> I wonder why folks who start with roughly the same skills, intelligence and opportunities (and bank account balance!) can nevertheless end up in very different places?
I don't want to sound dismissive but sometimes it's just luck.
Luck really can’t be overstated imo. I was genuinely just lucky to be interested in computer programming as a teenager. I wasn’t thinking about careers, I just wanted to make games. If my interest was basketball my life would have been very different.
Don't forget the luck of living in a country where programming was a viable career path that could lead to a decent job, the luck of having the opportunity (and/or money) to attain the higher education that's usually required for it and the luck of living in a time when the tech industry was in an upswing that would allow a person to find a job in this industry. Really, having any of these puts most of us well above the amount of luck an average person gets (at least on a worldwide scale).
You were lucky to have the genetics that allowed you to have cognitive capabilities to understand computers and programming.
Many people don't and never will.
There is always a bottom % of people who are under the cognitive capacity to meaningfully contribute to society. That doesn't mean they are bad people, but they will always be poor/broke.
Ranting about this is just ranting about human nature. Life isn't fair, some of us will be short, have bad looks, be unappealing to women, etc. And some of us will not have the cognitive capacity to have a job that keeps you above water, forever.
The only thing we can do is be compassionate and help out. Maybe eventually we will have enough mastery over genetics where we can make people truly equal in ability.
>There is always a bottom % of people who are under the cognitive capacity to meaningfully contribute to society. That doesn't mean they are bad people, but they will always be poor/broke.
There's a lot of dumb rich people, too. Sometimes the wield a lot of power and are indeed bad people.
> There is always a bottom % of people who are under the cognitive capacity to meaningfully contribute to society. That doesn't mean they are bad people, but they will always be poor/broke.
The percentage of people so dumb that they can't hold a useful job is staggeringly low.
Unless in your mind anybody of average or below average intelligence "can't contribute to society" in which case I suggest you step off your tech pedestal and look around you.
> The percentage of people so dumb that they can't hold a useful job is staggeringly low.
Sure. OP didn't say otherwise.
OP did say that some folks "will always be poor" because they are "under the cognitive capacity to meaningfully contribute to society" and that "[t]hat doesn't mean that they are bad people, but they will always be poor/broke" and that "Maybe eventually we will have enough mastery over genetics where we can make people truly equal in ability." but until then "The only thing we can do is be compassionate and help out.".
Perhaps you've been so lucky as to never encounter folks who hold the bone-deep belief that being unable to work [0] makes you worse than worthless. If so, celebrate your good fortune, I guess?
[0] Typically, these sorts of folks have carveouts for retirement, pregnancy, childbearing, and maybe a begrudging carveout for short-term injury. Anything else and you're a filthy drain on society.
> There is always a bottom % of people who are under the cognitive capacity to meaningfully contribute to society. That doesn't mean they are bad people, but they will always be poor/broke.
The only reason people like you or me can sit on their lazy arses typing for a living is because there's a small army of people that take care of things like food and other boring tasks. The people keeping the Tesco running. The drivers delivering stuff there. The distribution centre. The farmers. The people building roads. The people maintaining roads. People maintaining water. People maintaining electricity. People maintaining gas.
All of that is just to keep the local supermarket running. I probably forgot some. It expands even more if you include other things.
A lot of this is what is generally known as "low skilled labour". But it's all needed. It's all contributing. I did this kind of work until my 20s and I definitely had a share of coworkers who were dumb, for lack of a better term. Most were not, but some were, a few to the point of being clinically handicapped. But they were all contributing.
Without them one couldn't make privileged elitist statements on internet forums being derisive of an entire class of people. Snobby comments like this is why people hate "the elite".
People don't need your compassion or help. They need a roughly fair system where working a full-time job gives you a decent standard of living. Lets start with that. And I'm not even going to start how the entire post stinks of eugenics. The only way to eliminate poverty is to genetically engineer out the people you been too dumb to exist? Really?
I take your broader point. I didn’t choose my genetics, my parents, or the conditions I was raised in. That’s why I don’t believe in moralizing social class.
I do believe in the idea of meritocracy and competition in general to motivate people. We are far from a meritocratic society unfortunately.
I don't want to sound dismissive but sometimes it's just luck.