[sorisos]

> If every time someone shares their success, the response is instantly about how privileged or lucky they are, then our culture is sick. We should listen to and support those stories.

I would argue that a culture which attributes success in life to personal effort or choices is sick. This makes people blame themselves for not trying hard enough etc, when in reality there are more decisive factors such as who your parents are (or luck).

[s1artibartfast]

For me, This is a very strange take.

Don't we want a culture where success in life is associated with personal choice and an economic environment which allows it to be true?

For now, it is at least a half truth where some individuals are successful because of their hard work and others due to luck.

In what world would we want a culture where success is viewed as entirely random? how would this be better?

[sorisos]

I think we already have a culture that exaggerates this aspect. Tried-but-failed stories do not sell very well. Not everyone can be successful and pretending this is case makes people that feeling left out blame them self (or maybe immigrants). I am not advocating a "entirely random" view, just a more nuanced and perhaps more realistic one. Also, I do not think humans will ever stop struggling to achieve things in life, even if we had a society where success where attributed to pure luck.

(Perhaps we should define "success" in this conversation)

[s1artibartfast]

I think our impressions are colored about by our different observations of those around us, and this conversation is probably colored by our definitions of success.

This thread kicked off with someone who escaped poverty and made it to the middle class. I am not talking about the fetishization of the hyper-rich.

I do think that with persistence, hard work, and an average allocation of luck most people are capable of achieving a comfortable job and a happy middle class life.

In my observations, a lack of personal responsibility for improving your situation is much more harmful than idealizing the successful. For every person I know held back by some sense of inferiority, blaming themselves, I know 10 stuck in a shitty situation by complacency. I see skilled people in miserable jobs who could be interviewing, people lonely or shitty marriages they should change. I see people who are unhappy with their heath but make no change. Many of these people think, "I am just unlucky" and resign themselves to their situation.

While you don't think people will ever stop struggling, I'm not convinced. People can become disillusion and hopeless if you tell them their effort has no correlation with their success in life.

Some say that the "American Dream" of getting ahead with hard work is a lie, but I think the idea that your efforts have no impact on outcomes is an even bigger lie, and a more dangerous one.

[ncmncm]

Sad to say, $200k is not middle class. $300k is the line, nowadays. Very few of us are middle class, in the sense that our grandparents could be even on a regular wage. That is, there is essentially no middle class in the US anymore. Income is distributed strictly bimodally.

None of this is accidental: it is the consequence of a specific program started about 1970, outlined in the Powell Memorandum, to grab control of the levers of power. Perhaps the most important factor was using military-grade propaganda methods to get the poorer half of voters voting against their own interests. It has been running for 50 years now, and has been a roaring success.

Kids come out of college now saddled with decades of crushing debt, facing homelessness after one medical or legal hiccup; scared voters are easily manipulated. Half the nation actually voted for an out-and-out con man--twice!--pretending to represent them while doing everything imaginable to grind them down further. Meanwhile the opposition has been forced to pray to the same gods, and depend on hedge funds to finance a half-hearted alternative that has to use a vocabulary created by the propaganda machine.

The amount of money generated by the US economy has gone up and up and up since 1945, but the amount collected by regular people--the less-than-99%-ers--leveled off in 1975. All the rest has gone straight to the pockets of those at the very top, even minting billionaires left and right. Make no mistake, we could all be fantastically better off given pretty small policy changes.

[s1artibartfast]

>Sad to say, $200k is not middle class. $300k is the line, nowadays. Very few of us are middle class, in the sense that our grandparents could be even on a regular wage. That is, there is essentially no middle class in the US anymore. Income is distributed strictly bimodally.

If you think <300k/yr is not middle class, I think we are coming from such different places that we cant have a meaningful discussion.

I'm just going to put this out there:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distri...

[ncmncm]

You have displayed just the left-hand lobe of the bimodal US income distribution. The other bump is way off to the right. Middle-class, if there were one anymore, would be at the dip in the middle, where I said, just off-screen. The goal has been to develop and maintain a permanent underclass who are just barely well enough off that any change seems to threaten to knock them into homelessness, yet imagine they are doing lots better than people with brown skin.

The propaganda message is that any improvement for the people at far left (with brown skin, in particular) would be at the expense of people immediately to their right. The other lobe, off-screen, that could afford everything, is invisible. The program has been a fantastic success. Champagne corks are popping every year, but most especially in 2020, when the right lobe shifted quite a ways further right.

I have some relatives in the other lobe. Their lives are very different from ours. Their kids' lives are very different from our kids'.

[WalterBright]

> a culture which attributes success in life to personal effort or choices is sick.

Then what is the point of making better choices, such as staying in school, avoiding drugs and not committing crimes?

[ncmncm]

Meaning, why bother not just rotting in prison? Or, why stay in school when it will make no difference anyway? When you and I were kids, one hourly wage was enough raise a family on, and two (often enough the kid's) to send them to college. Now that is impossible. They graduate today with a lifetime of debt.

The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, both per capita and in absolute numbers (even counting, e.g., Chinese concentration camps). Cities have quotas now, where they are obliged to send a specific number to prison each year to maintain their contract. The prisons and police forces cost much more to operate than would be needed to lift every American out of poverty.

When you and I were young, no city police force had a billion dollar budget. Crime rates plummeted about 18 years after we stopped poisoning everyone with lead, so there is much less legitimate work for the police. They keep busy, though.

[WalterBright]

> one hourly wage was enough raise a family on

Having worked at minimum wage as a teen, I can guarantee you could not support a family on it.

> They graduate today with a lifetime of debt

The ones that did not google "starting salaries for major X" and compare that against the expected debt they'd incur, yes.

[Grustaf]

A culture that didn't do that at all would of course be doomed to failure. If people think it's all about luck, they won't make an effort. In reality it's of course not only about luck at all.

Yes you do need lucky genetics (and insane amounts of hard work) if you want to join the NBA, but if you're willing to work hard and make sacrifices it's more than enough to be born average (not too poor, not too sick), you'll be able to have a very decent life.

[chmod600]

It's not about attribution. It's about learning from success, because we can't learn from luck.