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.
You can, and you should. We all need a helping hand of a community, and a community to heal. We are social beings. And we carry the responsibility for not helping, too.
“A child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.“
Here are a handful of things that “the system” could change that would have helped the author:
- free or greatly reduced cost of higher education
- replacing means-tested programs like Medicaid with universal versions. Medicare for all, for example, where you don’t have to jump through hoops or even opt in, is better than the dehumanizing system we have in place today. Also removes the barrier to slightly improving one’s life, since you won’t lose your aid after getting a 10% raise or w/e.
- cheaper housing, or public housing (god forbid!)
These are not pipe dreams, these are all things other civilized countries have. I don’t want to live in a world where you have to be either lucky or extraordinary to live a secure, modest life.
> 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.
>...abandons the family to do drugs and alcohol? How can you blame “the system” for that?
We don't live in a vacuum and there a reasons why people turn to drug use that the system exacerbates. But that is completely irrelevant, because this blog post is a systemic critique, even if it is told through the life story of an individual. To cherry pick one stanza of the entire blog post to dismiss it on the grounds that the father who left is a drug addict is one more example of the delusions or strategies of the moralizing capitalist.
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.
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 ...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So because of his economic realities he should be pragmatic enough to drop his values?
Can't you see what a slippery slope that is? And in fact, how dangerous that level of economic despair is for a functioning democracy?
It's also not fair, because people who are more fortunate to be born into a well-off family can eat vegan their whole lives.
This person did everything he was supposed to do, stood up for things he believed in, and still was left in the lurch along the way. This is not the American dream, it is a clear indication how arrested social mobility is in the US. The rags-to-riches "Horatio Alger" story has been a myth in the US for quite a well, buoyed by anecdotes that are predicated on luck.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> How can you blame “the system” for that?
You can, and you should. We all need a helping hand of a community, and a community to heal. We are social beings. And we carry the responsibility for not helping, too.
Here are a handful of things that “the system” could change that would have helped the author:
- free or greatly reduced cost of higher education
- replacing means-tested programs like Medicaid with universal versions. Medicare for all, for example, where you don’t have to jump through hoops or even opt in, is better than the dehumanizing system we have in place today. Also removes the barrier to slightly improving one’s life, since you won’t lose your aid after getting a 10% raise or w/e.
- cheaper housing, or public housing (god forbid!)
These are not pipe dreams, these are all things other civilized countries have. I don’t want to live in a world where you have to be either lucky or extraordinary to live a secure, modest life.
Some people don't know what personal responsibility means.
> 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.
>...abandons the family to do drugs and alcohol? How can you blame “the system” for that?
We don't live in a vacuum and there a reasons why people turn to drug use that the system exacerbates. But that is completely irrelevant, because this blog post is a systemic critique, even if it is told through the life story of an individual. To cherry pick one stanza of the entire blog post to dismiss it on the grounds that the father who left is a drug addict is one more example of the delusions or strategies of the moralizing capitalist.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I guess they can also do the same without supporting UBI, so there's that..
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.
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...
/rant
Edit: Why downvote? debate me. Its so childish to suppress comments you do not agree with.
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.
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.
So because of his economic realities he should be pragmatic enough to drop his values?
Can't you see what a slippery slope that is? And in fact, how dangerous that level of economic despair is for a functioning democracy?
It's also not fair, because people who are more fortunate to be born into a well-off family can eat vegan their whole lives.
This person did everything he was supposed to do, stood up for things he believed in, and still was left in the lurch along the way. This is not the American dream, it is a clear indication how arrested social mobility is in the US. The rags-to-riches "Horatio Alger" story has been a myth in the US for quite a well, buoyed by anecdotes that are predicated on luck.
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.
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.
The author probably does not understand how radicalizing this text is.
What does that mean?
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.
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.
Yeah I struggled reading through the whole thing...too much delusion and narcissism for me.
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
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.