This has always been a topic of interest to me. The "System" (as much as/if there is one) is designed to facilitate a certain objective. In our case, economic

This has always been a topic of interest to me. The "System" (as much as/if there is one) is designed to facilitate a certain objective. In our case, economic growth and individual wealth. For brevity's sake, I'll skip the digression about clustering, distributing and distributing unevenly. So, if that systemic objective does not make your life meaningful, what do you do? The way of the world is towards this objective because it's the best progress we've made so far towards meeting most people's basic human needs. Escaping to a different country with human rights and a different objective is not very feasible. Changing the system isn't a good option because for most people the system is fine. There are also tons of people for whom it's not fine, but they don't notice and it's not necessarily our business to try to wake them up unless they ask. So I think the best option is, like the author is suggesting, to opt out as best you can. Find what makes you happy and base your life around that, while minimizing your conflict with the governing body (e.g. they pay property taxes, rather than bury a bus full of guns and plan to resist--that would be un-lazy and make them miserable). Had I not gotten married (which I don't regret, btw), I would have continued to work to fuel my desire to buy up a big plot of land that I don't have to mow and building a minimal but fully livable tree house. Since I still find that interesting, I'll keep designing and hacking and do it when the kids are off to college and my wife's making enough money to pay for her shoe fetish. Works for me.