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by superuser2 4780 days ago
>feel entitled to a job

Should we really insult people's character for wanting to work? Entitlement is a connotatively charged word that implies privilege, laziness, and an unreasonable desire to enjoy the fruits of other people's labor while sitting around. I can at least understand the use of the word "entitled" when leveled against welfare, progressive taxation, refusal to do entry-level work, etc.

But how is it wrong or anti-personal responsibility to want to work to support oneself?
2 comments
ruswick 4780 days ago
I think the connotation is that they feel as though they ought to be able to obtain a livable job doing what they want to do, which is not the case. They aren't necessarily entitled, but are naive and have unrealistic expectations.

Just because one loves writing does not mean that they will be able to secure employment as a writer. Yet, students continue to enter writing programs and graduate with useless degrees, expecting to enter the workforce immediately. Certain positions simply aren't in demand, yet students act as though finding employment will be trivial.

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shrikant 4780 days ago
I also believe the world has tended to conflate talent discovery with the talent quantity, because historically, talent discovery was up to a select few gatekeepers (like record labels and publishers), who could (or would) only showcase a small fraction of the available talent pool. Whether they did this because of unavoidable resource constraints or to ensure an artificial scarcity is another debate.

Now that anyone with a decent amount of talent and/or the willpower to put in some effort into honing a skill can also showcase that skill, the supply of writers and singers and musicians has suddenly become much larger than before. So it follows that the price associated with purchasing access to the fruits of these talent/labours will have dropped.

TL;DR: Microeconomics 101.

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dnr 4780 days ago
Perhaps a better way to say that is they "feel entitled to a job regardless of whether they can contribute any value to an organization". And a likely cause of having nothing to contribute would be studying a subject they find personally interesting but has no relevance to the broader world.

(I don't know if that's what the OP intended, I'm just clarifying in a way that makes more sense to me.)

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