plugged into the larger economy. That larger economy is made up of ordinary people. They are poorly compensated not because their contribution doesn't matter, collectively, but because they are fungible. Is fungsbility a fair criterion for structuring an economy?
      - waterlesscloud 12y ago
        >You take Zuckerberg and leave him in the middle of the woods, and what happens? Does he still create wealth? If I were to bet on it, I'd bet very heavily on him creating wealth under those circumstances. As measured by creating a system for survival. Obviously not as well as someone trained in such things (as implied by your dodge), but better than someone who lacked his intelligence, and more importantly, his drive. Ordinary people are compensated ordinarily because their contributions to the economy are ordinary. That actually does seem quite fair to me. I appreciate the work cleaners do, but their jobs simply don't contribute to the economy as much as building a large company like Facebook does. That's not to say everyone who is highly compensated contributes highly to society, we all know that isn't true. But that's also not really what we're discussing.
        JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Maybe it only seems ordinary to you, because it doesn't interest you. Its upper-middle-class arrogance showing, that nobody's job is as important as jobs like mine. What makes cleaning 'ordinary'? Try firing your cleaner/garbage man/street sweeper for a month and see how that impacts you. And what on earth does it mean, to contribute to an economy wherein only 'non-ordinary' folks benefit? That's pretty circular reasoning. I'd argue that the esoteric jobs of building web gadgets are the fluff and foam of our economy, unimportant to real health and welfare, and way, way overcompensated.

rokhayakebe 12y ago

Why do some people work 60 hours a week when others barely crack 10? That "grit" doesn't come from nowhere. Are you suggesting the people "cracking" only 10 lack the ability to work 60 hours weekly?

danielweber 12y ago
I'm not sure what you are asking, but I directly observe that, when presented with the choice between doing something hard that pays off a lot, or doing something easy that pays off little or not at all, that there are a bunch of people in the first camp and a bunch in the second camp. This doesn't strictly break down by SES, either, although there are certainly trends. You can come up with all sorts of reasons for the second camp's behavior, and many of those reasons are likely true for some subset of that camp. But at some point you have to recognize people's agency in their own behavior, or else they are just children in your eyes.
- rokhayakebe 12y ago
  when presented with the choice between .... bunch of people in the first camp and a bunch in the second camp. This is a VERY narrowed perspective. Unless these behaviors are constant across all areas of one's life, they only tell you what one's priorities are. Because someone may sacrifice short term for long term gain in their career, while at the same time sacrificing long term gain for short term satiation when it comes to food or health. So truly what can be said about this marvelous developer, and about his ability to hold on for long term outcomes, when she refused a Google buyout offer and took her company public, when at the same time she pushed back starting a family, eating healthy, and working out. My point is NO-ONE belongs to one camp and one camp only. You and I, and all others belong to both camps.