| This is a crazy story. It is a tale of compassion and human perseverance against nature. But parts of it really bother me. To equate risking everything for a chance at a decent life with the struggles of foundership is discarding the inherent worth of life. The two are not equivalent things. The former is about basic dignity and human rights and the chance to live a happy life and the latter is about trying to build something. I don't discount the challenges founders face; on the contrary I have tried it and failed spectacularly; it is not easy and that it requires a set of skills that is hard to learn and harder still to master. > We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - from the US Declaration of Independence I believe strongly in that, and I will say further that I believe that all human beings are created equal, and have inherent rights. Many countries have similar mottos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_... I believe it is a disservice to humanity to compare foundership and basic human rights and dignity. > Luck On a day when it really counted, they had some of it. But it dawns on me that luck is just the product of all these other qualities. Really struggling with this quote. It is in my opinion a serious mistake to believe that luck is not a factor. I have been extremely lucky; I was born in a democratic country and I had easy access to health care and education, and by god I had access to a computer at a young age. These accidents of birth are nothing more or less than luck, and they made a tremendous difference in my life and had a significant positive impact on my life. Even in my own city, people are suffering in poverty, have a lack of access to medical care, etc. These people simply don't have the good luck that I have had. As other commenters like buro9 have mentioned, > Those risking everything have no other choice. |