I had a different reaction. It felt very wrong. I don't like how our culture worships money. It's bad enough that more college students see 'being very well off financially' as a more important goal than helping others (compared to other generations) [1]. If children are getting these messages at an even younger age, that's disturbing. After all, children are more impressionable. I want the next generation of children to know there are more important things than money. I believe children will be happier their whole lives if they're raised with those values.
Saying "It exists, it's a part of our culture" is such a defeatist response. Culture is formed by all of us. You don't have to just let it happen. You can push back, and work to change culture for the better. That's why I like your last bit - we can engage with it and teach from it. I'd expand that to include: we can disapprove of it.
> It's bad enough that more college students see 'being very well off financially' as a more important goal than helping others (compared to other generations)
That's not surprising, considering that current college students did a lot of their growing up in the aftermath of the housing crash. It's kind of unfair to chide them for being preoccupied with financial stability (or for claiming to be when asked, not the same thing). Meanwhile, what's the messaging like about college today? That you should drop out to start a company, and that if you're studying anything not STEM related you're kind of a dope.
But really, in the link "helping others" is a close second at 65%, only a point behind the boomers and two points ahead of gen x. So, there goes declinism. Millenials are only about 4 points higher than gen-x in "well off financially" (70.8 to 74.4), hardly a generational sea change. The real difference is with the boomers, who come in at 73% "develop a meaningful philosophy of life" and 44% "well off financially". Perhaps rather than rejecting helping others, every generation since the boomers has rejected the solipsism it takes for a college student to list "develop my philosophy" as their primary goal.
>It's kind of unfair to chide them for being preoccupied with financial stability
The question is not about financial stability, but with "being very well off financially."
> Perhaps rather than rejecting helping others, every generation since the boomers has rejected the solipsism it takes for a college student to list "develop my philosophy" as their primary goal.
I'll give you that point. Younger generations may not be as materialistic as we think. But that doesn't invalidate my argument: It would still be shitty if they became more materialistic. That could happen if we tell 12 year olds they need to worry about their personal brand.
On a macro scale, I agree. We should strive to improve our culture and reduce the harm our actions have on anything outside ourselves. The world would be a better place if we all worked together, undoubtedly.
On a micro scale, if I had children, I'd teach them to take every advantage they can get. I'd teach them to be ruthless, because that's what the world rewards. If someone has to suffer, I'm doing everything in my power to prevent it from being them.
You can't attack these problems from the bottom. A parent would be putting their child at a disadvantage in the interests of the state, which is absolutely absurd to expect. It has to be an institutional movement.
It would be great if we could remove the system that rewards that behavior, but in absence of that, the correct move for any individual agent is to exploit the imbalances.
> It's bad enough that more college students see 'being very well off financially' as a more important goal than helping others (compared to other generations)
I'd bet that this is largely because college students now graduate with tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, and getting an entry level job out of college is harder than it's ever been. When you're struggling simply to stay float, you tend to be more concerned with your own well being than that of others.
When college was a finishing school for the elites, students had different goals from today when college is he entrypoint to the dog-eat-dog commercial world. Not surprising, and not an endorsement of the baby boomer culture that sold out the next generation for their own profit.
Those money-grubbing millenials are paying the Social Security entitlements to Baby Boomers
My outlook is there are definitely more important things than money like time - time for whatever you want - loved ones and friends, relaxation, enjoying life, charity work, etc. Money buys you time and unless you're reckless with it - it can remove or reduce a lot of stress. It makes a marriage and having a family much easier among other things.
I think we worship obscene money (ex: celebs, athletes, tech founders) and get rich stories but probably don't worship money as a whole - if we really did we wouldn't be in such debt buying crap and having no savings. 63% of Americans don't have enough to cover a $500 emergency. [1]
College students could be having that financial outlook you mentioned as a result of the crazy debt they took on. And the fact that 75% said raising a family was a life goal, which is higher than boomers and Gen X, at a time when raising a family is way more expensive than it used to be. If this is the case, then they actually value education and raising a family over money and money is just a means to attain those things. So I don't think that's alarming.
What's alarming to me is poor financial education and decisions and the desire to get rich quickly or feel like you're owed $X salary because you have $Y debt which I see with many new graduates.
Worshiping money is more a symptom of materialism than anything else. That's why people go into debt to buy things they don't need instead of saving their money. I also believe it's the cause of worshiping the uber-rich and get rich quick schemes.
Most people who are daydreaming about a get rich quick scheme probably aren't thinking about putting the money they earn in safe investments and living the rest of their life on the $80,000 a year they can get from the returns. They're thinking about the mansion, sports car, exotic vacations, etc.
It’s not a matter of culture it’s a matter of economy. We’re in a viciously competitive globalized economy and money is how you ensure your kids have a decent life. Asian kids are taught this implicitly; westerners are just having to abandon their idealized notions as globalized competition catches up to them.
the question is not whether or not to push back, the question is how. Do we begin from a place of compassion, or a place of condemnation? Are we a spectator booing from the outside, or are we a participant prepared to have a conversation?
Avarice is a deep facet of human psychology. Our kids don't need to be 'exposed' to it to discover it in themselves. If one condemns avarice, one doesn't provide a path for one's child (or oneself) to reconcile themselves with with reality. You and those you condemn remain avaricious, but under different flags and in your own ways.
Why would the elites try to reign in social media? If I were an "elite" I'd want everyone to be on social media, except me. I'd want them revealing all the intimate details of their life, so I can better manipulate them with targted advertising.
You don't need a conspiracy theory to explain the recent uptick in articles about social media's negative effects. It's called a news cycle. People write stories about things people are talking about. All year, Social Media has been in the spotlight for privacy blunders and news that nation states spread propoganda with bots. So people like Cal Newport are talking about it.
Remember when lead was discovered in Flint, MI's water supply? And then there was an uptick in stories about lead poisoning? That's how news works, for better or worse.
> Why would the elites try to reign in social media?
To better control it?
> I'd want them revealing all the intimate details of their life, so I can better manipulate them with targted advertising.
Yes. As long as they control the targeting and advertising.
> You don't need a conspiracy theory to explain the recent uptick in articles about social media's negative effects.
It's not a conspiracy. It's reality. It's what happened with every communication medium. Print, Radio, Film, TV and now the internet. To believe otherwise is the real conspiracy.
> It's called a news cycle.
It doesn't span years.
> Remember when lead was discovered in Flint, MI's water supply? And then there was an uptick in stories about lead poisoning?
Crazy how quickly that downed down huh?
That the elites want to control the means of communication is standard policy for thousands of years. And it spans all nations. The chinese elite, russian elite, saudi elite, the european elites, etc all want to control communication. Our elites aren't different. Societies, like humans, have similar organs.
Please don't distort the record. He committed a crime (defrauding investors) which carried potential prison time as a sentence. Prosecutors sought 15 years. The judge sentenced him to just 7. Considering he displayed disdain for the law and showed little hope for reform, putting him away for 7 years seemed reasonable to the judge, as he would have likely committed more crimes had he gotten off with a wrist slap.
I heard but didn't confirm that he made the investors whole. No one lost any money. Seven years for that, while people who have committed murder/rape get less, is ridiculous.
From article :
Matsumoto rejected Brafman's argument that because investors made money with Shkreli, that he shouldn't be penalized for losses.
Matsumoto said in Monday’s order that under federal law, all of the money that investors put in Shkreli’s funds as a result of his fraud, about $6.4 million, must be considered a loss (h/t Reuters). The judge also said the Turing Pharmaceuticals founder should get no credit for paying investors back because he only did so after they became suspicious.
That's a very strange way of looking at money. What about opportunity cost?
Lets say it's 2011 and you have $50,000 saved for a down payment on your dream house. I steal that money from you, but return you ~$56,000 7 years later (I've adjusted for inflation).
Technically you haven't lost any money.
But you missed the opportunity to purchase your dream house during a dip in the housing market while interest rates were low. Now, not only is your dream home 30% more expensive, interest rates are higher. You also missed out on 7 years worth of mortgage and real estate tax breaks. Your credit score isn't as robust either, since you don't have 7 years worth of mortgage history on it.
You are way behind despite getting every penny back.
> After their meeting, Sarah Hassan invested $300,000 in MSMB Capital, a fund Shkreli ran. He later told her that investment had increased to $435,000, she said.
[approximately 2 years later]
> Hassan eventually settled with Shkreli and she even made money off her original investment. She told the court she received $400,000 in cash, plus 58,000 shares of Retrophin that were eventually sold for an additional $900,000.
While it's true that these people would likely be richer if they had invested elsewhere, it's still hard to feel that these people were wronged. They didn't have someone break into their bank account and steal money for a house. They were wealthy investors who invested in a shady pharma company with a shady founder because they wanted to make lots of money without having to do much work themselves.
Investments lose money legitimately all the time, and the investors weren't stolen from when that happens, it's just a bad investment. Shkreli abused the system and lied with the intention of making himself personally richer, so I definitely agree with sentencing him. But I don't think the investors deserve more than their money back. They need to assume SOME risk here b/c they chose a bad investment, and it probably would have failed anyhow, even if Shkreli had followed the law.
Yeah interest is how we value the opportunity cost of money. Saying that his investors missed the dip is as pointless as saying his investors missed the opportunity to short the SPX from the top.
There's a big difference between wearing a suit and dying your gray hair. Dying your gray hair hides your age. Age is a protected class. It's illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of age. It's not illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of what suit you wear.
Can we all agree that nobody should have to dye their hair to get a job? The fact that people on this site act like this is normal is very disturbing.
Sadly, at least in the U.S. it is normal for many professional women to feel like they need to dye their hair. It is part of the general U.S. cultural bias toward youth in women, which is pretty obvious in popular media but also makes itself felt in the workforce.
Grey hairs can start showing up as early as late 20s for some people. I work with a number of women over 35 and I'm having a hard time thinking of one with a single grey hair showing. For a few I'm friends with, I know that dyeing their hair feels like an important part of maintaining their professional appearance.
Even Ginni Rommetty, CEO of IBM, probably dyes her hair. She has blonde hair without a strand of grey showing, which would be pretty extraordinary for someone who is 60.
You're unfortunately correct. More people should be outraged at the expectations employers place on women to look "professional." It's enough that some employers mandate high heels and make up in their dress codes. Dying one's hair should be a personal choice, and no woman or man should feel required to do this for their employer. I hope this changes some day.
That's nothing compared to women who read the news, sports, etc. on TV, most of whom have to get breast implants. And yes, it is the older women with thicker torsos who have to do this to preserve their "feminine" appearance. Young women can often get by, just by being slim.
While good in principle, we are human beings after all. There are many dimensions on which we judge each other, many of which aren't fair and/or accurate indicator of our true skills or abilities. We've managed to legislate against some of the more egregious dimensions, like age, race, national origin etc. but there will always be other dimensions.
One of the important once is appearances, demeanor, posture etc. While those of us who know about these things take care not to place too much emphasis on these things, they're still used by most people, mostly subconsciously, in making hiring decisions.
I find your response a bit of a non-sequitor to user 9889095r3jh's point and question. I imagine 9889095r3jh, and others, understand why it's a difficult problem. But that wasn't the question. The question was, yes, there's a lot of reasons why a person might feel compelled to do these things, but can we agree that they should not have to? It's trying to establish value-norms as a basis of conversation.
Are you saying you agree that the world is this way but you don't think it should be?
I don't want to sound like a jerk, but to me that kind of statement doesn't even really have a meaning... We can all wish the world was different than it is, but what matters is how to live in the real one.
I guess my impression was that the true difficulty of the problem wasn't understood by the OP, which is why suggesting that we simply decide to change it won't work.
Its like saying: hey eating a lot is not good for you. Why don't you just decide not to eat so much? And the answer is: there are real biological/evolutionary/genetic reasons which make that decision non-trivial to make.
I do realize that ageism is not simple, or easy to fix. I'm currently helping my father, who is over 60, update his resume. He's extremely talented and knowledgeable in a field that currently lacks skilled workers. I'm helping him feature his experience as a selling point, and not as a disadvantage. I so realize ageism is widespread, and I understand if older workers feel like they have to take small steps to put employer's concerns to rest.
But when we're at the point when dying your hair is considered necessary to get a job, we should be upset. And I for one (as someone who went gray young) will not give in to this trend.
I'm torn on the question of dye - not so much for my hair (where a braid to the middle of my back is more likely a concern than silver temples) but for my beard which has by now turned mostly white.
I'm half wishing I'd grown it out and bleached the last few bits this past winter to start establishing as a part-time Santa. "No, it's white because I'm also a volunteer Santa during the season."
> Personally, I think he is doing the right thing.
Right for who?
> fb should just stop communicating as that will give media less fodder
Oh I see. Right for Facebook's public image. Wrong for their customers which have a right to know what the hell Facebook has been doing with their data.
Why a company like FB would do anything right for their customer ? They never did. It was always about FB. How does that surprises you ? They are not Mozilla.
Would you rather the media report on unsubstantiated rumors and assumptions, or would you rather they wait to report things until they have evidence, or a source who can verify the information?
Pen. Paper.
Every time I see someone taking notes on a computer, they start typing whatever they hear, word for word. Pen forces you to slow down. Makes you organize the concepts, highlight the important things, summarize.
But who knows. I just know it works for me. Plus, I hate lugging around a laptop everywhere I go. Composition book is lighter.
If you switch to pens, try gel pens. Less hand fatigue. I don't mess with fountain pens as they are more expensive, prone to failure, and just come across as pretentious IMO.
There's nothing wrong with kids playing dumb mobile games. But they gotta spend some time making something. I don't care if it's a video game, a short film, or a bird house. When you're making things, you're learning. And when you're passively consuming, you may not be.
With games like Minecraft, kids today have no excuse. They can be making things and playing a game at the same time.
[1]https://www.thestreet.com/story/12791561/1/millennials-just-...
Saying "It exists, it's a part of our culture" is such a defeatist response. Culture is formed by all of us. You don't have to just let it happen. You can push back, and work to change culture for the better. That's why I like your last bit - we can engage with it and teach from it. I'd expand that to include: we can disapprove of it.