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I'm not op, but will tell two stories that may interest you. My cousin, mid 30's has FU money. Took him around 8-9 years of hard work (not in technology). He's the guy that buys a 5k rolex (or whatever big brand of watches) for fun. Last 'toy' he got was a 250k euro car for himself to drive maybe 1 month a year (he travels a lot). He is still an amazing person, tries to help people. He will have no problem spending a day with you trying to help fix a problem you may have. He will lend you 5k, no questions asked. My parents try to badmouth him every time they can, and try to bring his accomplishments down at every party/gathering. From insulting his business partner to just saying he is an exploiter of people/resources/whatnot.
I noticed his friends, behind his back do the same, even though he throws parties for them, welcomes them in their house, lets them use his pool even when he isn't there. The car I just mention before, he lets anyone drive it if they ask. But still, the envy is there. On a smaller scale, my wife's family and friends. My wife decided to quit her job to raise our kid. I still work, but due a good amount of effort, I'm making a good amount of money. There is no need for my wife to work so we both prefer that she stays with our kid. We also live a decent life (near the beach, pool, etc) but not FU money like my cousin. The amount of flak she gets for our choices is just amazing. From her mother telling her she is kinda useless, to her friends making snide comments about getting a 'rich husband', etc. We never show off, we invite everyone to spend some time with us for free in the summer (saving them 1000's in holiday rentals and food), but still, I can feel the jealousy in them... Hard to explain completely. I never thought this, but last few years what I noticed is in general, people are an envious bunch. A few are really happy for your successes, but most will resent you, because you are doing better than them, or 'showing' to them that some of the decisions they made in the past were the wrong ones, and they can't really come to terms with it, so it is just easier to excuse/criticise you. |
However younger people often have little or no idea what happened before them. Perhaps among the aunts and uncles of a family, an older brother or sister sacrificed for years working at a dead-end job in order to put a younger brother through college. Then as things work, the younger brother moves across the country has some success, and the older brother is working in a dead-end job. This was the story in "It's A Wonderful Life" 60 years ago and the story wasn't new then.
Then they have kids - the better-off ones go to a private prep school, the ones of the guy who sacrificed go to public schools. The children don't even know everything about how one brother sacrificed his potentiality and even to some extent his children's potentiality for the other brother. Some kids go to Ivy League schools, have great financial success, and develop a conceited attitude. The sacrificer's kids might not even be able to go to college.
If you look at the Forbes 400 richest list with tech CEO's, we see Bill Gates, who was born with a million dollar trust fund, Larry Page, whose father was a professor, Mark Zuckerberg, who went to Phillips Exeter Academy etc. These are are all white, male people born on third base, or at least second base. You look at Silicon Valley CEO's and you see people whose success was shaped to a large extent before they were born. Why have they succeeded whereas some black kid, whose family moved from Mississippi to Oakland in 1947, did not? Or maybe some Ohlone's whose families "owned" large tracts of lands in the Bay Area before whites came and stole it?
It's a self-serving narrative that people succeed solely due to initiative, hard work, flexibility etc. Are white males from upper middle class families the only people who possess these traits? Of course for the self-serving narrative to be tautological, there will always be murmurs among those people that that is so. Of course once in a while a white woman from an upper class familiy will slip through, or someone from a wealthy Brahmin immigrant family, but that should go without saying.
If one brother sacrifices in a family so that another can have success, the successful person will often have a wife and kids with a vain attitude that they're better than the sacrificer and his family. The repayment for the sacrifice is contempt that they're now better than the sacrificer, and that the poorer family has some innate flaws, are uncouth and so forth. If they feel some resentment toward that, they go on HN and whine how their family resents them driving around in a flashy sports car. The only real excuse the golden child has is he has no knowledge of what went on in the years before he was born.
I know a few (computer-interested) people who went to expensive private prep schools as their families are rich. They really live in a complete bubble. In the documentary "Born Rich", one of the rich kids talks about how much of a bubble his parents live in when he introduced his normal, middle class friend to them and they ask him "where did you summer last year?" This is certainly the case, these people have no idea how the average American worker lives. It's kind of like Mitt Romney, whose father was a CEO and who went to the exclusive Cranbrook prep school blathering on how 47% of Americans are dependents who see themselves as victims. Americans were smart enough to throw him to the curb. These people who are born to the manor, and who live off the wealth they expropriate from the workers who create that wealth, are ever increasingly disconnected from the real world and reality. Why shouldn't they hold themselves in ever high regard? Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette did in the years before they wer