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> [R]ecognizing the sickness within capitalist “success” is necessary to inspire broad rejection of a cruel, embittering, inhumane system [...] Once you are amo
by methodover 10y ago
> [R]ecognizing the sickness within capitalist “success” is necessary to inspire broad rejection of a cruel, embittering, inhumane system [...] Once you are among those lucky enough to pay for your basic material needs, the fear of being a loser keeps you motivated to work those 60 hour weeks that people are so proud of in American achievement culture.
The "sickness" the article speaks of -- fear of being a loser -- isn't a sickness at all, in my mind.
It's a boon to the world. Fear of letting down your customers, fear of letting down your employees, your cofounders, your investors -- that's a GOOD THING. That encourages people to try and make their new businesses work: to figure out what's wrong with them, to figure out how to make them better. And the point of that business is to provide customers with something valuable. And when you have lots of humans doing that across the whole world, you get a better world -- a world that turns typewriters into laptops, unused cars and houses into shared rides and shared vacations, long lost acquaintances into Facebook friends, etc etc etc.
- marketforlemmas 10y agoI think it's possible that its both a sickness and a boon. I fully agree with your point that the "fear of being a loser" does drive people to work harder, do better, etc. All of that has (generally) positive effects (well, assuming that you are willing to ignore the fact that many people will use less-tan-ethical means of making more money). However I can also see it as a sickness in the sense that we fetishize this extreme success. Imagine a hypothetical person that has to make a choice between doing some risky start-up that will consume his/her life or getting a solid job that allows them to work 40 hours per week and then enjoy their personal lives. Nobody would explicitly blame the person who chooses the latter option but we celebrate (especially on HN) the people who choose the former option. We celebrate it to the point that there are many people who choose the harder option simply because they feel they are a loser for not going after it and throwing everything they have at it. I don't see that being a good thing that everyone who is on the fence decides to go for the risky/hard path simply because of some societal zeitgeist. Then again, as you point out, those individual choices lead to our collective advancement, so it's a really hard balance.
- aninhumer 10y agoThe problem is, if everyone's spending all their time frantically trying not to be a loser, no one has any time to enjoy the fruits of our success.