[lordnacho]

Have you never someone who thought they had to please their parents well into adulthood?

On one hand, yes, on paper you are free when you are 18.

On the other hand, you can't be free without some sort of confidence that you'll be ok if you don't do what your parents say. And if your parents are the domineering kind, they'll have made good use of your first 18 years to keep you in their orbit.

Real life is complicated, not everyone has clarity, especially at that age.

[WalterBright]

It's their choice, not their destiny.

Young people reject their parents all the time. A pervasive issue in parenting is the kids refuse to listen to the parents. Movies about it are quite popular - see "Dirty Dancing", "Saturday Night Fever", on and on and on.

I'm not buying the lack of agency of young people. It's just another excuse for choosing the easy way.

If you are not where you want to be in life, have you done anything today to move towards that goal? If you've done nothing, then choose better. It's your life, not mine. Complaining about not being a billionaire's son is a waste of your life.

If you're in the US, of sound mind and body, and over 18, there's never been a time in history with more opportunity for you. If you refuse to see it, nobody can help you. But just think about all those migrants with nothing walking thousands of miles with the hope of getting into the US.

What do they know that you don't?

[lordnacho]

I know a fair few of those people, except they didn't walk to the west, they sailed. Basically my parents, and my aunts and uncles.

Like I said elsewhere, it's a good attitude that you can do it, but it's not actually realistic that you can. People learn this the hard way in sports for example. We aren't all going to starting QB, there's only 32 of those jobs.

> "Dirty Dancing", "Saturday Night Fever"

Movies from back before the drawbridge came up.

> Complaining about not being a billionaire's son is a waste of your life.

Well I actually went to school with a billionaire's kid, and I never thought I'd rather have his life. Nor did anyone else.

There's also a fair bit of gap between "oh why am I not a prince" and "everything I'm good at or want to do will cost me a huge amount of debt".

> What do they know that you don't?

People are mistaken about how other countries are all the time. Do you think Western defectors to the communist blocks were never disappointed?

Keep in mind not everyone knows everything, even after they turn 18.

If you think there's so much opportunity, why is it that people are complaining about the lack of it? Perhaps they've actually tried to search for them and couldn't find any?