[HN Gopher] The Guy I Almost Was (1998)
___________________________________________________________________
The Guy I Almost Was (1998)
Author : wallflower
Score : 235 points
Date : 2020-12-27 05:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.electricsheepcomix.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.electricsheepcomix.com)
| carlospwk wrote:
| After I clicked a few panels I got this weird feeling and then I
| realized it... I actually remember reading this when it came out!
| 1998 was 22 years ago :$
| cafard wrote:
| Hah. Omni Magazine. I remember seeing a copy in 1979 and thinking
| how odd it was.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Wired might have been fairly mainstream (and by the author's
| telling - ridiculous), but it was also a light in the dark of my
| small midwestern farm town. What are the current equivalents to
| the 90's cyber magazine culture?
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| Duplicate.
| ivanbakel wrote:
| You should link to previous (more active) discussions if you
| want to claim that the submission is a duplicate. That said,
| the statute of limitations has expired on this one, since the
| most recent big discussion I can see was 11 years ago[0].
|
| Those comments are an interesting read-through, since more than
| one person directly challenges the relevance of the submission.
| These days, not many people on this website would feel that a
| short personal retrospective on cyber culture and the 90s is
| out-of-place. Was the HN of a decade ago more hardline with its
| focus on interesting hacker pieces?
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=740760
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| Same thing was posted 5 times as that is the only content on
| that web site. Last time was commented 6 years ago ... not 11
| years ago.
|
| - The Guy I Almost Was (electricsheepcomix.com) 2 points by
| smacktoward on July 18, 2017 | past
|
| - The Guy I Almost Was - Graphic Novel by Patrick Sean Farley
| (electricsheepcomix.com) 1 point by msh on May 17, 2017 |
| past
|
| - The guy I almost was (1998) [techno-futurism expose comic]
| (electricsheepcomix.com) 4 points by coldtea on Oct 29, 2015
| | past
|
| - The Guy I Almost Was (electricsheepcomix.com) 6 points by
| niels on Mar 30, 2014 | past | 1 comment
|
| - The Guy I Almost Was (1998) (electricsheepcomix.com) 105
| points by juliankrause on Aug 4, 2009 | past | 25 comments
| ivanbakel wrote:
| The "most recent big discussion" is still 11 years ago. As
| your list shows, all the more recent submissions got much
| less attention - most don't have even 1 comment.
|
| HN permits some duplicates, particularly over a long enough
| time. Even recent duplicates are allowed, if previous
| submissions did not generate discussion but the moderators
| feel that the content is interesting enough and that it
| didn't get a "fair shake".
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| Thanks. I will unflag.
| postingpals wrote:
| It's like I'm reading a comic about my own life, except as it is
| happening in the 21st century.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| That was good. I link it to that previous entry
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25547448
| zabuni wrote:
| Given the whole #vanlife craze that is happening now, Spacehawk
| look prescient.
| cubano wrote:
| So in some ways, I feel that maybe the youngster in the comic
| wasn't totally wrong.
|
| Well, our cars didn't shoot around the world in hamster-tubes,
| but our thoughts and ideas sure did and you know, I think in the
| end that was probably a lot smarter.
|
| The "hedonism" stuff? Well don't know about you guys but I sure
| lived that thru the bands and the all the raves and shit I
| managed to find myself at in the late 80's and 90's.
|
| Yes..of course life almost always smashes our childhood dreams.
| Big deal get over it, but I think it's important to always
| remember the positive along with the crap.
| postingpals wrote:
| This story is deeper than 'life crushed this one individual's
| childhood dreams'.
|
| At any turn during the story, the author could have become
| something much worse. He could have become a drunk, he could
| have become homeless. The invisible hand of the economy dangled
| his future in front of him as a tease and then handed him a job
| in the end as a threat, telling him never to be ungrateful or
| else.
|
| It's a retrospective on the ways in which average people can
| have their lives warped by externalities. At the end the author
| wonders about the version of himself that became beatnik, but
| what about those versions of himself that became drunk and
| homeless? Well, those don't exist in parallel universes. They
| exist in this universe, as other people in the same situation
| as him, the same situation shared by 90% of people.
| cubano wrote:
| So I made the huge mistake of replying after only reading a
| few panels, so all your criticisms are totally valid and I
| feel kind of silly now.
|
| I think an alternate reading of the well-written story
| perhaps is how much of what we do is driven by dumb luck, and
| those just as smart and driven as we are here commenting are,
| through very little fault of their own, homeless and addicted
| because they just were not "in the right place at the right
| time" once or twice, or met the wrong person at a bad time in
| their life?
|
| You talk about lives "warped by externalities" and man, ain't
| that the truth.
| hckrnwsthrwwy wrote:
| What's the difference between a beatnik or a drunk? It's all
| perception, to one person you're a wageslave drone wasting
| your life working for a boss, to another you're earning a
| living the honest way and are a model to look up to
| adamsea wrote:
| You can combine being an alcoholic with pretty much
| anything, so ...
| phaedrus wrote:
| One of my best friends in college was in the same position as the
| guy at the start of this comic: he was paying for his own college
| so he had to work for a year (restaurant jobs) to pay for each
| semester of college. When I met him I was sitting in a diner
| bummed that I hadn't met any futurists at the college I just
| started, and I was amazed to suddenly find myself having a deep
| conversation about such topics with my waiter.
|
| Even though I started several years later than he did, we
| graduated the same year. We got computer science degrees not art
| degrees (though we both are equally interested in art) so we
| didn't graduate into poverty like the guy in the comic. We just
| had to live through poverty to get our degrees.
|
| But it's such a societal waste: this guy could have gotten a PhD
| in the amount of time it took him to get one bachelor's, if he
| hadn't had to work low wage jobs to pay for his own school.
| specialist wrote:
| How to pay for higher ed breaks my head. So many variables.
| While listening to this podcast, I had two crazy notions.
|
| _The Next Four Years: Beyond the student debt debate The Weeds
|
| New America's Kevin Carey explains loan forgiveness and the
| deeper problems with American higher education._
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-next-four-years-be...
|
| #1 Government underwrites student loans based on projected life
| time earnings.
|
| Actuaries are smart about this stuff, right? Figure out
| someone's future earnings to determine their "credit
| worthiness". Just like buying a house. And the student's
| collateral is the future labor. So assess how the loan will be
| used. Just to be sure everyone's committed, pick a fraction
| that is repaid directly. Say 50%. Then plug in the numbers.
|
| Someone going to community college to get an AA to work as a
| dental hygienist will need X dollars and likely earn X' over
| the next Y years. Another person is getting an MD PhD, who will
| earn 10x the future hygienist. So future doctor is eligible for
| a proportionally larger loan.
|
| Tweak the incentives to encourage people to choose more needful
| professions. Like we may need more electricians, nurses, or
| language teachers for a spell.
|
| Ya, this is how student loans kinda work now, indirectly. I
| just want to formalize and daylight the calculus.
|
| I also want it to be more explicit that governments are making
| an investment and expect a reasonable return.
|
| #2 Institutions are cosigners for all student loans.
|
| Fraud has been a huge problem. So if an institution loses it's
| accreditation or goes kaput, they assume the full value of the
| loan. It's unconscionable that the students carries all that
| risk.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| This kind of makes sense for the vocational courses you
| mention but only when students follow the expected path. If a
| medical student fails out, they may struggle to pay back the
| large loan taken out against their future earnings. The same
| is true if they pass but don't want to be a doctor.
|
| I studied mathematics at university and if you look at the
| typical student entering undergrad at my university, there
| was a high chance they would go into further education after
| the degree, and a somewhat smaller chance they would become
| an academic (though this is the outcome the university was
| focusing on). There was a reasonable chance they would go on
| to a reasonably ordinary middle class job, and a small but
| significant chance they would go into a highly paid field
| like investment banking. It seems it would be terrible for
| those incoming students to take out loans against their
| expected future income because the average is pushed up by a
| small proportion of high-paying careers, while many students
| may choose to go into lower paying jobs (e.g. being phd
| students).
|
| The problem is that the greatest burden falls on those who
| fail to meet the income expectations. I think such a system
| is regressive, at least in the technical sense.
|
| Obviously with the hind sight of being someone with a
| reasonable amount of success, one might want to have had a
| system like the one you describe, but I think I wouldn't want
| my friends who e.g. went on towards academia to have suffered
| such a system, and perhaps the pressure of needing to find
| work to repay loans would have led to a worse outcome for me.
|
| I think I would want a system where the risks are socialised
| to at least a large extent. But I sympathise that some people
| don't like the idea of others going off to get certain
| degrees that don't really lead to improved financial
| outcomes, and the more serious issue of not having a way to
| incentivise certain courses[1].
|
| In the uk we have a bizarre system of "loans" where if you
| are from a wealthy family you pay upfront for university, if
| you are not so wealthy the government pays for your tuition
| (for a certain amount of time) and provides money to cover
| living expenses as a "loan", and if you are more poor the
| government (and if you're lucky your university) will provide
| extra money towards your living costs as a grant. The "loan"
| accrues interest at a somewhat high rate (that depends on how
| much money you make) but isn't really like a loan because it
| is paid back based on income (one pays 9% of gross monthly
| income above a threshold of about PS20k/12) and written off
| after 30 years. This means that while people who don't earn
| so much money don't have an impossible burden after
| university, it is people with middle incomes who end up
| paying back the most in absolute terms (e.g. getting the
| balance down to 0 just before the 30 years is up and paying a
| lot of interest) while those with high incomes can quickly
| pay off the loans without paying so much interest and then
| enjoy an effective 10% pay rise. It seems this system is also
| somewhat regressive.
| troupe wrote:
| > this guy could have gotten a PhD in the amount of time it
| took him to get one bachelor's
|
| If he graduated with minimal debt and was able to get a good
| paying job, I'm not seeing the societal waste.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| I think waste is a bit strong, but our society is closer to
| an oligarchy than a meritocracy, and a side effect of this is
| that we have many talented people doing menial work so they
| can afford to better themselves because they don't have the
| wealth and connections of someone from a different social
| class, even if some of the people from that other class are
| less talented.
|
| With that said, it is a meritocracy to some degree, but it's
| only that for the very best, who also conform to other
| (arbitrary) standards. Everyone else has to grind through. I
| think the worst part is that it's presented as something
| else, which a lot of people buy into.
| dgb23 wrote:
| I think this response and some others vastly underestimate
| the value and complexity of ,,unskilled" or ,,menial" work.
|
| I ultimately respect middle class nerds with a sense for
| abstraction and upper class leaders with fine manners and
| so on. But the worker, who had to make hard tradeoffs,
| learn to serve and deal with having little, is naturally on
| a different level.
|
| You don't know the value of work, if you never _had_ to
| work.
|
| And I think the world would be a better place if the most
| powerful understood that.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I think that's true. But nevertheless it's not right that
| those from certain backgrounds should have to do this
| work while those from others do not.
| sushisource wrote:
| I agree with the overall point, but I don't agree that
| those who "came up from the bottom" are sort of magically
| imbued with this moral superiority that
|
| > But the worker, who had to make hard tradeoffs, learn
| to serve and deal with having little, is naturally on a
| different level.
|
| Implies. Take running for example. No one in modern
| society "needs" to run, but I took up endurance running
| and doing something like running a marathon teaches you a
| lot. Probably many of the same lessons you're imagining.
|
| All that to say, growing up poor I'd agree is probably
| pretty likely to imbue you with those learnings. It
| doesn't mean that people who haven't experienced scarcity
| have never learned those lessons.
| thevardanian wrote:
| I mean if that were true then he could afford rent,
| clothing, a $10 library card, healthcare, education, etc.
|
| Like there's this peculiar mentality in America that is
| absolutely psychotic. While those so called "menial
| tasks" are no doubt important, rather invaluable to
| functioning of society, we should not imply let alone
| pretend, that they provide enough. So in terms of sheer
| economic value, if we believe our current way of
| measuring labor, those "menial tasks" are in fact not
| valuable. Because if they were they could provide a
| decent life, let alone being able to provide roof over
| your head.
|
| What I find bewildering is how so many Americans, even
| here, can justify the sheer waste of time, and
| psychological trauma, with "If he graduated with minimal
| debt and was able to get a good paying job, I'm not
| seeing the societal waste".
|
| Such justifications either feel like exuding gross
| privilege or worse a result of some mass Stockholm
| Syndrome.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| What if was Stephen Hawkins?
| troupe wrote:
| His SAT or ACT score would have been high enough that
| schools would have been offering him scholarships to
| attend. It doesn't take Hawking level intelligence to get a
| full ride scholarship.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| I think parent is after Stephen Hawkins, not Hawking:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawkins
| whatshisface wrote:
| It wasn't a personal waste, but it was an inefficient
| allocation of our overall resources. There are a lot of kids
| who don't care about college at all but don't have to work
| through it either. In an ideal world, the people who would
| work the hardest in college would get the free rides, because
| not only do they benefit from it the most, we all benefit
| from them the most.
| troupe wrote:
| I think you are assuming that the person in question having
| a PhD would be better for society as a whole than the path
| he chose. I don't think that is necessarily a given.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The amount of extra money you can make, and by extension
| the value you create, by entering the workforce four
| years earlier dwarfs the value created by the four years
| of restaurant work.
| teachrdan wrote:
| > he was paying for his own college so he had to work for
| a year (restaurant jobs) to pay for each semester of
| college.
|
| It wasn't four years, it was eight! The poor guy had to
| work a YEAR for every semester of college. The amount of
| value lost to society due to a lack of affordable
| education is unbelievable.
| troupe wrote:
| > The poor guy had to work a YEAR for every semester of
| college
|
| Is it unusual for people to pay off their college loans
| over 8+ years? It sounds to me like he prioritized
| avoiding debt.
|
| Education is absolutely affordable. You can take all
| kinds of college courses for free online from sites like
| EdX, Coursera, MIT's Open Courseware, etc. What is not
| free is a diploma. You have to pay for that. If you want
| an affordable diploma, you can go to schools that have
| low tuition in a lower cost part of the country. Last
| time I ran the numbers it wasn't hard to find a school
| where you could work part time during the year and full
| time during the summer and pay for tuition, books, and
| living expenses while graduating with $0 to $2000 in
| debt. You can do even better by starting at a community
| college or if you have some skill that is worth more than
| minimum wage.
|
| Education is more affordable now than at any point in
| history because so much of it is free. Diplomas can be
| expensive or they can be less expensive depending on how
| much you want to pay.
| inopinatus wrote:
| This is sheer wealth-class prejudice. Any fee-gated
| access to higher education represents a detriment to
| humanity. The notion that it's fine to maintain access
| barriers to the poor _because they might squander their
| opportunity_ to benefit society is beyond crass; it is
| the offensively amoral age-old message to the
| downtrodden: be grateful for what we let you have at all.
|
| What this actually represents: a systemic means to
| preserve the stratification of power and wealth, and to
| hell with human progress 'cos I got mine.
|
| See also: barbaric healthcare practices, such as
| individual billing.
| wccrawford wrote:
| It also doesn't take into account all the people who might
| have spent all that money and time and still not ended up
| with an education or a piece of paper, if the education were
| just handed to them for free.
|
| This isn't so far from home for me because I had a niece
| community college scholarship and then my parents' money to
| pay for my college, and I ended up not getting that degree.
| Years later, I got serious about it and took out my own loans
| to get a degree and a job. The first time around I had no
| plans and no idea what I was doing, but the second time I had
| a plan and a goal, and I achieved it. And I paid off my debt
| myself.
|
| The initial money wasn't _entirely_ wasted, but most of those
| credits didn 't transfer towards my degree.
|
| That was just a CC, but imagine if it was a 6 yr degree at a
| University instead. It'd be vastly more costly.
| troupe wrote:
| I've definitely seen a difference between college students
| who are there because they are paying their own money to
| make an investment in themselves and kids that feel society
| owes them a degree.
|
| Congratulations on having a plan, following it, and then
| paying off your education. It is good to hear people saying
| that when so many stories are of people who never had a
| plan that are now complaining it is too hard to pay off all
| the debt they took on.
| bencollier49 wrote:
| The really odd thing about this comic is the way that the final
| panel is missing; where the dot-com bust happens, and he ends up
| back with the muffins.
| fspacef wrote:
| Fascinating. Can't think of another story that captures the
| nuance in coming of age for the average 90s futurist kid.
|
| The fact that this was written in '98 is interesting too. Seems
| like every generation goes through this journey. A bright
| optimism followed by intense disillusionment and then reaching a
| compromise and balance with their visions of the future and the
| complex realities of life.
|
| I wonder how Gen Z will respond to their trial, especially in the
| hyper-competitive world where everyone wants to be a "founder".
| offtop5 wrote:
| I actually fear for gen Z.
|
| Imagine the meanest dumbest thing you ever said at 19 or
| whatever.
|
| Now that's a part of a permanent record that could come back to
| haunt you well into your thirties. I often shake my head
| whenever I hear of a story of someone who wrote something nasty
| as a teenager on Twitter or something, and as an adult their
| life is ruined over it.
|
| Like we all didn't say stupid mean things in our youth. Now
| it's just easier to broadcast it all over the world.
|
| With Social media the only winning move is not to play
| 93po wrote:
| Recent example of this is a girl who was singing 3 seconds of
| a rap song on snapchat as a 15 year old which included the N
| word. 3 years later she was cancel cultured on twitter and
| had to withdraw from her dream college she got into. not
| defending this, just a data point
| keiferski wrote:
| I used to worry about this, but I realized that at some
| point, it will cease to matter. When everyone has dirty
| laundry, no one does, and the guy with none seems fake. We're
| just in the one or two decade window where deepfakes aren't
| prevalent yet and people still get outraged over stuff they
| read on Twitter. I give it another 10-15 years, tops.
|
| Future startup business idea? Reasonably scandalous fake
| social media posts, enough to seem real but not enough to
| truly exclude you from anything.
| phaedrus wrote:
| Your last paragraph is actually an idea fleshed out / minor
| plot point in a Neal Stephenson novel.
| keiferski wrote:
| Interesting, I've never read any of his works, but I will
| have to now.
| phaedrus wrote:
| The novel is called, "Fall, or Dodge in Hell." It's
| probably even better if you know some of the characters
| from previous novels, but I haven't read his other stuff
| yet and still enjoyed this one. It's a sprawling story
| that seems almost like he duct-taped several manuscripts
| together to stuff them all into one novel. However that's
| not a reason to not like the book so much as just an
| observation that many of the side-tangents could have
| held their own as stand-alone stories.
| njharman wrote:
| Exactly!!!
|
| Not getting married used to be cause for ostracism. Having
| child out of wedlock. Having long hair as a male!
|
| There will always be busy body haters who find a reason to
| exclude you, to elevate themselves above you. They are
| fucks. And unless you want to be one of them, are utterly
| ignorable. Most people worth knowing, don't care.
| k__ wrote:
| I hope it will lead to a better understanding that people
| change.
|
| We all talked crap at some point in the past.
| offtop5 wrote:
| Or we can all delete our social media and keep those nasty
| thoughts to ourselves.
| k__ wrote:
| Well, at least in the EU we have "the right to be
| forgotten".
| ErikAugust wrote:
| I found myself in this maybe 10 years after the author did.
|
| The idea I have gotten from it (and my own life) is that "big
| movements" (zeitgeists) don't really end up meaning much
| personally. They are created by the media and historians, either
| before or after things happen.
|
| This guy got into tech by getting a temp job. He needed the
| money, and Apple needed somebody to enter data.
|
| I guess a moral of the story is, if you want to be a part of the
| "future", you are better off entering data for a company actually
| building the future, rather than hanging out with people who sit
| around talking about what it might be like.
|
| Even if there are nothing to be learned here, very enjoyable and
| it's old enough that I think I may have read it before 15+ years
| ago.
| pwdisswordfish0 wrote:
| > I guess a moral of the story is, if you want to be a part of
| the "future", you are better off entering data for a company
| actually building the future, rather than hanging out with
| people who sit around talking about what it might be like.
|
| Corollary: spend less time reading and writing comments on HN.
| lollmao wrote:
| I found the comic very ammussing and insightful, likewise for
| some of the thread. But I am impressed at how well I delude
| myself into thinking that this was, at all, time well spent.
| Mc91 wrote:
| > I guess a moral of the story is, if you want to be a part of
| the "future", you are better off entering data for a company
| actually building the future, rather than hanging out with
| people who sit around talking about what it might be like.
|
| I read once Google makes one hire for every thousand
| applications. He lucked out getting into a FAANG company when
| he did (albeit at a lowly position).
|
| Someone of his means can not snap their fingers and get a gig
| in FAANG. With those gates up, he is just marinating in the
| culture which is accessible.
|
| Also, being in that culture, he sees opportunity when he lands
| at Apple. Plenty of other people who worked alongside him
| qprobably saw it as just a data entry opportunity to pay rent.
|
| While Mondo 2000, Wired etc. may have been forced, I don't
| think they were completely fraudulent. The people and
| subcultures they covered already existed, they just kind of
| cobbled them all together. Of course the editorial biases put a
| slanted tint on things - the average hacker is not as
| libertarian as Louis Rossetto envisioned or as into
| extropianism as RU Sirius imagined. But those magazines put
| people on their covers who were not on magazine covers before
| as far as I know (example - free open source pioneer and Cygnus
| founder John Gilmore).
|
| The zeitgeist was created by the media, but not out of whole
| cloth, there was something going on and raw materials to work
| with. In retrospect, the media in the center of it got some
| things right and some things wrong.
| pram wrote:
| I don't think framing it in terms of 'what could have been' was
| really necessary. To me it seems like there was absolutely no
| chance of him ever being the 'other' guy to begin with. It was
| just another temporary escapist fantasy like the cyber stuff.
|
| What happened doesn't resemble a meaningful fork between two
| possible lives. Fate (and Apple) really made the decision for
| him, it's implausible he would have ever rejected that job given
| the circumstances.
| microtherion wrote:
| As a teenager, I did not own a computer, and my high school's
| computer room with its SuperPETs was closed over the summer
| break.
|
| So I spent my 1983 summer break on our porch with my dad's Hermes
| 3000 writing the primitives of a FORTH interpreter in 6809
| assembly language (I may have written an earlier draft in long
| hand; I don't recall). When school started again in the fall, I
| entered my manuscript and got the interpreter to run with not all
| that much trial and error (considering I had little prior
| assembly programming experience).
|
| I swear I was not trying to be a hipster!
| njharman wrote:
| Man, reading Electric Sheep was the best. I really feel blessed
| to have been born 50 years ago, today in fact. Living through
| rise of personal computer, birth of internet, and the explosion
| on electronic and online art engendered by both.
| silentsea90 wrote:
| Happy birthday!
|
| How was living through the 80s? I wasn't born then but find the
| subculture fascinating.
|
| Did you make gazillions from being invested in tech through the
| 90s until now (lots of assumptions made here).
|
| Do you miss anything about life in the past(beyond nostalgia)?
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I'm not who you replied to, but I'm the same age. Your
| questions are interesting so I'll answer anyway.
|
| 1. The 80s sucked. I was a dateless nerd in a shitty town in
| a shitty state for most of it. They got marginally better
| when I went to college in the more sophisticated and urbane
| state to the immediate east.
|
| And that state was _Alabama_. No kidding, UA was MILES more
| sophisticated than the crappy college town I grew up in. I
| think this is probably because the University had much, much
| more influence in Tuscaloosa than USM had in Hattiesburg.
|
| The music was cool, though. The last waves of punk plus the
| waves of more indie-style stuff, plus the explosion in
| Athens, GA, all made for great tunes. To this day, the
| opening chords of REM's first albums are incredibly
| transportive and soothing to me. (And one of the only times
| I've ever been truly star-struck is when I found myself in
| line at an airport bookstore behind Mike Mills.)
|
| 2. In the late 90s, I was briefly (and theoretically) rich on
| paper. Not "Netscape stock" rich or "MSFT rich," but worth
| about $5MM. Sadly, it was not liquid, and became worth $0 in
| short order. I was an investing partner in an Internet tech
| consultancy -- mostly, custom web sites and software, which
| at the time you could charge a lot of money for -- but didn't
| have enough stock to turn the boat. We got sucked into the
| massive-land-grab mentality, and tried to go toe to toe vs.
| firms like Agency, and predictably lost. But had we aimed
| lower we could've been a tidily profitable regional player.
| The lesson is that there's nothing WRONG with mid-market, you
| know?
|
| The experience cost me actual money (not options), but it was
| also incredibly educational, and cheaper than grad school
| would've been, so I'm not sore about it.
|
| Sadly, the dot-com crash left me richer only in skills. I had
| to burn savings to keep my house from late 2001 through early
| 20003, when I started making money again.
|
| 3. I have enjoyed my life in every state. At 50, I could
| prattle on about this or that that used to be cooler, but so
| many things are manifestly cooler NOW it's a bankrupt
| enterprise. And God knows I don't want to come off like some
| bellyaching boomer. I mean, think about it: how much would
| this pandemic have sucked in an era without broad
| connectivity and online community? There's widespread enough
| bandwidth, and good enough software, that my 80 year old
| mother can very easily initiate a video call with anyone she
| likes. Sure, most of the folks who post on HN probably had
| online pals they were gaming with or chatting with or working
| with a decade ago, but the non-digital would've been
| materially more isolated.
|
| However, I will admit I definitely miss the Internet before
| Eternal September happened. There's more HERE now, but the
| broad internet culture moved from fairly intelligent and
| articulate to, well, nihilism. Few places reward multi-
| sentence or multi-paragraph expression now. (HN is a very
| notable exception.)
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Not just a question for 'ubermonkey': HN and where else?
| ubermonkey wrote:
| The Well is one of my other stalwart haunts.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I enjoy the Long New talks. You'd say WELL is worth the
| fee?
| throwaway293483 wrote:
| I would say some boards on 4chan, some forums and some
| discord servers, and some subreddits can be good for
| meaningful discussion- if you have niche tastes and don't
| mind putting up with a handful of stupid people. For
| example, I enjoy painting and weightlifting as well as
| programming, and can list several places I enjoy going to
| discuss and share stuff related to those topics.
|
| In my eyes, the issue with modern internet communities is
| that there are too many people there "just for the sake
| of it". I find that communities focused on a specific
| thing don't suffer from the repetitive and bland drivel
| that fills the front pages of most discussion websites.
|
| Due to the nature of this advice, I won't just list a
| bunch of forums and discussion boards I look at and post
| on. I'd recommend you search for places based on your
| interests.
| silentsea90 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this! Fascinating.
| robocat wrote:
| > I had to burn savings to keep my house from late 2001
| through early 20003, when I started making money again.
|
| Seems appropriate to the comic. So, the recession lasts
| ~18000yrs, eh? At least they've solved the problem of
| death, although I presume you are still taxed?
| [deleted]
| andi999 wrote:
| Real HM Ludens is not unhappy about this depiction.
| https://famicoman.com/2017/12/29/on-music-mondo-mayhem-an-in...
| (2 3rd down the page)
| lioeters wrote:
| Interesting to read a more recent retrospective on Mondo2000
| and similar zeitgeist. It led me to:
|
| https://www.mondo2000.com/
|
| From an interview on the front page, a snippet that captures a
| bit of that feeling:
|
| > ..There was this whole alternate, intellectual, metaphysical
| kind of thought in the 90s about where things were going. The
| Terrence McKenna school -- we are going to find a way to get
| free of these monkey bodies and we're going to find a way to
| enter other dimensions and we're going to expand intelligence
| and extend life. We're going to break free of a lot of these
| things that have held us monkeys back for thousands of years.
|
| > There's a sadness when you hear [Robert Anton Wilson] talking
| about that now because it didn't happen. The world now is even
| more fucked up than when he wrote _Illuminatus!_ It just seems
| like we've been completely incapable of breaking free of that
| stuff. We're still fighting the same pathetic cultural wars,
| the same primitive religious wars, despite our best angels
| pushing us forward to get better. The vast majority of humanity
| is just this epic failure. It's sad.
| bitwize wrote:
| I love how he drops a hint at who H.M. Ludens is supposed to be
| by having the protagonist ask him "Are you serious?"
| andi999 wrote:
| Good catch!
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Direct link: https://famicoman.com/2017/12/29/on-music-mondo-
| mayhem-an-in...
| everyone wrote:
| I feel like HM Ludens vision was realized.. Millions of idiots
| buying shit like Juicero, Alexa, iphones etc. Great!
| jamiek88 wrote:
| I don't think the utility of iPhones and juicero are in any way
| equivalent. iPhones really did change the world.
| duxup wrote:
| What we think we want to be and do and the randomness of life are
| strange.
|
| We reject fashion, or certain types of work, or various things in
| order to find something else or define ourselves, but it's not
| really clear if we ever really understood those things or that by
| doing so we learn / go anywhere.
|
| It reminds me of what Roger Ebert said of the film "Reality
| Bites" (sticking to the 1990s vibe):
|
| "the deep-seated prejudices of the movie, which are that anyone
| who shoots documentary video footage of friends is a genius;
| anyone who is pushing 30 and has a good job has sold out; and
| anyone who is simultaneously unemployed and hostile is a
| reservoir of truth."
| dghughes wrote:
| This is close to me even age-wise. I was always a dreamer and the
| future, computers, programming, electronics, all there but I
| never had the motivation. I never went to college until decades
| later. Magazines were my Internet in the 80s. Heck I even watched
| koyaanisqatsi on TV not Internet I was so into all things weird.
| minitoar wrote:
| Haha, seems to be set in a fictionalized Santa Cruz, my home
| town!
| hapless wrote:
| The most painfully 1990s thing in this whole essay is a man
| surviving on minimum wage, however modestly
|
| If you were to re-tell this story in 2020 it ends with the fellow
| living in the homeless encampment but still trying to stay clean
| and timely enough to make it to his data entry job
|
| --------
|
| To put it another way: The author happened to be born very close
| to the peak for average Americans' wages, and every year since
| then has been an ever-tighter vice squeeze between declining
| wages and rising rents (in both the real estate and economic
| senses of the term)
|
| The "guy he almost was" is homeless in 2020, if he isn't dead.
| There's nothing to envy in that life.
| enriquec wrote:
| As someone that volunteers at homeless shelters across the
| country, I can tell you your description is nowhere near close
| to reality and it is very strange that people get off on
| pretending things are dramatically worse than they are. Do you
| even do anything to help?
| baix777 wrote:
| Here in Seattle there are far more homeless people than there
| used to be. In Seattle at least, thing are much worse than
| they were. The cost of living in Seattle has become too high,
| and the wages aren't keeping up. The OP is right about that,
| if overly dramatic about the homeless being handed a death
| sentence.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Seattle
| dkarl wrote:
| I kinda can't blame him, because it's common for people to
| paint a picture of homelessness as something that can easily
| happen to appealing, relatable people who are highly
| functional by middle class standards. I hate it, because it
| reminds me of how conditional empathy is. Empathy is a skill,
| and like any other skill, it's developed through practice,
| and we mostly practice on people just like us. So people
| advocating for support for the homeless have to make them
| sound like they'd fit right in with the people who have the
| money and power to help them.
| bitwize wrote:
| Homelessness _is_ something that can easily happen to
| appealing, relatable people who are highly functional by
| middle-class standards. Perhaps you weren 't here when
| Doreen Traylor's article about being homeless for six years
| appeared?
|
| Nevertheless, thank you for showing your privilege.
| Judgement made.
| dkarl wrote:
| Doreen Traylor proves that a homeless person can write,
| have an online presence, and make a living as a
| freelancer. The fact that you think that's important is
| exactly my point, that you think homelessness is a
| different issue depending on whether or not homeless
| people are capable of living a certain kind of life we
| value. It shouldn't matter. It's sad that it does.
| dang wrote:
| Please omit personal swipes from your comments here. They
| just make things even worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| hapless wrote:
| Almost half of American children spend at least one year in
| poverty
|
| Not to mention, I don't know where you folks develop your
| anecdotes -- you really do meet a lot of totally ordinary,
| high-functioning adults in soup kitchen and community
| pantry scenarios. They just happen to be broke and hungry.
|
| At any given time, _most_ homeless families are only
| temporarily homeless, and _most_ hungry families are only
| temporarily hungry. Life has its ups and downs. Most of the
| adults spend most of their lives working, just like
| everyone else does.
|
| The "hardcore," long-term homeless, who spend years at a
| time unhomed, are not terribly representative of the great
| mass of Americans who have spent _some_ time unhomed.
|
| Poverty is endemic in America, and it's a hard time to be a
| working stiff, _especially_ if you work in, say, the Bay
| area, as the comic 's author did. ("Santa Luna" seems like
| a very thinly fictionalized Santa Cruz.)
|
| A man like the author, in 2020, could very well find
| himself in the encampment he so obviously feared.
| scythe wrote:
| Consider the inherent differences in the metrics you're
| using.
|
| The comment that started this discussion involved
| observing people visiting a soup kitchen. Short-term
| homeless may outnumber long-term homeless in an absolute
| metric (I was homeless for a few months in 2014) but
| long-term homeless make many more lifetime visits to a
| soup kitchen and therefore comprise a higher proportion
| of the people you meet. They also comprise a higher
| proportion of the people who are at any given time living
| on the street. If you solve short-term homelessness but
| not long-term homelessness, you haven't made nearly as
| much of a dent in the shelter beds and tent cities as you
| have in the quoted statistic of people who are ever
| homeless.
|
| I'm sure you do meet "high-functioning adults" in soup
| kitchens, but I would also doubt they're the modal
| attendees.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Your implication of certain people making more lifetime
| visits implying that a majority of the visitors are from
| that group does not follow.
|
| For example if a typical longtime homeless person would
| make (round number) 400 visits a year, and a typical
| transiently homeless person would make around 40 visits a
| year, then if eg there were 20 transiently homeless
| people a year for every longtime homeless person, then
| the makeup of a soup kitchen would be two-thirds
| transiently homeless.
| scythe wrote:
| I'm not making a prediction, I'm explaining an
| observation. I don't need implication, just inclusion.
| dkarl wrote:
| Broke, hungry, and poor are all different from being
| homeless. The vast majority of people served by food
| pantries are not homeless. Most people who can't afford
| to put a roof over their heads are sleeping under
| somebody else's.
|
| I do get it. When people think about homelessness, when
| they cast a ballot, we don't want them to think about the
| "hardcore" (as you put it) unsympathetic homeless. We
| want them to think about the more relatable people
| experiencing transitional homelessness. People who are
| leaving an abusive situation, people working a job that
| didn't cover their rent, etc. The Rosa Parkses of
| homelessness.
|
| And that sucks. It sucks that the "hardcore" homeless are
| so stigmatized that the only acceptable way to talk about
| helping them is to frame a larger problem in which they
| can be hidden away as an unrepresentative minority.
| watwut wrote:
| I don't think this thread was about stigma. It was about
| whether thing called homelessness can happen to otherwise
| functional people. Whether such a thing exist.
|
| The thing about what you call hardcore homelessness is
| the serious mental health issues many of those people
| have. And that is much bigger harder issue.
| dang wrote:
| Hey, please don't cross into personal attack. It's much more
| interesting that you have firsthand knowledge--if you want to
| share some of what you know, so we can all learn, that would
| be great, and much more in the intended spirit of the site.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?query=share%20know%20learn%20by:dang.
| ..
| [deleted]
| spoonjim wrote:
| Most minimum wage workers are alive and not homeless. Sometimes
| they live 10 to a 2-bedroom, especially the illegal immigrants
| who often don't even make minimum wage, but the world you
| describe is not the reality out there.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Minimum wages should apply to anyone, no matter their status
| no?
| skulk wrote:
| Yes; the problem is that for a worker being paid under the
| minimum wage to rectify this issue, they probably need to
| produce their work authorization documents at some point,
| and therefore risk deportation/worse.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Why not simply get work authorization documents then?
| skulk wrote:
| I'll assume you haven't lived in the US.
|
| It's not easy to get work authorization documents because
| there is a huge queue for legal immigration (for example,
| my friend's cousin just moved here from a country on the
| Indian subcontinent, after having waited more than 15
| years for a visa), while people in Mexico/Central
| America/wherever need to improve their situation NOW;
| they simply cannot wait the decade or so it would take to
| obtain real documents, even if they had the money
| required to even start the process.
|
| Living and working in the US without authorization is a
| criminal offense, and if caught by someone who cares
| enough, illegal immigrants will be deported and
| permanently barred from obtaining legitimate work
| authorization.
|
| Of course, there's always the option of counterfeit...
| mcguire wrote:
| State of Working America Wages 2019
| (https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/)
| keiferski wrote:
| It's completely possible to live on a minimum wage job and not
| be a miser. The trick is to not live in a coastal megacity.
|
| Source: myself, after college, working at a bakery in a
| Midwestern city.
| api wrote:
| Ahh, yes, but don't you know that if you don't live in San
| Francisco, LA, Seattle, or New York you can't do anything and
| nothing happens? You _have_ to live in one of those four
| cities. /sarcasm
| hapless wrote:
| We are discussing a memoir of a man's life working in the
| Bay area and living just outside the same.
|
| This memoir was not about Topeka, Kansas. Not that
| struggling to make rent doesn't happen in Topeka. Not that
| Topeka isn't filled with people living vibrant lives.
|
| Just, this particular story occurred in the Bay area.
| api wrote:
| I know. I was speaking to the parent, and the 2000-2020
| "you have to be in one of four cities" zeitgeist they are
| talking about.
| cortesoft wrote:
| This is kinda true, but leaves out the part that it is very
| hard to just move to the Midwest if you are poor in an
| expensive big city. First, you have to gather enough money to
| actually move. You will need a car and gas, and/or a moving
| truck. You will need first and last months rent (not to
| mention how will you find a cheap place in a city you have no
| connections in without being there?)
|
| Then, you are leaving your entire support system when you
| move. When you are poor, your support system is how you live.
| Friends watch each other's kids while they work, they share
| needed things, they find jobs for each other, they lend money
| to each other when unexpected things happen, they let people
| crash on their couch when they lose their house.
|
| Telling poor people to abandon their social support system to
| move somewhere cheaper is really underselling how hard that
| is.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > You will need a car and gas, and/or a moving truck.
|
| Or a bus/Amtrak ticket, and some money to ship your stuff.
| This is me, twice. It's not that expensive. It's not even
| painful. It's normal - what most people do.
|
| > You will need first and last months rent (not to mention
| how will you find a cheap place in a city you have no
| connections in without being there?)
|
| I have never paid first and last month's rent for deposit.
| Having dabbled in real estate, I do know this is a thing
| and not that unusual. I also know this is _not_ the norm. I
| 've often paid deposits of amounts like $200. These are
| decent apartments - not crap ones, but not high end ones
| either. I remember the one time someone asked more than one
| month's rent, I simply found a comparable apartment a few
| blocks away. It didn't require much of a search because
| probably over 80% of the apartment complexes in that
| neighborhood did not charge that much.
|
| As for finding a "cheap" place, all it takes is the
| Internet.
|
| > Telling poor people to abandon their social support
| system to move somewhere cheaper is really underselling how
| hard that is.
|
| Both having done this, and seeing others do this from the
| now expensive place I live in: I can assure you the success
| stories outnumber the fail stories 10 to 1. Easily. Your
| support system in the expensive city is not much use if you
| cannot afford to pay rent. Your argument has validity if
| you're moving between comparable cities, but we're talking
| about people who are, in a sense, already below 0. The
| baseline sucks, despite whatever social support they have.
|
| Of course, if you're starting with $0 in hand, you're
| screwed no matter where you are. Barring medical expenses
| or similar sudden expenses, most people who end up there do
| so via the boiling frog syndrome. The trick is to get out
| when you see that your finances are dropping.
| cortesoft wrote:
| You leave out having kids, and the childcare support that
| is needed if you can't afford daycare.
|
| Also, many poor people aren't starting with $0... they
| are starting with negative money
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Also, many poor people aren't starting with $0... they
| are starting with negative money
|
| This was addressed in my comment - although perhaps I
| added that portion in while you were typing yours.
|
| > You leave out having kids, and the childcare support
| that is needed if you can't afford daycare.
|
| Definitely. There are many subtopics in this thread and
| my intention was to focus on only one, which was the
| expense to move to a cheaper city. With children, it's a
| lot more expensive, but to be frank, as per the original
| comment in this thread - you couldn't afford to live on
| minimum wage with dependents even in the 90's - that
| aspect has not changed and only gotten worse.
|
| I was referring to a single person with no debt and a
| small amount of cash.
|
| To be clear, I'm not saying _anyone_ who is poor can get
| out of it easily (or even at all). I 'm saying _some_
| definitely can. Nor am I saying there aren 't
| institutional problems that make it harder for people and
| easier to get into debt (predatory advertising and loans,
| for example - heck - the whole credit system). In many
| ways being poor in the US is worse than in many/most
| developed countries. I acknowledge that.
|
| But there's a difference between a bad situation and an
| impossible one.
|
| I merely want to push back on a sentiment I see often on
| HN and other places (and usually only by people earning
| good amounts of money) that it's a bad idea or incredibly
| difficult to leave a coastal city to move to a cheap one
| and do better there than here. I see it time and again on
| these threads, and for me it's a huge cognitive
| dissonance, as I've lived in both places, and have
| encountered several people in both places who made the
| move. It's not easy, but as I said, the success cases far
| outnumber the failed ones.
|
| The last set of people I know who moved from my city to a
| cheaper one were low income workers (cooks in a
| restaurant who were treated poorly). They had families
| with kids - some did not have a working spouse. They saw
| cheap houses in Ohio (under $100K) and immediately made
| the move. Granted, they're now living in shitty
| neighborhoods (the only place you'll find such houses),
| but they have positive cash flow. And now that they're
| successful, their so called social support they had here
| is now considering making that move as well.
|
| My scenario in my original comment was about getting a
| decent apartment. I've seen people come in to the cheaper
| city I lived in with not enough cash to make any kind of
| deposit. Yet most were still successful in the long run.
| The exceptions were people with some kind of chronic
| problem: Drugs, health issues, crime related issues,
| behavioral issues (can't handle bosses) etc. They'd
| usually find some charity/religious institution who would
| provide them a roof for a fixed period of time and in
| that time they'd find a job and then move out to a real
| apartment. Most of these cities will have places that
| will rent you a room for fairly cheap. Crappy
| neighborhood, etc.
|
| The contrast is with staying in an expensive city where
| _no matter what they do they will not get positive cash
| flow_. Whatever your views on the topic, keep this one
| fact in mind: _The baseline we are comparing against is
| staying in a city with negative cash flow_.
| NationalPark wrote:
| You say $200 like that's an amount of money that a person
| living in poverty could conceivably accumulate. I think
| you're massively underestimating the degree of economic
| despair that is present in parts of this country. Also,
| you don't mention kids anywhere - regardless of how
| responsible it was to have them in the first place,
| they're here now.
| [deleted]
| Mary-Jane wrote:
| You are making very general statements and treating them as
| if they apply to the entire homeless population. If you
| have an interest in fixing problems you should appreciate
| that people's circumstances vary and so will solutions. The
| parent's solution will work for many people in poverty:
| most poor people are young, and most young people do not
| have children, so moving to a cheaper locale _is_ in fact
| viable for many homeless. Also, you don 't necessarily have
| to up and leave everything you know; living an hour from
| the city is often sufficient.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Most poor people are young without kids? Have anything to
| back this up?
| troupe wrote:
| There are some places you can go to college while working a
| part time minimum wage job during the school year and full
| time in the summer and graduate with only a few thousand
| dollars of debt while paying all your expenses.
|
| Just because an expensive new car is very expensive does not
| mean that a vehicle is out of reach of everyone who can't
| afford an expensive new vehicle.
|
| The market will only adjust wages if people are behaving
| rationally. Staying in a very expensive place with low wages
| breaks the market because it isn't rational behavior.
| RangerScience wrote:
| > The market
|
| It is known that the FSP is holy, for it shall cure all our
| ails with nary a lift of our clicky fingers. /snark.
|
| The market is us. We will adjust wages if people are
| behaving rationally - but people don't. The market isn't
| some external, independently existing force; it's
| observations about our collective actions. We're the
| market. It's weird (to me) every time that term is used
| that way.
|
| > it isn't rational behavior
|
| Of course not, people aren't rational, but even if they
| were, you'd still be (generally) incorrect. People coming
| to decisions that are against your expectations is much
| more commonly about _your_ lack of visibility into other
| forces and information than it is about _their_ cognitive
| processing.
| troupe wrote:
| One perspective is that people aren't rational. Another
| is that they are optimizing for different things than
| what you want to optimize for.
| hapless wrote:
| It may surprise you to learn that moving is expensive and
| difficult
| troupe wrote:
| There definitely is a cost associated with moving to a
| place where the skills you have are valued enough to
| support yourself. If the pain of changing is greater than
| the pain of staying where you are, then it is completely
| rational to stay where you are.
| pydry wrote:
| Some of the most desperate people I know are ones who grew
| up poor in a HCOL city (NYC, London, etc.) and who fell
| into low wage jobs.
|
| At the same time as supporting the cities they live in
| doing all of the most fundamental work (cooking, cleaning,
| etc) they are regularly disrespected and told to fuck off
| somewhere else if they're struggling - away from the
| support network they rely upon and the friends and family
| who give their life meaning.
|
| And yeah, some of them did move away but that sometimes
| made things worse because even though they might be
| financially slightly better situated in a different city,
| they didn't have a support network there.
|
| Expensive housing is a political choice. Watering down the
| minimum wage was a political choice. These people falling
| through the cracks and suffering was the outcome of those
| deliberate choices to prioritize pumping up asset prices
| and profit margins over actual people.
| Jetrel wrote:
| Yeah, this is spot on.
|
| Most people don't quite understand how homelessness
| works, and it's because of this whole "support network"
| thing. In most people's mind, homeless = bum living in a
| cardboard box. What actually happens in reality is
| someone falls on hard times and they move in with a
| relative, or bum a room from a friend, or etc, etc.
| That's what keeps them out of the cardboard box, and
| keeps them fed.
|
| And that's why they're shit scared to move. Move, and all
| those friends and family can't help you. Even scarier,
| move, and you're probably scared the whole friends-and-
| family ties might get weaker - most people are always
| paranoid about whether their friends/lovers/etc still
| care about them, so they stay close to make sure they're
| "tending the fire" and keeping the friendship alive. It's
| human.
| klyrs wrote:
| Last car I bought cost about $3000. Cost of insurance? Over
| half that, annually. More expensive if you do a monthly
| payment plan. And that's with a spotless driving record and
| favorable demographics.
|
| And then comes maintenance of a 30yo vehicle! Total cost of
| ownership was about $3k/y, _not including gas_.
|
| Even cheap cars ain't cheap, and that's one of many reasons
| that poverty is a spiral.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Last car I bought cost about $3000. Cost of insurance?
| Over half that, annually.
|
| How bad is your driving record, and are you getting
| anything beyond liability? I have paid about that much,
| for 2 cars, and I have a lot more than liability. Even
| now, for 2 cars I'm paying under $1300/year - and have
| more than liability coverage. When I paid the bare
| minimum, for 1 car, the _most_ I paid is $600 /year. Even
| adjusting for inflation, it would not amount to over
| $1000/year today. And I paid that only for 1-2 years
| while building enough of a driving record. Looking at my
| financial records, when I had just liability on an old
| car, I typically paid $350/year.
|
| > More expensive if you do a monthly payment plan.
|
| Not all plans are like this. For the last few years I've
| been on a plan that costs the same whether I do monthly
| or annual. Shop around.
|
| > And then comes maintenance of a 30yo vehicle! Total
| cost of ownership was about $3k/y
|
| First, if you paid $3000 for a 30 year old car, it's a
| bad deal. 2 years ago I bought a 15 year of Honda Accord
| for $3500, and it did not have a lot of miles. Second, if
| you're paying $3000/year for maintenance, you bought a
| bad car. Sell it and get a reliable car. As an example, I
| paid $350 this year for maintaining my car (including oil
| changes). I paid about $1100 last year. Looking at my
| prior old car, I've gone as low as $100/year. In fact,
| looking back at almost 10 years, that $1100 was the most
| I've ever paid for maintaining an old car.
|
| > Even cheap cars ain't cheap, and that's one of many
| reasons that poverty is a spiral.
|
| Good cheap cars are always cheaper than the alternatives.
| Always.
| hapless wrote:
| Yes, but, this particular guy was working in the suburbs of
| an expensive coastal city, while living in an exurb.
|
| That's obviously not universal. But it is certainly the story
| of THIS guy, as well as many tens of millions of other
| Americans.
| keiferski wrote:
| I'm certainly not arguing that rising inequality isn't a
| bad thing, but your comment wasn't about _this guy_ , it
| was about Americans at large. Contrary to popular coastal
| belief, fly-over country actually has people, and culture,
| and life. The average American doesn't live in NYC/LA/SF,
| they live in a small to medium size town.
|
| It is absolutely possible to live a frugal but reasonable
| lifestyle on a minimum wage job in most of the country.
| hapless wrote:
| Forty five million people live in the NYC and LA metro
| areas alone. NYC is about 3% of the national population.
| Los Angeles is another 2.5%.
|
| The average American lives in a fairly considerable city,
| depending on your definition of "large." The vast
| majority live in cities of 100,000 or more.
|
| Almost half of Americans live in the 100 largest MSAs.
| For perspective, the #100 MSA is Fort Wayne, Indiana, at
| roughly 500,000 people.
|
| Not to mention, struggling to make rent, homelessness,
| and poverty don't just vanish when you step away from the
| most expensive cities.
|
| Living in "Santa Luna" (which I assume was actually Santa
| Cruz) instead of the suburbs where he worked didn't make
| his rent affordable in 1994, and it certainly wouldn't
| today, in 2020.
| keiferski wrote:
| I'm not really sure what you're arguing for. I didn't say
| anything of those things were non-problems, I said that
| having a minimum wage job isn't some kind of homeless
| death sentence.
|
| It is completely possible to survive on a minimum wage
| job in many cities across the country. It isn't
| luxurious, it isn't fair, and it certainty isn't ideal,
| but exaggerating the facts to make a sociopolitical point
| only makes the opposition have a stronger foothold.
| Jetrel wrote:
| He's arguing that this statement is false:
|
| > The average American doesn't live in NYC/LA/SF, they
| live in a small to medium size town.
|
| http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-cities-factsheet
|
| "It is estimated that 83% of the U.S. population lives in
| urban areas, up from 64% in 1950."
|
| Demographic shifts are weird, man.
|
| I'm part of this big shift - I moved from a rural town in
| flyover country, to a giant metro area in flyover
| country. That metro area is most of the population of my
| state. It's sobering - you add up all the little rural
| towns and the number of people there just doesn't add up
| to much. That wasn't true, in the past. And it's like
| this in almost every state. We all moved to the city
| because all the farming jobs and factory jobs dried up.
| keiferski wrote:
| I'm not seeing where 'urban area' is defined in that
| document. I imagine it includes basically any town or
| city. The original issue was NYC/LA/SF vs. the rest of
| the country, not urban vs. rural. Plenty of college
| towns, for example, likely qualify as urban yet are
| extremely affordable.
| hapless wrote:
| I think it's very plain that holding a minimum wage job
| implies a tenuous ability to house and feed oneself in
| much of the country. It is not a complex thesis.
|
| I'm glad you were able to get by on the cheap in an
| unspecified midwestern city, but that doesn't change the
| picture for tens of millions of other people
| BrandonMarc wrote:
| > Almost half of Americans live in the 100 largest MSAs.
|
| Meaning just over half live in the rest, with far lower
| cost of living.
| bumby wrote:
| Not disagreeing, just curious where your data came from.
|
| The census data >80% of Americans live in urban areas but
| that's loosely defined as any area with more than 2500
| people
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> It is absolutely possible to live a frugal but
| reasonable lifestyle on a minimum wage job in most of the
| country.
|
| I don't really have a horse in this race as I'm an EU
| citizen and have never lived in the USA, but I am curious
| to know: have you, yourself, done this (what you say is
| absolutely possible)?
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| I have not done this myself, but 2-3 of my friends are
| doing this currently in the midwest. One is working at a
| warehouse; one is working at a major home improvement
| store; and one is doing part time work which effectively
| amounts to minimum wage. Like the GP stated in his other
| post, their lifestyles aren't fantastic and they
| definitely are constrained in their spending, but they
| are hardly living in squalor: they have adequate, safe,
| reliable housing; they have functional vehicles; they
| have health insurance; they don't go hungry; they take
| driving trips; they come out to our group events and
| bring their own booze; and they are not in danger of
| becoming homeless. There is a huge delta between solidly
| middle class / upper middle class and poor / precarious
| or homeless which doesn't seem to be acknowledged.
| keiferski wrote:
| Yes, absolutely. During and after college (4 year
| university), I worked at a bakery in a fairly major
| Midwestern city. For working ~45 hours a week, I made
| roughly $1,200 after taxes. One room in a 2-bedroom
| apartment was $350, leaving me with about $850 for
| everything else. Definitely enough for cheap beer,
| groceries at Aldi, and other budget entertainment.
|
| It certainly wasn't a luxurious lifestyle and I wouldn't
| wish it upon anyone, but it also wasn't much different
| than living in a dorm at college...or even the startup
| lifestyle, seeing that this is HN. Absolutely doable for
| a young person (as the original link is about) and not a
| straight ticket to homelessness.
|
| For what it's worth, I also spent quite a bit of time
| traveling around Europe and had many art student friends
| living on half as much money in smaller cities in France,
| Germany, etc.
| s5300 wrote:
| Did you have any significant medical issues?
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| Thank you for replying. I live in the EU and indeed wages
| are lower, but of course prices are also lower.
|
| When I was 16, I worked at a bakery too, as an
| apprentice. I made a pittance and lived in a squat
| because I couldn't afford rent, but I enjoyed the work
| and I could eat of the produce to my heart's content (I
| have a big heart). This was in Athens, Greece, btw.
|
| On the other hand, neither I nor you had a family at the
| time we worked such low-pay jobs and I suspect that a
| minimum wage job would not be sufficient for two adults
| wanting to start a family.
| relscholar wrote:
| Ummmm I'm homeless. I love my life.
| everdrive wrote:
| I'm not so sure. Could he have moved back in with his parents?
| Could he have gotten a second job (at McDonald's or something?)
| I'm not suggesting that these would be good, or easy options,
| only that homelessness was not a forgone conclusion. This comic
| is only one man's personal story, and it does not necessarily
| coincide with the general demographic and economic trends of
| the time. ie, it's not clear that his story speaks about the
| particular hardships of one age compared to the hardships of
| another.
| will4274 wrote:
| > To put it another way: The author happened to be born very
| close to the peak for average Americans' wages, and every year
| since then has been an ever-tighter vice squeeze between
| declining wages and rising rents (in both the real estate and
| economic senses of the term)
|
| Yeah... This isn't true. You can see the data here, among other
| places: https://www.statista.com/chart/17679/real-wages-in-the-
| unite.... The average real hourly wage is higher today than any
| time since 68 (which was the peak) and is about a dollar higher
| than the 90s. Note that this is the __real __hourly wage, so it
| 's already inflation adjusted.
| 93po wrote:
| If this is true then why do I also see graphs showing that
| wages have declined in purchasing power since the 70s? Is it
| possibly that this chart is using "average" rather than
| "median"? Housing is everyone's largest expensive and I feel
| like I've seen figures that show housing has a percentage of
| income is something like 2-3x higher than it was 50 years
| ago.
| will4274 wrote:
| > wages have declined in purchasing power since the 70s
|
| This was true until 2019. Wages dropped in the late 70s and
| in the 80s, then went up in the 90s, spent the 00s mostly
| flat, and rose a little in the 10s. It took 50 years (until
| 2019) for them to go back up to the 1968 high. So "we've
| made no progress since 1970" economic quotes are mostly
| true, but "we've made no progress since 199x" economic
| quotes are mostly false.
| enriquec wrote:
| post your charts, if you don't mind.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| The American Dream has been replaced by perseverance porn: the
| only way to succeed is through hardship and the people who fail
| are losers.
| BrandonMarc wrote:
| I'm wondering if success has ever _not_ come through
| hardship. It certainly came through hardship in the past.
| Today seems little different.
|
| Note: 80% of millionaires are first-generation rich - they
| started off with little, and made their own fortune.
| ishjoh wrote:
| I'm a millennial, I have never been drafted to fight in any
| war, I did not spend my childhood or early teens working on a
| farm, I was educated by a public school system, I have enough
| disposable income to have a computer, iPhone, and internet
| connection through which I can learn anything, I live in a
| safe community, people of all colors and religious beliefs
| are willing to do business with me.
|
| In history there might be one maybe two generations that have
| had less hardship than mine, every other generation ever has
| had more hardship.
| troupe wrote:
| You sound like someone who is looking at your opportunity
| rather than trying to find reasons you can't succeed. :)
|
| It is easy to complain about how hard life is, but I really
| don't think most people would be willing to trade it for
| some other time in the past--no matter how bad they like to
| think things are today. It is surprisingly inexpensive to
| live like people lived in the 1950s when TV, air
| conditioning, and even indoor plumbing weren't things you'd
| assume you had to have.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I read this when it was new, and I"ve had a bookmark for it (and
| for the author's other work, Spiders) moved from browser to
| browser and computer to computer for more than 20 years.
|
| It's really really good.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| His Delta Thrives story was my favorite webcomic work. He took
| it down for some reason. Someone else had it up for years, but
| it looks like it's finally completely vanished now. It's a
| shame.
| jeffbee wrote:
| And The Jain's Death is gone, really liked that one. "Rush
| Limbaugh Eats Everything" I imagine might have got sued out
| of existence.
| superkuh wrote:
| You can still find them all on archive.org if you dig deep
| enough. For about 10 years there was no e-sheep site at
| all. I've kept a copy of the original "The Guy I Almost
| Was" (slightly different images in the ending, and no
| javascript) on my local mirror
| (http://superkuh.com/almostguy/) for decades.
|
| Almost Guy is still my favorite but "Night at the rave" is
| just so wholesome I love it too. "A Suitable Seed"s message
| still hits just as hard today as it did in the 90s. Farley
| makes great comics.
| miles wrote:
| Here you go:
|
| _The Jain 's Death_
| http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/jain/01.html
|
| _Rush Limbaugh Eats Everything_ https://web.archive.org/we
| b/20001109233800/http://www.e-shee...
| everdrive wrote:
| What a great little comic. It reveals a truth I've felt for a
| while: that most people can't really explain their success. Their
| success was some combination of luck and talent, and if they had
| to lead their lives over again, they'd end up in a very different
| place. Or, if they had to lead their lives in a different time
| (let's say 60s vs. 2000s) they might be successful in one time,
| and unsuccessful in another.
| dusted wrote:
| What an excellent read! It captures my own disappointment with
| both the future at large and my own failure at it :D
| genjipress wrote:
| This is one of my favorite webcomics of all time.
| floren wrote:
| It seems that his beatnik dreams were still largely based on the
| things he'd own. Instead of shiny future-clothes, he'd wear Red
| Wing boots and horn-rimmed glasses. Instead of a computer, he has
| the typewriter and his vinyl records. He already couldn't afford
| to eat or pay rent on his bakery salary, can't afford a $10
| library card (a purchase explicitly called out as part of Project
| Beatnik), but his new plan doesn't include moving or getting a
| new job. I guess the good intentions of buying all his clothes at
| Goodwill or the hardware store (clothes are not cheap at the
| hardware store) would just magically allow him to afford prints
| of classic Abstract Expressionism paintings?
|
| My read is that "the guy I almost was" would be a homeless dude
| who lugged around an old typewriter with him.
|
| I enjoyed the critique of the whole cyber/futurism movement,
| though.
| cableshaft wrote:
| He said he couldn't hang out at a library because he didn't
| have a library card, which struck me as odd.
|
| Do libraries not let you inside unless you have a card in
| California?
|
| Because there's not a single library I've been to that required
| a library card to enter or spend time at the library. I only
| have a library card for my city, but I've been to libraries all
| over the suburbs to read their books (on the premises), write,
| attend events, and even secure meeting rooms (just needed my
| driver's license).
|
| Actually when I was poor that was one thing I did a decent
| amount of, was just hang out at libraries. Although I've never
| been so poor I didn't own a working computer, either, although
| I came close once. One time, when my computer died I spent a
| couple weeks hunting down a cheap one (just the tower) for $80
| on Craigslist that wasn't too much of a downgrade from what I
| had (mine was kind of old to begin with).
|
| I don't remember exactly what was wrong with it. I want to say
| it was the power supply fried, but if that's the case, I don't
| know why I thought I couldn't just buy a replacement for the
| same cost. Maybe I just felt I couldn't afford to take the
| chance.
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| It's true for some campus libraries.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Well he said he only needed $10 for the card, which
| suggests a non-college library. And at my campus you just
| needed a student id to check books out or go on a computer,
| but it's otherwise open to the public. But maybe. I assume
| it's accurate, just seems unusual from my experience.
| kbenson wrote:
| > Well he said he only needed $10 for the card, which
| suggests a non-college library.
|
| Does it? The public library system where I live offers
| free cards. I think it's just as likely for a school to
| include the library card cost in tuition and charge for
| it otherwise.
|
| My guess is "Santa Luna" is actually Santa Cruz, and
| their library cards are free too (at least now, but I
| suspect that it hasn't changed). My guess is that since
| this was written after the fact, there's just some
| haziness on what was actually the case, and why he didn't
| frequent the library as much (which might be as simple as
| that the hours he was out and walking the neighborhood
| were often not library hours).
| troupe wrote:
| > He said he couldn't hang out at a library because he didn't
| have a library card
|
| But at the same time his plan for changing his life was to
| start going to the library. :)
| scythe wrote:
| It's a little sad to see that a kid obsessed with building a
| better future could grow up reading about technology throughout
| the '80s and into the '90s and never know about the GNU project,
| which was closer to what he wanted to believe in than everything
| else -- but not gussied up with marketing glitter. The people who
| most deserve to make an impact rarely do.
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