I mean, it kind of makes sense. These kids aren't stupid. They see that most of the upward mobility ladders have been pulled up by the last generation to climb them, and there's not much left besides gambling on meme stocks, OnlyFans, and trying to become a popular streamer.
They look at their Millennial parents generation and say "Why would I want to study hard, go to college, and work my ass off? That's what you did and you have six figures of debt and work at Starbucks!" We were suckers and believed in class mobility. I think the next generation of kids are more observant and cynical and have figured out the deck is stacked against them.
Yeah that's exactly right. I'm 42 and my wife is 26 and she and her brother (23) are very keenly aware that the deck is stacked against them from the get go. Their early internet consumption mostly consisted of them informing themselves of their odds in the world. And they were horrified with their own conclusions. They kept saying "it couldn't be that bad, could it?". And then they tried to find entry level jobs on the local market...
They are not lazy. They simply are on the lookout for an opportunity that's worth their energy. And truthfully, 98% of them out there are not.
Mind you, this might still end horribly for them because IMO at some point you have to start working your ass off since that at least carries some potential to open opportunities for you (get acquainted with people, for example).
But I definitely understand why they are the way they are.
And I know at least 15 other young people who are on the exact same mindset.
It's indeed an evolutionary process. They're born in a different environment compared to you and me, and their priorities are different.
There’s a lot of negativity towards capitalism here in this thread which is hard for me to understand when the average Hacker News user is upper middle class chatting away on social media in the middle of a work day. It seems like capitalism has done exactly a great job in lifting people out of poverty and continues to do so.
A lot of the negativity simply comes from being detached from real problems, in my opinion.
I've got no idea about the general demographics of the site, but I for one am here in the middle of the day because I'm unemployed, not because I'm well-off.
There have been many people trying to get rich quick in previous generations, as well. If it's growing over time, faster than the "work hard and rise to the top" or other segments of the population, it may be because "working hard" in the same kinds of jobs (level of skill, amount of effort required, etc) people were doing 50 years ago is much less likely to get you to the same level of independence and wealth that it would have 50 years ago.
I think this entire discussion is more about opportunities and the common debate is between older generations that think young people have the same opportunities now that they had when they were young VS young people now believing they do not have those opportunities. I mean, is this not the basis for the entire "OK, boomer" response/meme?
When looking at specific success stories, I think the people talking about luck being opportunity have the right of it. Sure, there might be some plan old luck involved and there's surely a large amount of persistence and effort involved, but it does seem rare to hear about what created the opportunity for the success.
Everybody talking about survivorship bias are really talking about how the success story, as told by people involved in the success, are rarely looking to download their involvement and talk about the opportunities they had, but instead want to show how their involvement and the things they did are the key to the success.
Even more common are kids who plan to get rich being a famous TikTokker, IGer, of YouTuber.
Since there's not much I can do about it, I'm just curious to see how this shakes out over time.