Larry shared some thoughts on the Book of Faces that I thought you might enjoy. Their words are italicized, Larry’s are bold -Jack
“Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something.
Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.
Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about ‘meritocracy’ and the salutary effects of hard work.
Poor kids aren’t visiting the carnival. They’re the ones working on it.”
That’s defeatist horseshit, and another great example that just because somebody crafts an analogy it doesn’t mean it makes sense.
I was one of the poor kids who worked that carnival. I grew up poor. And not collect a government check poor, I mean farm poor, which has all the disadvantages of being poor but with the added benefit of constant backbreaking manual labor for little to no reward. I suppose I’m supposed to be bitter about that and be a good little communist or something, but instead I still got a bunch of throws at the dartboard. Go figure.
My family literally lost the farm. I moved out when I was 16 and my family moved to a different state. My first throw missed, when my own little herd of steers I’d been raising in the hopes of selling for college money got tetanus and died. Oh well. Later I managed to get a scholarship because I was good at judging dairy cows in FFA. I kid you not.
I later lost that scholarship because I decided I really didn’t want to work with cows anymore and switched majors. I worked my way through college at various stupid grunt work or college student peon jobs. I had a new goal and new career path!
Which totally didn’t work out at all, I wasted a year and a half going through the application process at various agencies, finally got hired… and that department then had emergency budget cuts and layoffs the week before I was supposed to report to POST.
Miss.
So fuck it. I got a degree, and a young wife and a new baby to take care of, let’s switch gears and throw a dart at the corporate world! And… I hated my first real professional job. Despised it. Evil mega corporation. Terrible boss. Seriously, her nickname company-wide was The Harpy.
Yet I learned a ton. I picked up valuable skills. I honed my bullshit detector. And then the day I caught where a senior executive had fucked up and cost the company a quarter million dollars, and the Harpy screamed at me for doing my job (because she couldn’t very well yell at a department head and she had to hold somebody accountable!) I mentally checked out and the timer started for my next dart throw.
Let’s throw a dart at being an entrepreneur! I now had business skills. I love guns. There’s some other dudes I know who know guns but not business, let’s open a machine gun store!
I can’t really call this one a miss, because I learned a lot. I made a multitude of contacts. I picked up a really unique and oddball skillset… however, I was fucking poor again, and working 60-80 hours a week. And no, that’s not an exaggeration. It was like milking cows again, only with slightly less shit, and slightly more government. So the dart hit the board sideways.
And of course, during all this, I was writing books for fun, and gradually getting better at it. I was sharpening that fucking dart to a razor point. I self published my first book at this point.
When I reached my breaking point at the gun store (right around when I got so angry and frustrated one night doing paperwork that a little blood vessel in my forehead literally popped) and I sold out, I was then unemployed for four months. And of course this was right when the economy took a dump and nobody was hiring.
Big miss, right?
Nope. Forced unemployment meant I had plenty of writing time, and I milked that for all it was worth. For the first time in my life I had time to actually write, and I treated that like I was milking cows and I churned out words. This was when I wrote Hard Magic, and considering what that series did since, that was the best paying unemployment ever.
This whole time I was looking for good paying professional business work again, and losing, badly. Often to guys with way more experience than me because that was just how shitty the economy was at the time and there were a lot of laid off accountants. But we were broke, and I now had 3 kids to feed, so I was about to start a job driving a bread delivery truck for a friend’s company.
Except then one of the dozens of darts I tossed ended up hitting a little start up 8A military defense contracting company, which wasn’t even planning on hiring an accountant yet, and I only cold called the CEO because another friend of mine had applied for an IT job there, and mistakenly thought they said they were looking for a finance guy. I ended up talking to the CEO for two hours about what having a full time accountant could do for her.
I spent the next 5 years there while that company grew ten times in size. Best accounting job I ever had. Great people. Big challenges. Lots of work. I ended up the finance boss.
Bullseye right?
Oh hell no. I wasn’t done. I was still writing books during all this, and it was while I was doing military contracting I got my first New York Times bestseller. (I didn’t even tell the CEO I was a writer on the side until after I’d been there for long enough to prove myself so she wouldn’t think I lacked focus).
And then I still worked as an accountant for a few more years after that to make sure I had all my ducks in the row before throwing another dart at full time entrepreneurship.
Which I’ve been doing ever since.
Looking at the darts I’ve thrown my life has been poor, really poor, poor, lower middle, poor, lower middle, middle, poor, middle, upper middle, rich, and I’d really like to hit Fuck You Money before I die so I can be like JK Rowling and sue random deserving shit heads on Twitter for fun.
But when you talk about Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps now, people cry and whine and tell you all the multitude of reasons its impossible and the American dream is dead, that’s all fucking bullshit from losers and people who want you to be as miserable as they are. Don’t fall for it.
Sure, there are people who’ve gotten fucked by life out the gate, who will never have a chance because of health problems or baggage or whatever. But most of you aren’t them. And even for those people, get the fuck out of their way with your defeatist garbage.
Most of the people who mope and fail aren’t doing so because of the station of their birth or the strength of their body. They’re failing because trying is hard and we live in a malignant society where self anointed victimhood scores you social points.
My home life growing up was fucked up. My family had issues. Only I don’t whine about those on the internet because my parents did the best they could with what they had and bitching about it later as a grown ass adult is just pathetic and unbecoming. I forget how awful some of the stuff from my childhood was until I’ll be telling a story to my kids because I think its funny, and my kids will be like wow dad your life sucked. 😀
Well yeah, but there’s no reason to be a big baby about it!
There’s people who had it a thousand times worse than me who’ve still managed to land a fuck ton of darts in that board. And there are people who had it a thousand times better who squandered everything.
And then there’s fuckers who snort Parmesan cheese out of the shag carpet of their stripper baby mama’s trailer because they mistook it for crack dust, and they still inexplicably make $80k a month “consulting” for foreign oil companies and selling shitty paintings to the Chinese secret police, and yet the same fuckers who cry the hardest about inequality still vote for that crack head’s dad.
Go figure.
But anyways, what I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter where you come from, you can do better than that. Period. Outside of shit that’s beyond your control like cancer or having your dog get shot by ATF agents, you are the master of your destiny.
I’m never going to get paid millions of dollars to do drugs and bang strippers because my dad was VP, but I’ve come a long way from milking cows.
So fuck your defeatist bullshit and your stupid carnival analogy. Crying doesn’t do shit. Get good at something and get paid.
Hell, I’m still poor. Like, below the federal poverty line poor. Know what? I don’t give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about anyone that’s got it better than me, because I’m not an entitled, envious turd.
Doesn’t matter if they got it through hard work, good luck, mommy and daddy’s trust fund, or any combination of the three. Good for them. I have enough to focus on with me and mine without trying to look in someone else’s business.
I just made it to middle middle in time for our first child. Sometimes I think about how much money I’m technically in charge and it makes me want to throw up on my shoes so I’m still learning that piece. My wife was able to quit working and be a stay at home mom. I’m currently in the 70hour a week hell and this time right here (between 5:30am and 6:00am when conference calls start) is about the only time I have to myself these days. After work I’m in the back yard chasing the boy around blowing bubbles and telling him not to pick up the neighbor’s cat. Still, when the checks come in we are able to put a lot of it into savings and we aren’t dumb enough to do things like waste it on new cars, and I think I might actually be able to do crazy stuff to help our son when he’s older like flat out buy him a house. (Sorry I don’t subscribe to the podcast, my wife is a napkin hoarding third generation American Polish gypsy and she gets super unsettled when I spend $5 so I’m thinking after I add a few tens of thousands more to our income next year she’ll believe we can afford it)
I’m exhausted most days but I know it’s my job as a dad to just dig down deep and keep pushing through. Yesterday I found out a project benefit was way undersized by an order of magnitude. I do think when you come from a place that’s messed up it’s sort of hard to imagine things going well but you owe it to yourself and the people who love you to push through.
All of which is to say some advice my dad gave me after my fourth grade teacher died in the middle of class and he found me crying in the principal’s office turned out to be way better and more true than I had previously realized: don’t be a pussy.
And now these whiny fuckers and their decrepit dear leader are demanding that those who have good credit exchange their good credit with people that have bad credit in name of “equity”. The government couldn’t be bothered just to give money to people with poor credit themselves, nope, gotta fuck the haves on behalf of the have nots. My son’s saving to buy an house and now his situation is upside down. Had he been irresponsible and not saved money and gotten good credit he might be able to get a house, but because of the pedo pretendident he’s now fucked over for trying to do it the right way.
These whiny “I’m oppressed, I need equity!!” demanding assholes have the weight of the government stomping on the hard working people doing things the right way. And even after stealing a few percent on a loan from my son they’ll bitch that they’re entitled to more.
Normal people hate these leftist fuckers. Enough is enough. And when pedo Joe steals the next election, it’ll be time to become completely ungovernable by these leftist totalitarian scum….
I agree with you, except that I think it’s probably way PAST time to be ungovernable, but I don’t really know what that will even look like. There is one scenario outlined in the book “Unintended Consequences” (by John Ross. Now available for free as e-book or audio book)
I find it hard to imagine anything like that ever coming to fruition.
Where/how is Unintended Consequences available as an ebook? Everything I’ve been able to find indicates that it’s out of print, and only available for 3 figures on eBay, or at the very least, about $75 via abebooks. Can you give me a lead on the e-version?
Found it: https://archive.org/details/unintended-consequences-by-John-Ross/mode/2up
Thank you!
Looks like an interresting read!
He is doing this in the hope that all these poor credit risks will have their homes by the next election and vote for him. They will not be in their affordable homes very long. Home ownership means YOU are the landlord and you pay for repairs or needed improvements. If you cannot afford a landscaper, you have to mow your own lawn and keep up your property. If your furnace goes out, you have to pay for to be repaired or replaced. If you do not have a slush fund, you are out of luck. What about property taxes? This is all on top of the mortgage you cannot afford. One should think about the issue of bad credit. People can have very high incomes but still be poor credit risk if they live above their means. If they are given “an assist” on fees, they are not going to stop their spending habits. They will believe they have to have a new car instead of a used one. They will think that they should be able to purchase expensive lunches instead of brown bagging it. If they have growing children, they will not shop at thrift stores or yard sales for the kids clothing. Everything has to be expensive and new. The bottom line is that people with bad credit have never learned about deferred gratification: economizing on certain things so that in time, they can afford the big things without going into hock. Also, those with poor credit don’t have realistic expectations. There are somethings they will never be able to affords so they purchase the symbols of wealth, often on credit. A credit card is not money and if the charge is not paid for in month cycle, the item will probably cost more because of interest accrued, instead of the purchase price. Biden’s plan is not rescue but rather a temporary facade of financial well-being which will quickly crumble because of the habits poor credit risks.
Biden’s plan seems specifically tailored to screw over the entire population except for his elite cronies. It will interfere with people who have good credit being able to get a decent loan, while it will give those with bad credit an even worse credit score and less of a chance at life when they inevitably default on their too expensive mortgage and lose everything. But his buddies will swoop in, purchase the property at a fraction of the price and turn a nice profit.
I know people who need to see this. Thank you.
I love the Parenthood movie analogy.
Life is a rollercoaster.
You’re going to have your ups and downs.
You can’t appreciate the highs unless you experience the lows.
I’ve never been your kind of poor or your kind of rich, but I’ve had patches in my career where getting the type of poor you described was a real possibility.
The real crisis point came after 9/11 when I lost my job and couldn’t find another one because everyone had a hiring freeze on for the first six months and after that ended I was considered “long-term” unemployed. But I did what I had done for most of my career before then and have done ever since: throw darts until one stuck.
It would have been easy to give up at that point and say the deck is stacked against me, but with a wife and three kids (one in college) I said screw that, and kept throwing darts. When I finally got a new job we had dumped the last of our savings into checking and had enough to cover the bills for just one more month. It would have been a crash landing after that.
I resolved to never get to that position again. I developed side gigs (including writing) and developed skills to give me flexibility.
When I got laid-off again when the Shuttle program ended I left with a big payout (a critical skills bonus for staying with the program until I got laid off) dumped what I had been doing (not much demand for space navigation rendezvous engineers, much less one in his 50s who wasn’t a superstar). I recast myself as a tech writer (because I enjoyed tech writing and high end tech writing paid well).
I discovered being in your 50s did not make you less employable. It made me more employable because I could leverage my prior experience – just not doing exactly what I had before. What makes you less employable is insisting the world not change and that you have to have a job doing what you did before for at least as much pay.
Instead I looked for what an employer wanted and showed how I could provide it. Sometimes for less pay initially, so I could prove my worth. It always went up when I showed my worth. Plus, because I had several income streams by then, I no longer had to take the first offer.
I am past 65 now, doing work I love. I could retire, but why? I like what I am doing, getting paid more than I can spend, and stay busy. (Busy is good.) And I may not be as rich as J. K. Rowling (or Larry Correia), but I could stop working tomorrow and have enough income to pay my bills.
That in itself is great. Vaccine mandate? Nope. Fire me if you don’t like it. Mandatory woke struggle sessions? Nope. Fire me if you don’t like it. So far, they haven’t, but if they did I can find something else in a few months or sit at home and read.
But I only got there because I never played the “world is against me” game. I kept throwing darts.
Seawriter,
Well said. I also read you on Ricochet. Always look forward to it. Couldn’t agree more with Mr. Correia.
I’ve been in the situation where if it weren’t for the generosity of others (notably my parents letting their grown daughter live with them rent-free) I’d have been in serious trouble. I got myself an engineering degree, but that’s no guarantee. I taught martial arts for 6 months after graduation because I’d graduated right when the 2000’s recession hit Silicon Valley and no one was hiring. When that fell through I worked for the TSA for a year. I worked as a security guard. I freaking babysat for gas money. I did what I needed to do to keep moving forward. Which meant that when a career-style job came along, I grabbed on with both hands and learned yet more new skills and made myself the most valuable member of my team.
As my martial arts instructor was fond of saying: The only sure way to fail is not to try.
I grew up poor as well, but I didn’t know it. I mean outhouse, no running water in the house until I was 8, with a coal burning stove for heat. But we had 3 good meals every day. We grew most of our own food and I worked from the time I was old enough to hold a garden hoe. I went to college and have worked in law enforcement my entire adult life. It paid well enough; and I enjoyed it so much I rarely felt like it was “work.” I hate the idea than anyone owes you anything but a day’s pay for a day’s work.
So, preach on and say “Hi” to Tom Stranger and Wendell the Manatee for me.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade and sell it… It works, as you so well described. And having a ‘work ethic’ honed on the farm gives one a leg up, because you REALLY don’t want to go back to milking cows 24/7/365 at zero dark 30.
I grew up on a farm. As soon as I was able I volunteered to cook meals instead of do barn chores.
I LIKE farm life.
But the first time I had my very own cubicle I was simply thrilled. I arranged things on the little shelves and set it all up and I was a happy little worker bee. It was simply NICE. It was clean, comfortable, and nice normal hours.
I never quite got the cubicle hate. But I suppose that none of the people arranging their family pictures with push pins next to their computer monitor ever helped their dad castrate pigs or picked rocks or know what walking in snow sounds like at 40 below. So maybe nice, warm, comfortable, with nothing alive depending on you but an African violet, seems restrictive.
I always loved cubicles. A tiny bit of semi-private space to call your own, and put your head down and get work done.
It couldn’t last, of course, and they took them away and shoved everyone’s desks together in big rooms.
Sigh…
Oh, yuck!
That sounds like it would be awful even for people who don’t have ADHD.
I’ve come out the other end and completely forgotten what it feels like to roof a house in ninety degree heat while being slowly cooked alive on Pabco Pewter Gray shingles and sometimes I imagine I want to go back to that.
I’ve helped put shingles on a building or two but never as a full time job. Roofing probably beats farming as “hard work” because at least farming has variety.
I did roofing one summer.
HATED IT.
It was actually easier than farming, but it turns out that I am utter shit when it comes to heights, and even worse when that height is at a steep angle. I have a high center of gravity. 😀
Roofing was not for me!
My dad told me that fall gear made people careless so we never had any, it wasn’t so bad if it wasn’t hot. You may get a laugh out of this but sometimes we’d roof a random church for free because my dad would say he felt like he was going to do something fucked up soon.
I ‘ve worked in residential and commercial construction my whole life. I worked as a roofer for 3 years in southern Arizona. I don’t miss it.
Installing insulation is no walk in the park either.
Nowadays I only get up on MY roof and only if I absolutely have to.
I don’t like walking in snow at -40°F. It’s not the styrofoam sound of the snow crunching under my feet that bothers me, it’s fact that my nose is running, which then freezes into my mustache, and my eyebrows break off if my balaclava and touque ride up. That’s why I prefer working inside answering phones and radios.
When you know, you know. 😉
(I am now adding words so my comment is not too short.)
I got the cubicle. I got to generate and edit regulatory grade documents for a federal contractor. This was wonderful, because I could crap on the entire engineering department when they made mistakes.
Then the contractor IT dept thought COTS was best for our multiterabyte image database and crippled it. Then the Feds erased ~15 years of doc history on my 60-year-old plant because of Hillary; we cannot keep email more than 7 years for any reason.
So I left.
When I saw you were posting a comment from hacker news, I just knew it was going to have an absurd analogy in it. Somehow hacker news is the worst place for analogies. They’ll just… analogy back and forth at each other, thinking they’re proving something. It’s astonishing.
The ironical thing is that the analog fits the various People’s Democratic Socialist Republics far better- except that they are out of darts.
If Snowflake think Capitalism is bad, Communism is worse.
That argument just reeks of self-centeredness and narcissism.
“Look at me, I can run a mile in 4 minutes! See how simple that was? If I can do it, that means everybody who is complaining about how hard it is to run a mile in 4 minutes must be a whiny brat. They’re just not trying hard enough. Unless they have cancer or the ATF shot their dog, in which case I’ll give them a pass.”
We get it, boomer. You grew up dirt poor on a farm. And your father chased you around with a bullwhip in his hand and forced you to carry heavy stones around for 20 hours a day. Barefoot in the snow and uphill both ways. And all you had to eat was a glass of dirty water and a piece of moldy bread. Yet you managed to overcome that and become a millionaire through the sheer power of your awesomeness. But not everyone is YOU.
I’m actually impressed at how hard you managed to miss the point.
So you’re either incredibly fucking stupid and don’t read good, which would explain why you’re a bitter envious failure, or you’re just a profoundly dishonest piece of shit crank who is missing the point on purpose.
Could go either way.
Did you skip the parts where I said many people had it worse, and many had it better, but this stupid defeatist attitude screws them over too? Of course not everyone is me. Like you, for example, are a dumb fuck, and most of us aren’t.
It isn’t about being able to run a 4 minute mile, numbnuts. It’s that the people who start out running 10 minute miles can probably get that down to 8 with some learning and effort. And those who start out walking it in 15 can get to where they can jog it in 10. I’m not saying everybody can turn into an olympian. I’m saying everybody can work to improve… But then inevitably along comes the dishonest dumbfuck contingent to cry about the poor .001 of the population who are born without feet, which you predictable fucks always do in any discussion that suggests humans can actually do stuff.
Also, shithead, unless the Baby Boom lasted until after the Fall of Saigon, I’m Gen X and proud. So kiss my ass and die. 😀
I’m just here for the popcorn concession
You can have the plain popcorn concession, *I’M* running the artisanal, small batch, flavored popcorn concession!
And the first flavor is going to be BBQ! 😀
Wait, did I just throw a dart? 😉
No, I’m not talking about some .001 percent of the population (and I’m the one who “can’t read good”, right?).
How hard can it be to understand that you are an extreme outlier? Apparently harder than I thought.
Did it ever occur to you that HALF the population has below-average IQ? And they might try their best when the odds are stacked against them, but they’re simply not very smart, so it will not be good enough and they will fail? It probably didn’t, because you’re a giant self-centered jerk.
This is the problem with libertarian philosophy. Libertarian douchebags have no compassion for human failings and human limitations, because they think they’re immune to them. It’s a philosophy by and for narcissists.
I know a guy just like you. Friend of a friend. He made a career in banking (back when it was a lot easier and less stressful than it is today). Upper-middle class. He loved to repeat the self-serving boomer claptrap: I worked so hard for everything I have, and poor people deserve to be poor if they’re not “generating value” for their employers, and if you’re in a low-paid job it’s your own damn fault because you should have researched your career before you chose it, and kids these days have it easy, and so on.
Let me tell you what happened. His only daughter graduated from law school. The best she could get was an exploitative job at a second-rate law office with very long hours and low pay. Now she’s 30 years old, single, extremely overworked, badly paid, unhappy, can’t afford her own rent and is fat from stress eating. Also, she’s probably on antidepressives (half of white women are).
That guy changed his tune a little bit. It’s hard to pretend that everyone who doesn’t make it is a loser, brat, entitled, freeloader, whatever when it’s your own daughter.
So…you still can’t read well, apparently.
Because Correia already addressed your points in his reply to you, and in the OP, or did you miss the part in the reply about cutting a fifteen minute mile to a ten minute one and the extensive discussion in the original comment of his multiple failures before getting anywhere?
I get that you hate the idea that people can make their lives better with a little bit of effort rather than just sitting around and wallowing in their own misery. That, however, is your problem.
Wow. You managed to compress an impressive amount of bullshit into one post! Thank you for providing such a quality example of Brandolini’s Law. (look it up stupid)
“No, I’m not talking about some .001 percent of the population (and I’m the one who “can’t read good”, right?).”
Actually you are, fuckface, as we’ll cover when we get to the part where you don’t understand how stats, IQ, or bell curves work. But .001 was a rhetorical exaggeration that everybody who isn’t a fucking dipshit realized. The fact is that the vast overwhelming majority of humanity is capable of improving their situation through doing certain things.
I never said success was guaranteed. In fact, I repeatedly said the opposite, and you’re just too fucking dishonest and rolled up into your woe is me socialist mooch narrative to admit that. Failure is common. Some people just get fucked by life. Sometimes you get hit by a fucking asteroid. However, you don’t make general policy based around the circumstances of outliers. And people who physically or mentally incapable of improving their lives are outliers. Period.
“How hard can it be to understand that you are an extreme outlier? Apparently harder than I thought.”
I’m a smart guy with a good work ethic. I wasn’t born with either of those things. By the station of my birth I should maybe be the best meth cook in the trailer park, but we live in America which doesn’t have caste systems, you stupid fuck. The skill sets I developed and the knowledge I learned were because I decided to. That’s not an extreme outlier. Anybody who doesn’t have some kind of physical or mental disability which prevents them from learning, improving, or working (which is the vast overwhelming majority of mankind) is capable of bettering themselves. Not assured they’ll better themselves, but it sure as shit ain’t your pathetic loser dumbfuck no toss at the dart board lies.
“Did it ever occur to you that HALF the population has below-average IQ?”
Did it ever occur to you that half the population has a below MEDIAN IQ because that’s how the tests are designed? Arbitrarily pegging that to 100, so that they can then massage the questions to create a bell curve? And that your IQ score is primarily a measure of how well you take IQ tests? And that IQ tests only measure a few types of intelligence? And that they also remove questions which males answer differently than females in order to create one uniform bell curve? And that outside of a handful of specific sociological things and fucking dorks on the internet who got a 120 or 130 in high school who then felt they were entitled to be successful for the rest of their life because of that, nobody really gives a shit what your IQ score is?
Oh wait… Unless you’re one of those racists who think that us poor minorities need you white savior liberals to come and rescue us from our helpless stupidity because the IQ average is one standard deviation off white liberal suburbanites.
“And they might try their best when the odds are stacked against them, but they’re simply not very smart, so it will not be good enough and they will fail? “
Oh yeah. Found the fucking racist.
He won’t come out and say WHO he’s worried about, but its us poor Warm Beige people and black folks he’s sooooooo concerned for. These fucks just love pretending to have compassion for others, but really they just use some groups of people as excuses to push their bullshit social agendas. Notably those social agendas always fuck over the long term success of the groups they’re pretending to care so hard about, which is perfect for the white liberals because they need those groups to keep failing so they can keep getting more of their nonsense passed. Guys like this need ghettos. They want you to stay in the projects. The more misery and suffering you endure, the more important white liberals think they are. Naw. Fuck that noise. If you’re born in the projects, success doesn’t have anything to do with your IQ. It’s whether you find a way to get out of the place that’s been run into the ground by democrats for the last 90 years!
“It probably didn’t, because you’re a giant self-centered jerk.”
Yeah… My record speaks for itself. I’ll let my regular readers decide about that one, Comrade Fuckface. 😀
“This is the problem with libertarian philosophy. Libertarian douchebags have no compassion for human failings and human limitations, because they think they’re immune to them. It’s a philosophy by and for narcissists.”
Libertarian philosophy boils down to the government sucks at everything and should leave individual people alone. Marxist/Leftist/Socialist philosophy thinks thinks people are property of the state to be controlled, managed, and liquidated as needed. One equals dangerous and wacky freedom. The other at best gives you giant crab pot welfare states which are only sustainable until the money runs out, or at worst gulags, purges, and genocide. Because a state big enough to give everything, is big enough to take everything away. And once you go from asset to liability on their ledger, they will take it away. Enjoy your social credit score.
So I feel pretty good about having a dumbfuck like this say my prefering individual liberty to totalitarian control is bad. 😀
Also, note, once again the lefty shit head who hides behind fake compassion in order to justify being a giant mooch and control freak who thinks some people are helpless without him meddling in their lives brings up “narcissists”. Projection is a hell of a drug.
“I know a guy just like you.”
No. You don’t. Because there is no guy just like me. I am a unique and special snowflake. 😀
“Friend of a friend.”
Oh come on. Internet weirdos don’t have friends.
“Insert giant sob story here”
So basically, some guy who was moderately successful had a kid who was less successful, and now she’s unhappy… ergo self-improvement is a myth and people are helpless scrubs doomed to eternal failure.
Well, that’s fucking compelling. But let’s break down all the ridiculous fucking bullshit in your stupid post, you pathetic fucking weasel.
First off, she got a law degree. That puts her in the top, what, 2 or 3% of earing potential categories in America? But oh no! She got an exploitive job at a SECOND RATE law office with low pay (I’m betting his idea of low pay is what most people would consider middle class) for long hours (he tells the former dairy farmer) and now she is THIRTY!!!!!!
REEEEEEEE!
Motherfucker, thirty ain’t old! She’s got decades ahead of her to get her shit together. What kind of pathetic fucking loser dipshit throws in the towel at THIRTY!? At 37 I’d just lost my business and was unemployed! I was gonna go drive a bread truck. BREAD TRUCK MOTHERFUCKER!
She’s overweight! So fucking what? Most of us are overweight at one point or another. Some of us get super fat! Get your ass on a fucking treadmill! Buy a bike, lift some weights. Do intermittent fasting. I don’t give a fuck. Oh wait, now comes the part where the perpetually helpless shit heads like you cry about food deserts, and how Poor People Can’t Cook.
Fuck you! Rebuking the Poor People Can’t Cook asshole is still one of my favorite blog posts, brought to you by my mom’s expert knowledge of Dollar General!
She’s probably on anti-depressants like half of white women are? Well gee whiz, shit head, in a society with fucking scum like you constantly preaching about how half of our species is doomed to perpetual failure and ruin because they’re helpless losers no matter what they do, I can’t imagine why the group most likely to buy into that nonsense is so depressed! Oh, but wait! There’s more! In those same studies where white women are so likely to be on anti-depressants, when you break that down by liberal vs. conservative, the liberals are massively over represented. So the people who buy into your defeatist doomer nonsense are depressed, while the women who believe in my boomer pull yourself up by your bootstraps philosophy aren’t as depressed.
Holy shit, you fucking suck at this. No wonder you’re a fan of self-defeat in life, because you can’t even get through a blog post without stepping on your dick.
Mew mew mew, SHE ONLY GOT A LAW DEGREE! AND NOW SHE’S THIRTY AND SAD!!!
Meanwhile, there’s some poor kid out there knee deep in shit or arm deep in blood on a farm, or trying not to get shot in the drug infested projects that exist only because democrats suck at running cities, who if he ever bothered to actually take an IQ test would only score like a 95 or 98, and that ONLY means that if he works hard he’ll someday make a pretty decent living installing windows, or HVAC, or pouring concrete, or something… but OH NO! A 30 YEAR OLD WHITE CHICK WITH A MOTHERFUCKING LAW DEGREE GOT FAT THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN AND ONLY THE GOVERNMENT (which built the shitty projects that devoured everyone he grew up with) CAN SAVE HIM!
Fuck you and fuck your fake compassion, you fucking scum trash bigot piece of shit.
As a 28-year-old white woman on antidepressants who is struggling to figure out what she wants to do with her future, I’m offended by his pretend concern for my well-being. My problems aren’t solved by jerks like him insisting that I shouldn’t bother trying.
OMG! 30, and life hasn’t worked out the way she wanted it to? There’s a term for that: it’s called “Welcome to 30.” 😀
Take a deep breath and read what you wrote again. It’s verbal diarrhea, half of it has no connection at all to what I wrote, and the tone reads like you’re an SJW having a psychotic episode.
I said nothing about race whatsoever. You are the one who is trying to make this about race. Not every mention of IQ in a discussion is a racial dog whistle, stupid.
And take care that you don’t blow an aneurysm or something. We’d hate to lose you over a dumb Internet argument.
Lol.
“U SOUND ANGRY!?!”
Bitch please. I can say with complete dispassion that you’re a fucking nitwit, and “vurbul diarea!” as I went through your dumb nonsense line by painstaking line demonstrating that you’re full of shit and have no clue what you’re spouting off about. Literally every point you made was stupid as you Gish Galloped through my blog comments.
And then just in case I’m biased I kicked the screen shots over to a much larger live audience to marvel at your fucking stupidity and judge for themselves, where you were universally mocked by a group which is overwhelmingly on the right side of that IQ bell curve you love so hard.
You said nothing about race, because you’re a cowardly chickenshit. There’s just GROUPS OF SOME PEOPLE out there who are too stupid to live or make anything of their lives who need to be managed like livestock for their own good.
And I’m betting you weren’t thinking of Norwegian Lutherans when you wrote that self-righteous claptrap.
So take your “U SOUND ANGRY” and kindly insert it up your ass, you fucking loser ass dope. 😀
MEW MEW MEW A LAWYER GOT FAT THE WORLD IS SO UNFAIR.
If I sound angry you sound like a mewling, entitled, little candy ass cry baby. 😀
@Eraser
Funny, I can see where everything he wrote connects to the discussion.
The real issue is that you’re simply reaping the rewards of waddling into someone else’s living room and taking a dump on their off-white carpet, then prancing about as if you’ve offered some great insight to the human condition.
Piggybacking on your comments about the 30 year old lawyer, I struggled for years to earn a decent living with my law degree. My main attempt was a less than stellar foray into criminal defense on behalf of my state (contact employment representing indigent accused).
For long periods of time I worked outside the legal field. I felt that with my struggles, in school, with the bar exam and afterwards I doubted I would ever really practice law. And this is from someone whose father and both brothers were lawyers. I sought other jobs, including a stint as a delivery driver for a startup juice company.
Eventually I got back in by being a notary, handling mortgage refinances. Seeing the writing on the wall in Biden’s illiterate scribbles promising higher interest rates, I threw another dart and made a second attempt at criminal defense. Instead of the quiet rural courthouse (where I was last time), I wound up splitting time between two big city courts, drinking from the firehose. But now I have other lawyers with whom I can consult and I’m in courts much closer to home. And I am making progress in my job far beyond my first foray in the field. Being a solo practitioner in criminal law is a perfect fit for me. I’m my own boss and I don’t have to deal with civil procedure
My point is that everyone may need to take out a few more darts to throw. And the depressed lawyer… maybe she needs a different (and more lucrative) field of practice. Maybe she can do more pro bono work for fulfillment. Maybe she could work at a nonprofit. Maybe she could relocate to where the cost of living is less expensive. Maybe she should ditch ‘big law’ and look at a smaller firm, even if it is less than ‘second rate.’ Maybe she could hang her own shingle. Maybe she could look at government careers. Maybe she use take CLE courses to be more valuable. Maybe she should look at occupations besides lawyer where her JD would be a benefit.
She has a law degree. That’s a lot more darts in her arsenal. You just have to be wise enough to realize that you can throw them.
BTW, my current career started when I was well past my 30s.
I just had a thought about the law degree daughter and it has to do with the dart board analogy.
Maybe she shouldn’t act like she only had one dart, eh?
Maybe pick up another dart and try again. Because this seems to prove the point that telling people that they don’t have choices or opportunity and telling them that they don’t get to try again is actively damaging to them.
And is she even sad? Maybe it’s Dad who is unsatisfied with her life. Maybe Dad thinks she’s fat and lonely and stuck living with cats. Maybe Dad thinks her law firm is second rate.
If she really doesn’t like it, there are other ways to use a law degree.
I know a bunch of people with law degrees who ended up doing something different because they hated lawyering.
I can’t believe this stupid motherfucker thought THAT was a compelling example that self-improvement is a myth.
Maybe should could only get a job at a second-rate firm because she was a second-rate lawyer. Can’t rule that out either.
Those are the ones that usually go into politics.
Looks like it’s time for my semi-regular comment about how IQ is meaningless and doesn’t actually measure intelligence. Hooray!
My college training and professional experience is primarily in the subject of developmental disabilities, where IQ has exactly one use: it’s a very rough screening tool to use when deciding whether to refer a kid to actual testing for a potential disability.
That’s it. It’s not even actually the deciding factor in whether they have a disability, but merely a “hey we should look into this” moment. It doesn’t actually assess intelligence — it assesses your ability to do logic puzzles.
Also, other aptitude tests are not IQ — not the SAT, not the ASVAB, not your grades in high school, not your grad school entrance exam. IQ itself doesn’t even actually test aptitude, and as Larry described it’s specifically weighted to enforce a bell curve. In actuality, the vast majority of human beings are average or better intelligence (defining “average” in its colloquial usage to mean “a normal amount that you can expect from most people”.) In IQ, a perfectly normal person might score an 80 and it means nothing. He’s still fine and doesn’t have any disability nor does he need your help to be a productive human being.
The formalized rankings of “an IQ below this number means you’re intellectually disabled” are garbage created in the same scientific movements that told us the shape of your skull or nose determined your personality and whether you should be allowed to have kids.
IQ is trash. Period.
Quoting a speech by Jordan Peterson:
You are going to have a son, and you can choose. You could have a son with 25 points of IQ above the average, that is 125, or a son with 25 points of IQ below average, that is 75.
By the statistics, your son with 125 IQ will likely be near the top of his class in high school and get into a 1st-tier college.
Again, by the statistics, your son with 75 IQ will likely not graduate high school, and will never have a job that pays above minimum wage in his life.
If you had that choice, which one would you choose?
Because that is the real deal. Writing feel-good nonsense on the Internet about how “IQ is trash” does not change reality.
[Note that I’m writing from a Western perspective. I imply no comparison to IQ scores in Africa or anywhere else. I have added this note to preempt dishonest accusations of racism.]
Again, you demonstrate that you don’t understand how bell curves or IQ tests work, you fucking dork. And there’s no dishonest accusation of racism. I’m flat out saying you’re fucking trash, bigot, and the audience can read your original screed and judge for themselves where they think you were coming from.
Speaking of which, I already screen capped all this and posted it on Facebook so people could do that. You’re a big hit. 😀
Also, since Jordan Peterson is smarter than you, and you’ve already demonstrated you’re a dishonest piece of shit, I’m pretty sure you’re bungling that context somehow, because people don’t get to choose if their kids have a 50(!) point IQ advantage at birth, and who would chose to be genetically stupider? Like what kind of dumbass rhetorical question is that? And you’re once again switching from specifics to generalities, and the 75 or 125 will both be able to take multiple throws at the dartboard and improve their lot in life, so your original bullshit remains bullshit.
And what portion of America is sub 75? Oh wait… That’s right. I said the vast majority can improve their situation. There you go again, stepping on your own dick.
Now fuck off, stupid. Go be a miserable loser failure crying about capitalism is unfair because an unfullfilled 30 year old lawyer got fat.
Ironically, since she got through law school she’s probably got a higher than average IQ score too. 😀
Hey, fuckface. Provide a link for that Peterson quote so we can see how dishonestly you’re mangling the context.
Because I’m pretty sure from a couple dozen other talks that Jordan Peterson agrees with my “boomer pull yourself up by your bootstraps nonsense” and not your stupid woe is me, we’re all helpless because a lawyer got fat once school of mooch philosophy.
Now go clean your room and take a shower, you fucking scrub. 😀
Hail Lobster.
Jordan Peterson links, as requested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjs2gPa5sD0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM
The “Which child are you going to pick?” section is at the very end of the second video.
So… you fucked up the context, and Jordan Peterson is a huge proponent of the bommerific pull yourself up by the bootstraps and take charge of your own destiny thing.
Wow. You suck at this. 😀
A high IQ doesn’t necessarily make anyone successful either. (All experiences people report with MENSA put on the table as evidence.) Above a certain point it depends a lot on if you got pointed in the right direction, can function at that high level reliably, and haven’t said something stupid that you considered obvious and gotten yourself cancelled.
And someone with that low IQ can get better outcomes in a supportive environment with easily understood rules, parents who taught those rules, and perseverance.
One of the things that pisses me off about the “crutch kickers” is they pretend no one needs the “crutches” of religion or clear societal parameters, rules about truthfulness, reliability, and working hard. So restrictive! So they go around kicking people’s social crutches out from under them and when they FALL insist that the State needs to support all of these hopeless people.
Almost as bad as insisting only one type of “success” exists and pushing people in that direction, complete with crippling educational debt, when they ought to be doing something else.
Sorry, dude. Jordan Peterson is right about some things (I’m surprised you’re quoting him favorably when his main schtick is “clean up your life and be productive” which is the exact antithesis of your sad lawyer story) but one of the reasons I stopped listening to him was his misuse of IQ data.
A far stronger interpretation of the data shows that to the extent there is a link between IQ and success, it’s a reverse correlation — i.e. people who have well-adapted skills that lead to success are therefore better able to solve logic puzzles, rather than that being able to solve logic puzzles leads to success.
In other words, successful people are likely able to score well on IQ tests, but people who score high IQs aren’t more likely to be successful. This means there are tons of “high IQ” people for whom this supposedly advantageous trait means absolutely nothing, because IQ doesn’t measure intelligence or adaptive skills or anything useful at all. If you look at longer-term studies of people who tested for IQ as children or youth and what their long-term success looks like, you’ll find it’s all over the place — IQ doesn’t predict anything. The studies that are often cited as proving IQ causes success are all the ones that only look at people’s socioeconomic status at the time of testing. How on earth can someone interpret causality in those data?
The dude with a 125 might graduate with honors and attend a prestigious school. Awesome! Or he might not, because IQ doesn’t predict academic aptitude. It literally just measures your ability to solve logic puzzles. Then there’s the fact that high academic achievement doesn’t automatically translate into successful life skills, and that neither of those things is caused by high IQ.
Whereas 75 IQ people graduate high school all the time and do fine. People with significant learning disabilities find their niche and do fine. People who never go to college (or don’t graduate) but get trained in a useful skill also do fine.
Find some citations that aren’t garbage. IQ is still trash.
The funny part is that Eraser–the random cry baby internet dumbfuck bigot–claims that the traditional self-improvement philosophy is “self-serving boomer claptrap” then tries to use Jordan Peterson quotes to bolster his case.
Ten seconds on Google found 50 quotes from the same Jordan Peterson on the benefits of this ” self-serving boomer claptrap” 😀
https://dailybrightside.com/jordan-peterson-quotes/
Lol. Dipshit. 😀
IQ is not meaningless. It is pretty strongly correlated with several different positive life outcomes, especially the ability to do complex jobs.
The IQ correlation with the ability to do complex work is about 0.6… which means for every increase in 1 “unit” of IQ, you would expect an increase in 0.6 “units” in the ability to do complex work.
It is harder for low IQ people to do complex work successfully, and easier for high IQ people to do this work. That is just reality.
The truth of the matter is that gal would be in pretty much the exact situation (best case) in pretty much any other nation. Or worse if she was in the various Democratic Socialist People’s Republics, because stress eating is not a thing there.
This just proves that dumbassery is heritable. What kind of idiot spends the money for a law degree these days? The market is MORE than saturated.
She COULD have spent a lot less to become a paralegal. The pay is decent, the jobs have benefits, and she wouldn’t be working round the clock.
Dude give it a rest you have already proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have the intellectual capacity and personality of a used diaper.
I have to disagree here. A used diaper contains valuable information about the health and well-being of the user.
Eraser’s screed has none of that.
“a friend. He made a career in banking”
so rich then. Way richer than me. Way richer than 90% or even 95% of the US population. if considered worldwide instead of just the usa he is richer than 99.9% of the world population.
“His only daughter graduated from law school. ”
rich privileged girl throws a dart, has all the advantages in the world that we poor people can only dream of, including going to college at all, and then going on to LAW SCHOOL which is pretty much the super privilege for rich kids.
“overworked, badly paid, unhappy,”
dart missed . . . awaiting infinite retries . . . error 404 not found
under YOUR theory she should now be doing those infinite retries that rich kids get to do until they win at life. Where is the rest of her throws? Your example literally disproved your own thesis.
If you want to PROVE your thesis (ignoring the scientific illiteracy it takes to think ONE EXAMPLE proves a theory) then you need an example of a POOR person taking one shot at winning, failing and then being unable (not unwilling but UNABLE) to take another shot at it.
You are certainly a loser brat, and I honestly doubt your story. In a market when people are willing to pay top dollar for someone with a HS diploma, a girl with a law degree can only get a terrible job? Something doesnt add up.
One thing I have learned over time. Hard work matters far, far more then intellect. Stupid people get rich all the time. Lazy smart ones do not. Yes, the country has fewer opportunities then it did just a few years ago, but there are still plenty.
And everyone who has money works hard.
Although its quite different for women. We have other things we can trade on. And why wouldn’t most white people be on antidepressants the way we get treated.
This is a truly Gen X reply. I am a less profane member of that generation but heartily endorse the sentiment.
I grew up upper middle class. My mom stayed home with us (no latchkeys—she did that herself, after her dad died when she was 8 and her mom worked in a bakery to support them; my dad was far poorer and went to college on the GI bill after Korea). They taught me to work hard and value what I had. I’ve had hard times, and I’ve had good times. I know I’ll never be rich and the way the country’s going we may all end up poor. But I’m Gen X. I’ll deal.
Nope not everyone is him, eraser, sadly some are YOU.
“Your idea that matches most of recorded human history’s ideals about effort and self-improvement reeks of narcissism” screamed the rando defending a tortured analogy for Marxists who think they’re too special to experience the human condition. 😀
The Cult of Evangelical Losers tolerates no heresy.
They also think that Communism… er, “Real Socialism” means they get to hang around their free apartment, staying high on free weed and playing video games & watching TV while eating free junk food.
Can you show us on the doll where competence and diligence hurt you?
No, some are just whining losers like you!
I am a true “baby boomer”, and grew up dirt poor on a farm! Although I didn’t know it at the time! My parents grew up in the 1930s and knew how to stretch a dollar.
Did fairly well for myself, nothing spectacular, but being willing to work and show up on time can go a long way!
Who’s the Monty Python ripoff?
And Larry better NOT be everybody; my bank card’s in MY name…
Sure must suck to be you.
All your life you’ve been coddled and rewarded for being a whiny baby so now, despite the accumulation of years, you have failed to achieve the maturity of a 2-year-old spoiled brat.
And you won’t, either, unless you get a fucking clue.
———————————
If your reputation can be ruined by the truth, it should be.
Oh, and:
Really? Five and a half years you’ve been chewing on that bullshit without realizing what it was? I dismissed it as bullshit in about ten seconds.
Lessee…there are more than 30 million seconds in a year…five and a half years versus 10 seconds…guess that makes me 17 million times smarter than you.
Now, I know I’m not 17 million times smarter than the average person, so that would mean you are a total fucking idiot. As if that wasn’t already obvious.
Hey, I know how to use the SHIFT key, too!
———————————
I used to live on a farm. I know what bullshit smells like.
Who reads a takedown of a shitty analogy and thinks another shitty analogy is going to improve things?
That’s pretty much the gist of his entire blog. Yeah, they’re might be some good points about the sad state of the publishing industry and society as a whole, but it always loops back to Larry and his opinions/political views. It gets old almost as much as the defeatist talk.
And if Larry censors this (or God help me, keeps it on so he can tear what I say a new one), then my point will have been proven.
I had this blog for years before I knew anything about publishing and just like then I talk about whatever I feel like, so you can kindly go fuck yourself.
*censors*
Lol. Its cute you pretend to be familiar with my blog and then type dumb shit like that. 😀
Seriously, what a stupid fucking comment. “Larry makes good points talking about the sad state of society but he also talks about his opinions and politics which is bad!”
They’re the same thing, dummy.
You’ve got to be one of those doomed to failure dipshits on that lower half of the IQ scale that last asshole was babbling about.
“If Larry does what he wants on his own blog my point is proven!”
Larry does what he wants.
Point proven!
Holy shit, I take back everything I said about that racist shithead Eraser’s post. He’s right. Some Americans are too fucking stupid to survive on their own. Thank you for showing me the light.
Heh, CHAZ / CHOP would like to have a word with you about surviving on their own, I’m sure they think their “food garden” would’ve worked, if they only hadn’t been booted out finally!
Hey, here’s an idea! Lets take people like that, give them two weeks (no helping!) and a decent budget, then dump the lot of them on a decent sized island by themselves with a bunch of trail cams set up, a couple weeks before prime growing season, and then leave them to their own devices for 9 months.
Figure the pay-per-view rights to the trail cams will cover everything, including the burial expenses…
You can only bury what the scavengers leave. 😛
How dare you express your views on… (checks screen) YOUR OWN BLOG??.
Yup, I’m pretty sure most people’s blogs are about themselves and their own opinions.
Duh.
That’s what they’re for.
Whose opinions and thoughts are we supposed to have? Am I supposed to be renting out my blog to Eraser or Mahma?
Woah, you mean to tell me that Larry Correia talks about things he likes on… his own blog?!?
The nerve of some people, right?
That’s so rude of me. I should just stick to the specific topics that random internet assholes say are allowed.
*There not They’re
Good Allah, “eraser” you are. Bleating whiny twatwaffle whose aspirational ceiling in life is a being a jealous petty whiny mendoucheous rectal fistula.
No, you are correct. Not everyone is Larry, but not everyone is a crying little bitch like you either.
And yeah, try harder. If you are saying that you are trying as hard as you can and your still a fucking failure then you REALLY are a fuck up at life.
Get up off the floor and throw another dart, you entitled little wanker. Those of us who have anything WORKED for it, usually for years and years and fucking years.
The number of people who “got lucky on the first throw” closely approaches zero, and even those guys had to work like demons to make the most of that opportunity.
Hey now, just because I’m battling stage IV cancer and poop out my abdomen now doesn’t mean I should get a pass on trying my hardest to improve for both me and my family. That sort of defeatist attitude will kill a person early. I learned that as a little kid. My dad fell off a roof and smashed both his ankles (in over a hundred pieces) but still worked his buttuska off to heal and keep improving. There’s no place for a successful person to feel sorry for himself if he wants to continue enjoying life.
Fuck cancer.
Here’s prayers for best possible outcomes and wisdom and insight for the doctors and grace and wisdom for you and your family.
I’ve never been poor, and I’d say even when my parents were managing 3 kids (including me) while each of them was holding down a job, we were a solidly middle-class family.
Since then, I’ve gone through a few jobs ranging from warehouse / delivery work to the IT job I’m working now (and, frankly, making a good living at.) I kept throwing darts, learning a bit every time, taking steps to improve myself to improve my chances of getting closer to the bullseye.
Have I hit the bullseye? Well, if you define that as “F U money,” then no, not even close. If, however, you define it as “reasonably comfortable living for the wife, myself, and the 3 cats,” then I’ve Robin Hooded that bullseye.
And like most people who get to there, sheer, stubborn, bullheadedness and no matter how dark things seemed to get, just keep putting one foot in front of the other and throwing darts.
So she made a poor career choice, didn’t bother to find a good man because she was too busy with her poor career choice, then she compounded her mistake by stress eating and doing drugs (probably on the advice of her therapist who is making lots of money) and the problem is that our system screws over people.
Oh and she bought into the “career’s make you happy” BS that modern feminism has foisted on our women. And then people say things like “half of white women are on anti-depressants”. But no one points out the obvious.
I have an idea. Stop taking the medication, start working out and eating properly, find a job she likes doing something else (or figure out a way to do what she is doing for better results), have a good relationship with someone, etc. She has bought into society’s “the only way to be happy is to have a career” when she has a whole world of options if she chooses to take advantage of them.
But it’s probably easier to stress eat, take your next pill, watch some reality TV, and complain about how unfair life is.
Eh. Don’t go off your meds until the doctor says it’s okay. But yes to the rest of it. (Although I will say that once you get to be around thirty, finding a good potential spouse is hard but not impossible). Will doing these things make her life, or the life of anyone who does them, all peaches and cream? No.
Will they make it less miserable? Absolutely.
“Doing drugs” and “taking medications” aren’t the same thing and the fact that you think they are proves that you have no clue what you’re talking about.
Maybe her problems are 100% situational and will be fixed via lifestyle changes, at which point she can stop the meds. But you don’t find that out by quitting your meds first. You do things in the right order.
I really hope there’s nobody in your life that needs your support and suffers from depression. You sound exhausting to deal with.
So you apparently can’t extrapolate from incomplete information and you do project your own beliefs onto a short comment on a blog. Did I say anywhere to stop taking meds cold turkey? Nope. Just like I didn’t suggest that cutting off both your legs would be a good way to quickly lose weight.
And apparently comprehension of the English language is also not one of your strengths, because doing drugs and taking medication is, in fact, the same thing. By definition. I’ll even allow you the caveat that some medication is necessary but it is clear that anti-depressants and ADHD meds are massively over-prescribed in this country. As pointed out by the poster to whom I was responding, a majority of white women are on anti-depressants. I know several of them. They have been on them for years but do nothing else to try to figure out how to cope with life. No effective therapy, no exercise, no weight loss programs, no hobbies, no social activites other than with other overweight women who take anti-depressants where they can sit around talking about how horrible their lives are.
So as far as me being exhausting to deal with and as far as people around me needing support, if they ask me I will make suggestions that don’t involve sitting on the couch popping pills. Better advice than they will get most other places including, apparently, from you.
Apparently you don’t have strong enough language skills to realize that connotations are an essential part of meaning, besides just literal interpretation. “Doing drugs” is a phrase exclusively used for harmful or illegal substances. Therefore it’s not unreasonable for me to conclude that you are making a blanket statement that anti-depressant meds are harmful and that the only reason she’s being prescribed them is so her therapist can make a buck.
I have some life advice for you. Learn how to express yourself better and quit being a dick.
I agree with you about feminism, but I think my main point got lost in the debate (it’s not that the system screws people over or life is unfair or something).
The point of the story is that those libertarian bros who go: “Look at those lazy poor people, LOL, they stay poor because they don’t try hard enough, why don’t they just do what I did?” (her father in this case), well, they tend to shut up when it happens to one of theirs.
Lots of these jerks in finance and banking. I think it attracts them.
Or you’re a fucking liar making up imaginary strawmen to rail against, and you can’t even do that well.
And you’re projecting all this on Larry why? Nowhere does he say that success is guaranteed, and he shows plenty of compassion for people going through personal challenges or disability. Assuming you’re actually paying attention and not just yelling at him from your super special High IQ vantage point
Oh, he ain’t high IQ. 😀
And if he got a decent score on one once, that pretty much demonstrates that the scores are meaningless in most contexts, because he’s a pathetic flailing dipshit here. Apparently there’s not a section on making compelling arguments or swaying audiences.
On the compassion thing, I let my record speak for myself. I don’t need to posture or put on airs.
And because of that, I know that the personal and individual quest for self-improvement is the most compassionate philosophy, and the ones that claim to be “compassionate” are usually a trap that leads to negative outcomes.
But Eraser’s a fucking idiot, and his only purpose here is to serve as a rhetorical prop. 😀
True compassion involves a balance between recognizing when there are legitimate obstacles (physical, medical, psychological, or whatever they may be) and helping people find ways to overcome them. It’s neither in pretending you can just buck up and be fine (like the other jerk saying “don’t take your meds” and then accusing me of not comprehending English when I tell him that’s bad advice) nor is it in pretending that the existence of obstacles means life is a failure and giving up is fine (like Mr. Big Brain Eraser).
Ironically despite espousing two opposite points, both guys seem to think they’re agreeing with each other? It’s hard to follow nonsensical arguments, so I’m missing where they intersect.
Anti-depressants aren’t “drugs” in that sense. They don’t make you feel happy — they make it easier to get control of your thoughts and emotions.
Precisely. He’s taking advantage of the dual meaning of “drug” (the neutral medical definition, and the negative colloquial one) to make a sly criticism of the medication while claiming deniability when he’s called out. It’s a standard deceptive debate tactic called “Shroedinger’s asshole” in its basic form.
I figured this would wind up on the blog. Too good to pass up.
I’m poor. I wasn’t always poor. Before that, I was even poorer. And that’s with a pretty good background and family-run safety net. Stuff happens. You have to keep going.
And let’s defeat the carnival analogy on its own merit: if you’re the poor guy working the carnival, then you’re getting paid to be there. Everyone else is paying to lose.
Utterly terrible analogy, but a great response by Larry.
I need to say a few things to clear up a few misunderstandings.
1. The Stanford-Benay doesn’t measure IQ. It measures IQ in relation to academic performance. This means that its only interested with a specific portion of IQ. There are other IQ tests, such as the Weschler, which are designed to measure total IQ. The SB is the most common, because most folks enter public school, and it can be administered to a group easily, unlike most total IQ tests.
2. No IQ test gives you a flat score. Let me say that again, no IQ test gives you a flat score. It always, always, always gives you an IQ score + or Minus, how big is dependent on the test. My IQ is 109, + or minus 5 on average, and being blind and a military brat, each new school, new IQ test.
3. IQ tests have to be adjusted every five years to reflect changes in education, and private assistant measures. One of the biggest for the longest time being Sesame Street. In case its not obvious, by and large populations are getting smarter, not dumber. Average IQ tests across the board jumped two points after the children’s program was on TV for just a year, and median IQ scores across the board jumped by four points, and that was regardless of Socio-economic status, or IQ of the parents. They are getting less motivated towards the SB too, which has been demonstrated half a dozen times just by Myers and Brown, and they are just the tip of the ice-burg. This is to say nothing on the research of motivation, and desirable disadvantages, and psychological facets to allow for resilience against failure in trumping IQ in workplace performance. I could easily, without once using myself, provide you plenty of case examples since I’ve started volunteering as a board member for a Center for Independent Living.
4. Since the Americans with Disability Act was passed we’ve seen disabled hiring decrease not increase. The Government Accounting Office has the largest and most recent data on this, and they’ve been measuring this long, long before this measure was passed, so you can’t argue inaccuracy before hand as a factor, so like many things, when the Feds step in they’ve made matters worse, not better. I could go on here, but I think this covers many of the relevant points.
test m
Well, naturally. The government rewards failure and punishes success. Successful people don’t need ‘help’ from the government and they can’t stand that.
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The one thing we need more of from the government is LESS!!
So 1/2 of the people are below average IQ.
So what?
A below average IQ is not disqualifying for many jobs. No, they won’t pay you to sit on your ass playing video games.
But, they will pay you to work in uncomfortable temperatures, smells, or other conditions. And, if you show up every day you’re scheduled, do your best to follow instructions, and stay off drugs, you’ve got a real shot at some small degree of success (i.e., keeping that job).
If you watch how you spend your money, even better.
Do I have to mention don’t steal from the business? Apparently, because this is a common problem in those jobs people think they are too good for.
There’s also an interesting bit of research from… either Sweden or Norway, I want to say Norway but I might be wrong. At the time, they had recently increased the required length of schooling by two years. (Used to be you could drop out at 16 if you chose, then they raised that age to 18). They also required every young man who was eligible for military service to take an IQ test at age 19, which would go into his service record if he got called up. Which meant they had hundreds of thousands of IQ tests, and could compare huge numbers of young men who had school until age 16 (group A) vs who had school until age 18 (group B).
What they found was that group B averaged about 7 points higher on the IQ tests than group A. The groups were otherwise the same, just group B had had two more years of schooling than group A. So two extra years in what I assume to be good schools added about 3.5 IQ points per year.
Now, it’s not much of a stretch to believe that bad schools can end up dropping your IQ points, if they fail to teach you. I lived one year in one of the poorest countries of Africa, and what I learned there was that the schoolteachers often didn’t get paid because the kleptocrats running the government were pocketing the salaries that were supposed to go to the teachers. I gotta assume the schools there weren’t getting good textbooks, either.
Which explains a lot about those numbers, so often cited by racists, where African countries have lower average IQ. (Which almost certainly meant “median”: gotta remember that journalists, by and large, fail at math). For example, the country I lived in had an average (I assume it really meant median) IQ of 61 according to those reports. Think about that. If 61 is the median IQ, that means half of the population had an IQ below 61, a lot of them down below 50. That’s getting down to the point where people are actually unable to care for themselves and need a full-time caregiver. Yet that doesn’t square with the people I actually met, who couldn’t have told you the difference between a median and an average yet were extremely knowledgeable about cattle, how to raise them, how to take care of them when they had diseases, and so on.
In other words, those low IQ numbers from all over Africa? They’re not measuring any sort of innate ability, they’re measuring trained ability (or in this case, a complete lack thereof because the schools have no money). Those low IQ numbers have nothing to do with genetics and everything to do with living in a country run by thieves who steal money from their own people.
That tracks with what’s happening here in the U.S.. Declining IQ scores for the first time since its been tracked in 1932. The decline isn’t as pronounced among those with higher education, but it’s still present.
https://nypost.com/2023/03/09/study-suggests-iq-scores-in-the-us-have-fallen/
I would assume, right out the door, that the students who leave school at 16 are not the same as the students who leave school at 18 and that the groups are self-selected differently and that those two years of schooling can not be credited for the higher IQ scores.
There would need to be IQ tests at 15, before the groups divided into groups, to compare to the scores at 19.
That’s the thing: they were not self-selected. They were young men showing up for their compulsory draft registration. So those groups covered pretty much every young man in the country except for those that were physically disabled or otherwise disqualified from military service. So while there would be plenty of individual differences, the sheer size of the two groups means that on average, you’d get equal numbers of motivated and unmotivated students in groups A and B, and the only real difference between them is the two extra years of required education.
Note also that group A isn’t “people who left school at age 16”, it’s “people who went through school before the law was changed”. Meaning that those who dropped out as soon as possible, and those who continued on to university later, were both in group A. Which means that the actual effect of schooling was probably more than 3.5 IQ points per year, because group A had some people that continued on past age 16 and brought the group average up to what group B would have had.
Finally, group A’s tests and group B’s tests were within a few years of each other, so not enough time for social changes other than the schooling change to make a huge effect. (E.g., they weren’t comparing 1960’s scores to 1990’s scores).
All of that put together means this is pretty reliable data.
Yes — I think your study was in Sweden, which I have some family ties to so can elaborate on how their schooling works. It’s not that they had a high school that graduated students at age 18, and you had the option of dropping out at 16. Rather, the old school system graduated students at age 16 and they extended it. The default option was finishing at 16, and only some students continued on to post-secondary school. They also used to have compulsory military service until about 2010, which creates as close to comprehensive of a testing population as you can find.
It’s worth bearing in mind that Sweden was a very agrarian nation with low socioeconomic scores until only two generations ago. This produces a huge generational gap between those born before 1950 and those born after. Since IQ tests are specifically built to test skills related to higher education (many versions notoriously rely on solving word puzzles that require familiarity with obscure vocabulary) that means IQ is artificially increased in societies with more formal education.
But does more formal education equate to higher life outcomes? The data really don’t support that. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It opens up doors to specific types of careers, especially white-collar jobs with more digital tech skills, but plenty of jobs and lifestyles are successful and worthwhile without those.
Infectious disease and malnutrition in childhood can have severe effects on IQ. This probably has a negative large effect on measured low IQ in Africans… especially kids who get malaria, parasites, or not enough protein in their diets.
Reminds me of something I read long ago. In WW1 and WW2 the US Army administered IQ tests to draftees. Between the wars the Jewish test-takers scores went up to an astonishing level. The ones from 1917 were still culturally from the Pale of the Settlement and ghettos of Eastern Europe*. Their Americanized children took the test 25 years later.
*No, I am not ignoring language issues as well.
I was talking with someone the other day about the phrase “overnight success” and how it cheapens the fifteen to twenty years most have put in working their asses off to get to this level of success.
The work they did before anyone was looking at them doesn’t count. Obviously.
To be good at a thing, one needs to do the following:
-Do the thing
-Fail at the thing
-Figure out why you failed at the thing
-Do the thing again
-Fail at the thing again
-Figure out why you failed at the thing this time
Repeat until you don’t suck anymore
Now, failing at the thing makes people feel bad, so now people pretend nobody fails- ‘here’s your participation trophy, and anyone who says you failed is just a hater!” So, nobody gets encouraged to fail enough to not suck anymore. Which is why suck is so common now.
Some people just want an excuse to be sorry & lazy.
They’ll tell you that they’re hard workers, but most of them That Guy at Work. The slacker that everyone else has to pull. The person who’s always taking a break. The one who always arrives late, leaves early, and has a litany of reasons why they missed work.
It costs, essentially, nothing to take a toss at the board. Just courage, determination, and a strong desire to succeed someday. That courage allows one to accept failure as a cost for success. Determination helps one move past failure to try again. All are IQ independent. Hell, they’re pretty much everything independent. Anyone can win, just like anyone can lose. I find it I informative that those who surrender seem to lack those two qualities while those who refuse to quit have them in spades.
That text starts from the false premise that everyone deserves a chance to become a successful entrepreneur. People like that writer are so full of initiative, they’re just bursting at the seams. Clearly, the government needs to step in and give them the chance they deserve, while preventing the wrong kind of people, like Elon Musk, from having more than their fair share.
I, on the other hand, see nothing wrong with being an employee, a free professional, a stay-at-home parent (but not at public expense), a soldier, a contractor, or any of several possibilities.
Is entrepreneurship the only game in town? Are entrepreneurs the only ones enjoying the rides, while everyone else is looking on wistfully?
Honestly, it had never occurred to me to think of entrepreneurship this way, even though I have read Ayn Rand. The writer has a highly romanticized view of capitalism, to say the least.
YES. EXACTLY.
There needs to be a part of you that doesn’t know how to quit.
And ANYBODY who tells you that you can’t succeed, or tells you that you MUST have their help to succeed, is either an idiot or a grifter who’s going to steal your dignity and your wallet.
It pisses me off to see so many people quoting Homer Simpson and saying “Never try!”, instead of “either try harder, or find something else to try”.
Sometimes you get people like me who don’t want to play the game. I don’t want a yacht or private jet. I don’t want a Lambo. I don’t want a mansion. I don’t even want a giant workshop because I wouldn’t have time to use everything in it. I’m quite content with my little house and rolling rust bucket. Even though I curse everything under the sun when I’ve got to make repairs. What I hate most is that I can’t be left alone. Even if I lived in a mud hut in the middle of nowhere: Some asshole from the government is going to show up demanding half of the corn that I grew. To add insult to injury they’re going to give a portion of that corn to another asshole who won’t grow their own corn.
both the original analogy and larry’s response seem to be equally facile. the original analogy is probably true for some people caught up in bad situations, with no reasonable way out, no matter what they do. and larry’s story is probably representative of what can be true for some. but probably neither is true for 100% of people. both the original poster and larry seem to be angling for sound bites rather than perceptive analysis.
It ain’t that deep.
The superficial character of the original analysis doesn’t require some deep dive into the human condition to refute.
My one facebook post about my personal experience doesn’t sum up the entirety of the human condition?
GASP!
My apologies for failing to write a thesis complete with annotated bibliography in order to refute this obviously stupid meme, professor.
What a stupid fucking comment.
And no. The original analogy isn’t true, at all. There’s no probably true for some, because he lumps everybody into rich, middle, and poor, and then generalizes something fucking stupid for all of them.
Mine is 100% true, because I’m the one talking about individuals, and I said that success isn’t guaranteed. I repeatedly talk about how its hard, and about how some will fail, but for the overwhelming majority self-improvement is possible.
Also, saying that I’m angling for sound bytes rather than “perceptive analysis” (best if said in a sneering tone of aloof academic disdain) for a quick post on my FACEBOOK PAGE demonstrates that you’re a dope who doesn’t at all understand that there’s various levels of communication, or that I have any control over what goes viral.
So come back with a warrant, Moral Equivalence Police, and until then you can fuck off.
“no reasonable way out, no matter what they do.”
no, this is literally NEVER true. it is simply NOT POSSIBLE to have a situation where nothing can be done to improve things. There is always SOMETHING you can do to make life better.
just think for a moment on how stupid it is to claim there is nothing a human can do to make his life better. there are nearly infinite possibilities available and you are saying that ALL of them have somehow been blocked? bullshit. that isnt possible.
If you are claiming there is NOTHING that can be done, then that includes ASKING FOR HELP FROM SOMEONE ELSE! are you saying that somehow it is even POSSIBLE to prevent someone from walking around and asking people for help? bullshit. anyone can walk into a local church, talk to the pastor and ASK for help. You can even just ask for ADVICE. Plenty of people would be willing to give advice even if they arent willing to give money.
The Reddit post hit something that’s a big pet peeve of mine: the notion that, in order to succeed at the American Dream, you have to be wealthy. It’s an idea that makes me cringe.
No, the American Dream isn’t about wealth. It’s about being able to work hard, get a nice home and a decent car or two, and take that occasional vacation, and do, in general, what makes you happy, without a bureaucrat looking over your shoulder saying “You can’t do that!”. Yes, money is an important part of the equation — it’s really hard to buy a home and a decent car or two without it, and it’s certainly a good idea to save a bit for emergencies — but getting rich is not a requirement to achieve the American Dream.
Now, it’s probably safe to say that the American Dream is harder to achieve than it used to be … but, to the degree it is, it’s because bureaucrats are getting in the way. I remember someone pointing out how you used to say “It’s a free country! I can do what I want!” all the time — but a couple of decades ago, that phrase lost it’s popularity. Could it be because no one feels free anymore?
Yes, disability and other things can interfere with achieving even the most rudimentary level of “American Dream”, but I fail to see how government interference can fix that. It’s particularly not the fault of so-called Capitalism, either. This is a problem with the physical limits of our universe.
Which brings me to another pet peeve that is implied by the original Reddit post: the notion that bad things that happen under so-called Capitalism is caused by the System, and all our problems will go away if only Government were to take over. Never mind that a good portion of what goes wrong is merely side effects of the entropy of the universe — and never mind that many of these problems are exacerbated, and sometimes even started, by the very Government programs that were meant to fix the issues in the first place.
So-called Capitalism gave us the greatest level of prosperity ever seen on this planet — and rather than celebrated, it’s crapped on by stupid metaphors like this, to justify a takeover by Communists, who gave us the absolute worst levels of misery on the planet — and who still blame Capitalists, even though they are literally the only ones in charge!
“I know a bunch of people with law degrees who ended up doing something different because they hated lawyering.”
Yes. Over half the people I knew who got undergraduate degrees in physics and chemistry and biology ended up in other fields.
See Theodore Dalrymple’s book “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass”, for an exploration of the social pathologies that cause failure. He worked for many years as a physician in a slum hospital and a prison in the UK, and his observations apply well to America too. See also his numerous essays written over the years for various periodicals.
I think that there is legitimately a benefit to being taught how to have money by parents who are good with money. If your parents weren’t and you didn’t learn, there’s an additional hurdle. I noticed when I was young that “rich” people did some things that our family didn’t do. Like penny pinch!
Saving requires the bone deep belief that saving will work, that it is even possible and later the money will actually be there.
And if you don’t get that belief at home you have to learn it elsewhere. Such as from a book or a mentor.
There are a whole lot of things that seem too simple to bother teaching, but when you’re at the end of your cope on a normal basis even simple things aren’t that easy to work out on your own. Particularly how to be efficient and organized.
It would be good if we didn’t disparage teaching some of these things, such as how to keep house, shop, organize a closet, speak to others in a professional setting, etc.
I feel like I would come up to you, hat in hand, and say “Master, I heard of your reputation. Can I be your apprentice?”
And your response to me, which I would deserve, would be: “Get the F out of here and do some work, moron!”
Anyone else ever tempted to spout something stupid just to get roasted by Larry? I mean even his rants are works of literary art. Honestly, it’ll probably be the biggest accomplishment a lot of these idiots ever achieve.
Keep up the great work sir. I’m eagerly awaiting the release of Tower of Silence on audible.
Is there a posted date on the ToS Audible release date now?
Not yet.
Make your straight line EPIC if you do…
I’ve seen theories like these. When the layers are peeled back it sums up to hatred of the “self-made”. They downplay the work and risk of the successful person. It’s either the game was rigged, or you had an unfair advantage. It takes agency and therefore accountability away from the “victims” of the system.
A person can change their situation still. Tons of help programs, opportunities, etc. Doesn’t fit the narrative though.
‘Notacoward’ *is* a coward, trained like a monkey that trying and failing both permanently crippling and a far worse fate than doing nothing. Add in the Left’s favorite mortal sin, Envy, and you have the toxic stew that rots between his ears.
Oh, yeah, the ‘unfair advantage’ of working your ass off. Which they didn’t do, but expect the same level of success for sitting on their dead asses whining about how ‘unfair’ life is.
Hey, snowflakes, life is unfair to everybody. The universe is constantly trying to kill you, and one day it will succeed. If you don’t fight back, that day comes sooner.
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Welfare is pay without work. In order to provide pay without work for some, others have to work without pay. We used to call that slavery. Now they call it socialism.
This is why I don’t feel bad about not being rich. Better habits would make us better off without extra work, just those better habits, but I’ve never noticed someone who is amazingly, notably successful who didn’t work their butt off. Do I want to work that hard and work those hours? No. Not really. So whining about it would be incredibly stupid. My self-respect doesn’t require I be wealthy, but it does require that I not be a complete idiot.
I do know one couple who seem quite well off without being driven the way most wealthy people are, but they have no children. Would I trade having had kids for being able to afford to go more places and have more stuff? No.
“only with slightly less shit, and slightly more government”
…. ew. Can we go back to the poop? I’ve shoveled shit, and I’ve dealt with bureaucracy. At least the shit is honest. It might have been smeared on the wall by a fast food customer, but it’s honest.
Father was a subsistence farmer – oldest of 8 kids. Family had been farming for generations. Large part of farm got taken through eminent domain for a reservoir. Mother studied engineering, but got trapped in Germany when she was young and survived the firebombing of Nuremberg – buried for 3 days under rubble until they dug her out. Burn scars for the rest of her life. Father joined the Army at 17, became a Army Air Corps pilot, got shot at in 3 different wars. Pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Parents didn’t expect anything from anyone. My wife’s mother survived a F5 tornado in Oklahoma in the 30s. Destroyed their homestead. No government assistance to rebuild – didn’t expect it, didn’t want it. Rebuilt the chicken coop first. Family lived in the chicken coop with the chickens while they rebuilt their homestead with their own hands. My parents taught me that you make your own way. You’ll fail a LOT but the only measure of you as a person is how you act when you do fail. Do you pick yourself up and carry on or do you whine and complain? Do you blame others or “the system” or do you “throw another dart”? Me? I’ve failed a lot. But my parents taught me to work hard, persevere, and never, ever, EVER give up. Busted my butt and studied HARD to get where I am today. Definitely not one of the sharpest chisels in the toolbox – lots of people are FAR smarter than me! Sacrificed a lot. Succeeded because of my own blood, sweat, and tears. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is my IDOL! Don’t care about “keeping up with the Jonses” – don’t even care to know the Jonses. Don’t like or even CARE FOR whiny BIT$#ES like the OP “Josh” or Josh’s whiny sycophants.
“Family lived in the chicken coop with the chickens while they rebuilt their homestead with their own hands. ”
Nowadays the government wouldn’t allow them to live in the chicken coop at all and heaven help them if they tried to rebuild their own house without paying government for the privilege (permits).
As noted elsewhere, government makes everything worse.
I’ve noticed that a lot. All the things that a person can do to get an edge on life, a little hustle, tends to be illegal one way or another. You can live in a tent under a bridge, but heaven help you if you trade a cot in a back room for pushing a broom and offering night time security. The plumbing and the zoning won’t be right. The bridge? Groovy, go for it. An actual roof and walls but it’s not zoned residential? You monster!
True. The more the government meddles, the fewer opportunities exists.
We justg had our roof redone. At least got our crew fed and hudrated.
We just had our roof redone. At least made sure they got fed and hydrated. Gotta go cut a pioneer graveyard now. We like quiet neighbors.
*casually glances at his Persian and Indian friends*
Yeh…this guy’s got looser brain.
I dunno. There’s plenty of opportunity for people to have a decent job and have a decent life from it, but being “an entrepreneur” and running your own business kinda sucks. And not just because the part about working a lot and risking your personal fortunes sucks, but because the government goes out of its way to make it suck way more than it has to. I mean… Blood vessel, man. 😀
Thank you, Larry, this is encouraging to those of us who are still throwing darts.
You can always find a reason to fail, and “the harder I work the luckier I get”…
Socialists gonna socialist.
I have a friend who came over from the Congo on the Immigration Lottery about 8 or 9 years ago, could not speak English he and his family were sleeping on the floor of their apt, He got a job as aa janitor then He took ESL got a 2 yr Electronic Degree through Work Force got a job where I work (fortune 500 avionics company) 4 years ago he bought a house in a very nice neighborhood, No one gave this guy anything but OPPORTUNITY. Well he also might be the most intelligent person I have ever met and I am not a dummy