[jongjong]

Yes 100%. I was born upper middle class. I have a BIT from a global top 50 University. I understood this after working in cryptocurrency sector in Germany.

After I left Australia and moved to Europe, I realized after some time that 'the matrix' had demoted me into a lower social class. I had to work harder for less money and had access to fewer opportunities.

Then I joined the crypto sector and the people there seemed almost mentally deranged. I didn't understand it at first. They had a way, way, way more cynical view of the world than I did. In retrospect, it feels like they had been under attack by the system, in secret... And they saw any outsider as an enemy. I felt like I was disliked for not being cynical enough. Like my subtle optimism was a signal that I didn't belong. It made me a target.

Then I came back to Australia after having a really tough time and switched back to mainstream tech sector and it was like everyone I worked with was living in some fantasy world. Like 10x more naive than I ever was, all colleagues with master degrees and PhDs... Work was a lot easier too. More forgiving. Also, I was liked. People were almost too nice to me.

The difference is privilege. I can see it very clearly now. It's absolutely not based on culture or race.

Society is highly stratified and I believe there are mechanisms built into the system to prevent people from different classes to meet.

I feel like there is some kind of operating system which manufactures cultures to create separations... Traditions and taboos separate people to prevent them from sharing their experiences and to maintain blind spots which serve to hold the system together. I think I understand why rich people don't like to hang around regular people.

Have you ever wondered why people don't talk to strangers anymore? I went to a train museum recently and noticed that the carriages on old trains had seats facing each other; I sat on one side and thought to myself that it must have been awkward for people to stare at each other in the face, sitting so close to each other, with nothing and nobody standing in between them... for such long trips. Carriages were split between 'smoking' and 'non-smoking'... Nowadays carriages are split between 'normal' and 'quiet'... And the number of quiet carriages seems to have increased over time... It's like there are forces in society which try to prevent people with different experiences from sharing their experiences. This is masked by superficial differences; superficial mental and physical differences are fine but experiential differences are not.

When I watch modern movies, they seem to show characters from an elite perspective. Even characters who are depicted as poor seem to share elite ideologies which makes the characters not believable.

Also, beyond values, there are some material distortions; I've seen too many detective series were the cop is living in a luxury penthouse.

[taurath]

> mechanisms built into the system to prevent people from different classes to meet

IME these mechanisms are a natural outflow of how those with money and power delegate power or invest money.

I have friends with a private plane. I also have friends who are scrambling to make rent, among many other friends always worried about their next paycheck. When you put the two together, you’ll find they can’t really engage in conversation about their lives without extreme embarassment - the plane people could solve most of the immediate problems facing the paycheck folks with barely a dent in their lifestyle.

So the plane people end up around people they can talk about vacation spots with, and the paycheck people hang around people who are empathetic and participate together in mutual aid to get thru. Rarely do the paycheck folks become plane people (they’re too generous or focus on maximizing other aspects of their lives than income). Rarely do the plane people actually help the paycheck people, except indirectly.

Inequality is embarrassing. Our society is embarrassing. That there is no safety net and basic needs being met being demanded by everyone from the poor to the richest of the rich can ONLY happen because they don’t interact. I see a huge backlash coming and it will not hit equally, or fairly. No society can continue like this without breaking down.

[fullStackOasis]

> No society can continue like this without breaking down

I wish you were right, but I think you are wrong. This article on poverty in ancient Rome suggests otherwise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_ancient_Rome "Their society may have consisted of a handful of wealthy individuals that made up 0.6% of the population, an army that made up 0.4% of the population, and the poor masses that made up 99% of the populace." I selected Rome because it's my understanding that this is one of the longest lived empires.

The facts for the Roman Empire are not clear, but it looks like massive inequality is the sad default mode for humanity. One might expect that as literacy and information sharing improved, it would be less tolerable by the populace for this inequality to persist. But it seems about as bad as ever. This may be due to the perception that rich people because they "earned" it, despite the fact that it seems patently obvious (to me at least!) that is not the case.

[jongjong]

You occupy a very unusual place seeing such extremes of both sides.

I've only interacted with people with that level of wealth in a professional capacity. In my personal life, I know a lot of people who own multiple properties and businesses including some of my own family members but I don't think I know anyone with a private jet. The top of the range I know have big boats and big houses.

I feel like there is a social boundary between the old money and the new money.

The new money tends to be much wealthier and they don't like the old money folks. In theory, they could both talk with each other about exotic holiday spots, fine dining and boating/yachting but there is a different discomfort. And it's not about tech understanding because a lot of children of old money went into tech. I think the discomfort is that the new money folks see the old money folks as spoiled brats... But IMO, this is a result of the new money folks not seeing their own privilege; not granted by daddy, sure, but granted by the system itself.

My view is that nobody earned anything. They were chosen by luck of birth, chosen by a rich friend, chosen by a rich investor, or chosen by algorithm or a combination thereof. Usually based on highly superficial aspects. Their efforts have very little to do with it besides providing plausible narrative cover.

[mawadev]

I think you should spend less time on computers, the internet and around tech people, it will blow your mind

[lisper]

> Nowadays carriages are split between 'normal' and 'quiet'... And the number of quiet carriages seems to have increased over time... It's like there are forces in society which try to prevent people with different experiences from sharing their experiences.

It's no great mystery. Social interaction is a skill that requires practice and effort to develop. Interacting with new people is risky and occasionally painful. Back in the day the punishment for not developing that skill and taking those risks was boredom, but nowadays you can just crawl into your cell phone to while away the hours.

[YZF]

It all used to be smoking and there are still places in the world where trains and busses have seats facing each other. Having sat in those seats in the past I can tell you that people can still perfectly well not talk to each other ;)

There are cultures (e.g. go to Israel) where random people still talk to each other.

I'm not sure I would call what you observed in Europe privilege. I think you were just an outsider/immigrant from a different culture. Different places have different cultures and it takes a long time (if ever) to acquire them. You'll be treated differently if you don't have the right social cues e.g.

In places like the US or Canada this tends to be a lesser effect because it's a big melting point.

I know plenty of really rich people (like billionaire or approaching) that aren't that different than most of us (also rich). You don't magically move to some other "circle" just by having money. It's true there are certain "classes"/cliques in different cultures but it's not as simple as has money vs. hasn't.

[webnrrd2k]

Re: movies and elite perspectives, I watched They Cloned Tyrone a while ago and it had a solid "hero movie from a lower socioeconomic class" vibe. I enjoyed the perspective shift and I think it might be a good example of your point.

[addaon]

That movie was far better than it had any right to be.

[thr0w]

> Nowadays carriages are split between 'normal' and 'quiet'... And the number of quiet carriages seems to have increased over time... It's like there are forces in society which try to prevent people with different experiences from sharing their experiences.

In the USA at least, people in the normal cars aren't "sharing their experiences". They're playing garbage music from their iPhone speakers (technically not allowed - happens anyway), trying to subdue their giggling/crying/screaming children, loudly conversing amongst themselves, etc. It's a zoo.

Not trying to pick apart your post, I liked reading it in general.

[musicale]

100%* prefer almost anything to sodcasting, facetime calls, and tiktok/youtube/mobile games at max volume

*rounded up

[musicale]

> Then I joined the crypto sector and the people there seemed almost mentally deranged

so better than expected then

[svara]

While I can only peripherally relate to the specifics of your story, I think it beautifully illustrates how interesting and mind expanding it is to spend time in different cultural contexts, and that different cultures can very much co-exist in the same countries or even in the same people.

Everyone should do it more, it really helps put the uncompromising convictions of people around you into perspective and see them as what they often are: a lack of understanding for the breadth of human experience.

[jongjong]

Yeah I suppose this is the stuff which you only start to understand after you've been somewhere more than a few years. It also makes you appreciate certain things about where you're from which you didn't even notice and used to take for granted. The European class system combined with a deep cynicism towards tech was a huge surprise to me... Especially for Germany which I thought would be an engineer's paradise.

Australia is extremely egalitarian. I think even more so than the US. In both Australia and the US, you can usually talk to the CEO of the startup directly; they actually like to talk to their staff directly. But in the US, the power differential is usually much bigger, I am more cautious about what I say.

In Germany, there seems to be a more rigid hierarchy and the founders tend to avoid talking to employees directly; they tend to communicate mostly through middle-managers, even in relatively small startups.

[lifestyleguru]

DACH societies are extremely class based, in fact most of European royal families come from there. They take it as a point of honor to be rude or at least gruff in daily interactions, it's not about you. Their cynicism is indeed a poison, no need for it as the real life will bring enough unexpected challenges.

[mawadev]

I'm german and I was at aldi yesterday, one guy was super nice and happy and wished another a good day, and the guy, including us were surprised how nice he was and he said "we need more nice people in this country". Mind blowing. Taking the plane from croatia to germany is also funny, because there is a grey filter as soon as you enter the airspace

[dgellow]

European royal families have pretty much nothing to do with the modern DACH region, and compared to the UK royal families in continental Europe have very little influence.

But the rest is pretty much true unfortunately, though I wouldn't call the behavior rude because it's not seen as rudeness by people who do it. It's more that being optimistic, feeling surprised by things, expressing strong emotions is all seen as naive and pointless. There is also a strong aversion to taking risks which is pretty frustrating. Even when you can show they are calculated risks.

However not the whole DACH region is the same either, the cultures are pretty different, the only thing in common is really only the language. I had better success in Germany than my own country of Switzerland

[lifestyleguru]

> European royal families have pretty much nothing to do with the modern DACH region, and compared to the UK royal families in continental Europe have very little influence.

Literally the top female figure in the EU structures had married into German nobility. Even without the marriage it's hard to describe the carrier as self-made. Families controlling German automotive industry are interleaved with aristocrats. The trees are obstructing you the view of the forest.

[mejutoco]

Battenberg -> mountbatten

I think that is what op meant.

[jongjong]

Made me chuckle. I think I know what you mean about "expressing strong emotions" - This is how a lot of Europeans view Americans specifically.

I think the Australian version of naivety is more about meritocratic ideas and flat social hierarchies. Australians aren't usually loud or opinionated. European CEOs may not like it if an employee reaches out to them directly. In Australia, the startup CEO usually tries to be friends with the employees so it feels natural to reach out to the CEO directly and they often reach out to you. In Europe, I get the sense that CEOs believe that they're too important to talk to employees. This has been my experience at startups of similar sizes.

[dgellow]

> In Europe, I get the sense that CEOs believe that they're too important to talk to employees

In Switzerland and Germany that's pretty much true, yes. As a contractor I really prefer working with UK and US companies, the communication is as you describe, more friendly and natural, and they are generally more than happy to see someone who wants to take initiatives (in fact it is expected)

[ghaff]

It also depends on the company.

I was picking up my buffet dinner at a company event in Europe and the CEO who I somewhat knew was alongside; this was a moderately large company--maybe 10K employees at that point. We went to sit down at a table and the $EUROPEAN_COUNTRY people there were basically "Nah, we'd prefer to speak our own language." So the CEO and I went down to sit at another more welcoming table. (And had a very pleasant discussion about his upcoming family vacation and forwarded him some info.)

Not sure of the point but there are definitely cultural differednces on many dimensions on what you can do and can't do.