The Life Sentence

The Life Sentence(isonomiaquarterly.com)

40 points by kickofline 2 years ago | 11 comments

dinobones 2 years ago |

The stories and opportunity this generation of people have are amazing to me. Lax immigration, cheap tuition, jobs are easy to come by. But they didn’t have the internet.

Today the author probably wouldn’t be able to afford California’s community college out of state tuition. They probably wouldn’t be accepted to Stanford with a 3.8. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if it would be impossible to convert from their B1 to an F1 without requiring an expensive return flight home and re-ingress into the US.

There are so many more barriers to everything, in lots of annoying little legal and political ways, but mostly due to the higher cost of everything.

Today we have an abundance of technology, connectedness, and information, but paradoxically the barrier to do anything substantial seems much higher. Sure 2 day shipping and the gig economy is abundant, but I mean the ability to do something to truly benefit and improve yourself.

What would the modern day equivalent of this tale be? Where/when are these kinds of opportunities available now?

ip26 2 years ago | |

I idly wonder whether having easier access to information about “how to truly benefit and improve yourself” is the cause. The more it becomes common knowledge, the more people will be competing to do that thing.

In this view, everything has become closer to an ideal free market, and the stories of olde about getting in to Stanford with a 3.8 were a lucky guy stumbling upon an undervalued asset.

coolThingsFirst 2 years ago | | |

All the information that's public and accessible is worthless. No one will share inside scoop on how things really work and how to take advantage of them. The garbage floats to the surface because it has no value.

Like someone was going to share with others how to become rich in 6 months if they knew it.

emmet 2 years ago | |

Ah but fruit and vegetables were hard to get out of season. And smartphones exist! Checkmate, Millennials.

klyrs 2 years ago | | |

But in season, they were delicious. I haven't had a ripe store-bought stone fruit in more than a decade. Now, they're either rock hard or mealy, with nothing in between.

aiquestions 2 years ago | |

I think it’s really easy to underestimate how the cards fell just right for you. It often feels like one’s own experience is common enough that successes are all our own. It leads to folks misunderstanding things like institutional racism, or the way increasing housing and education costs have fundamentally changed the experience of American dream.

I really appreciate the simple examples you give that show how the author’s timing (1965) was a great “hand” to have been dealt, and had all things been the same 50 years later the game may have played out differently.

noodlesUK 2 years ago |

It’s a real shame that stories like this are essentially impossible now. It’s impossible for a French person to just meander over to the U.S., set up shop for a bit, go to school, and flit between the countries at will. In many ways a French citizen today is lucky because they could at least explore an alternative life living in Belgium or Italy or elsewhere in the EU, but for most people in the world, it’s impossible to leave their home country for anything other than a visit. I mourn for the freedom that earlier generations had to simply uproot and start anew.

GamerAlias 2 years ago |

Well written. Draws a rosy picture of a youth that gave him opportunities that he rose too.

jongjong 2 years ago |

I've learned that life challenges and luck are extremely asymmetric in our society. I believe that even someone who is as smart and determined as Elon Musk could be totally and hopelessly broke if born in the wrong place at the wrong time. A lot of extreme luck in life looks trivial and common in retrospect and you only realize how fortunate it is when you know what 'normal luck' looks like.

To many, 'normal luck' today feels like the world is conspiring against them; the sheer scarcity of opportunities appears intentional and the result of intelligent planning because of how extreme it is. I think that explain the increase in conspiracy theorists today.

Extreme scarcity (combined with asymmetry) of opportunities creates a powerful illusion that even the brightest minds can fall for. "Why is Peter getting 1000x the reward as Paul for doing 1/10th of the work and delivering 1/10th of the potential value or delivering negative value? Maybe some invisible force is helping Peter and/or working against Paul?"

The greater the asymmetry, the more real this 'invisible force' seems as it provides an answer which seems to explain a lot of things.