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Power is important. The author himself writes about how he has spent X years trying to get more power/money when he can now just move to the countryside and enj

Power is important. The author himself writes about how he has spent X years trying to get more power/money when he can now just move to the countryside and enjoy life. And write when he wants. This is power. Which to me, is not something an Intern would right, as you have student loans to pay, perhaps dreams to build. When you are successful and write for NY Times, or code for Google for a few years, it is easy to write "Ah, fuck this shit! I can now move to the country side and do whatever I want, but I don't do this. Will this be my last year here?", because even though you don't notice, you are very powerful. You have financial independence to do this, because you have fought very hard to go big on your career. So essentially, you have power, even if you don't write for NY Times, or if you aren't POTUS anymore. You made some big bucks or respect, that enables you do to things most people can't even dream of. Then it looks "Overrated". What I think is Overrated is being poor and left behind. Financial independence is one of the most powerful things one can have. Sure, most of the people after they have it, they still work and run after more power and money. But having a little bit of power and money is one of the most important things in life, without that, you have no leverage in society to be free. If after this you will chose to seek more power, that's your choice. Coming back to my initial example, if you were the intern that can barely eat lunch with your colleges and your mom is sick and need money... shoveling shit to become more power seems like a good thing.

devoply 7y ago
Also when you are at that level what is asked of you and your time is much less when you are at a lower level, so the motivation to quit is less than it would be if you were not in that position.
david-gpu 7y ago
I would differentiate between power and freedom, as the author does. Power would be the capacity to affect other people's actions, often arising from having a position of authority over them, but can also occur in the form of influence over them (soft power). Freedom would refer to having the means to choose our own actions with fewer or weaker external constraints. The author has achieved some degree of financial freedom, but not much power from what I can see, beyond the limited power that his modest net worth can buy.
- cm2012 7y ago
  I'd argue those are the same things, just different amounts of it.
- protonfish 7y ago
  Maybe to avoid the ambiguity we could use the terms "political power" and "personal power."
  - apatters 7y ago
    The article uses the terms power and freedom, and explicitly defines them. > I would define power as the ability to make other people do what you want; freedom is the ability to do what you want.
    - protonfish 7y ago
      I don't think it's cool to take a common and ambiguous term like "power" and claim that it will now only refer to a single, narrow meaning. It's not constructive. Better to qualify the term in a way that everyone in the discussion knows what you are talking about.
      - ummonk 7y ago
        Since we're discussing a linked article, it is perfectly reasonable for people to use the terms that have been defined early in the linked article.
      - chibg10 7y ago
        The original author clearly has a point to make and providing an explicit definition of the relevant terms helps communicate them. If you want to discuss something else about "power", the comment section of this article is probably the wrong place to do so.
- sooheon 7y ago
  And strength is the currency which you can cash out as power or freedom. What you choose is up to you, but you need to be strong to get what you want.
cm2012 7y ago
Agreed completely. Most people would sure as hell feel that lack of power if someone they loved was in danger/got sick and they couldn't help them.
adriand 7y ago
The reason the author's viewpoint is compelling is because it is somewhat unique. Your viewpoint is the standard one. Most people share it and that's why most people do exactly what most people do: work their tails off to try and accumulate power and money, often without thinking about why they're doing so and what they are truly working towards. A few weeks ago I saw a startup founder speak and one of the things he talked about was work/life balance, which for him had been skewed towards work, extraordinarily so, for many years. "I've now realized," he said, "that I need to rebalance things, because the reason I'm working so hard is to be able to enjoy life and spend time with my family." I laughed to myself, because this is someone who has built a company with $100MM in annual revenues. He could sell today and fulfill his stated ambition immediately. The reality, I suspect, is either that he's still in love with building something (a positive motivation that resonates with me) or is still trying to accumulate even more power and money (a less positive motivation that also, quite honestly, resonates with me too). Someone like that is someone I understand. Based on your comment, you're also someone I understand. But I have met, and believe I also understand, people who are not wired like us. They truly have no power but do have a great deal of freedom. Either choice is valid, but if you look at someone who is free and insist that they are just as power-hungry as you are, that's sad - because if you can't see the choice they made, then it probably means you haven't made a choice either. And you should! Not making a conscious choice about your priorities is a great way to create a mid-life crisis. ;)
- tigerlily 7y ago
  > then it probably means you haven't made a choice either. So true. I remember a colleague once saying "Not to choose, that is also a choice."
  - cfmcdonald 7y ago
    Was that colleague Neil Peart?
- ChuckMcM 7y ago
  I think you capture the essence fairly well. Choice is a weird thing, it can be oddly paralyzing. My favorite example is that when I was just starting out, a good computer was very expensive (like $3,000 for a desktop, or probably closer to $7000 in today's dollars), and so when I bought one, I had researched all of the options that might fit in my budget and pruned the list down to the one or two "best" components given what I could spend on them. Flash forward 10 years and between salary growth and the cost of computers plummeting, I found I could walk into Fry's and literally put together any computer I wanted. Even the "monster" configurations that PC Gamer used to have I could buy. It was really hard for me to figure out what to buy then. "Success" is one of those things that in my experience is always in the future, because to have achieved it for me would mean I was "done" and I'm certainly not done. As a result, as I've gone through life I've become more deliberative about how I spend my remaining time, and trying to remind myself that it is the only resource that must be spent every day, you don't get it back.
skybrian 7y ago
I'm not sure this is really disagreeing? It's just quibbling over what "power" means. When we say someone has or seeks power, financial independence is not what we're talking about. There are a lot of retired folks, and this doesn't feel like power, in the sense that most people don't know or care about your opinion. (Unlike the author, who has his opinion in the New York Times.) When you buy stuff, it just feels like an ordinary transaction. There is technically a form of power in that, but it's different.
hinkley 7y ago
Upper class people without the more pernicious forms of classism tend to refer to themselves as “comfortable” rather than upper class. We’ve discussed this “comfortable” phenomenon before and I think the classism is the main differentiator. If this line of Us and Them isn’t important to you then of course you wouldn’t necessarily notice when you’ve crossed it.
bhntr3 7y ago
I agree that the author's perspective is very privileged. The terms powerless and trapped are nearly synonyms. Yet he overvalues freedom and says power is overrated. I think a more interesting statement might be that wielding power is overrated. It seems like you could have financial and personal freedom without holding power over another individual. This is something I've tried hard to do (and I think been successful at.) Perhaps it's an illusion. But I think what the author and others are noting is that most people who gain power then feel compelled to use it. Once you start to wield power, it seems necessary to compound it. Because power is a hierarchy with a nearly limitless ceiling. There's always a bigger fish. I've never felt comfortable wielding power. It comes from many things: I'm skeptical of central planning. I think most evil comes from misplaced certainty. I'm over privileged and I recognize the inescapibility of unconscious bias. It goes so deep that I prefer declarative programming to imperative. I'm not even comfortable dominating my computer. Maybe it is just a privileged form of guilt only accessible to those who have attained sufficient power for their own comfort. But my choice to abdicate conventional power and refrain from participation in some conventional power structures (corporations, etc.) has confused a lot of friends and family. Regardless of being privileged, it doesn't seem common to actively choose to avoid wielding power.
- majos 7y ago
  This reasoning confuses me. Your abdication of power cedes it to whoever's next in line. Maybe you are unsure of your ability to appropriately wield power, but that is only a good reason if you think you'd be worse than the next person in line. My attitude is that power-seekers are likely to be bad power-wielders, so you'd have to be a pretty bad power-wielder to make things better by abdication. Maybe this is a matter of principles for you?
  - bhntr3 7y ago
    Great point. I'm not advocating for an anarchist utopia. I think Ursula Leguin's The Dispossessed lays out the problems with that pretty well. We've probably all participated in organizations with ineffective leadership. I do think it's better to be a clear, decisive and consistent leader than a "cool" boss if you're participating in a power structure. So it's not even a moral issue. It's just a personal one. I think it's rare for us to really ask if we enjoy holding power over others and whether those people benefit from it. Are there fruits of power (wealth, status) worth it? When does that change? There is an imbalance of power across all demographics. If I step aside maybe the person who gets is traditionally more powerless. The question of whether I wield it better than them is hard to judge. There's a lot of nuance to when a good leader becomes a bad one. I think it's very difficult to judge our own working of power objectively. And of course power corrupts. If there is a moral issue, it's just that I think a lot of our systemic power structures are archaic and ineffective at directing human potential. There will always be people craving and consolidating hierarchical power structures. I'd rather engage in organic, decentralized, emergent ones when I do participate.
agumonkey 7y ago
> he can now just move to the countryside and enjoy life. And write when he wants. This is power. Allow me to exagerate a bit. This is mostly knowledge. Minus the bit of land that you'd need to pay, making a house, growing veggies etc etc is just knowledge. It's just not modern western world education.
- jhatemyjob 7y ago
  > Minus the bit of land that you'd need to pay, making a house Lol guyz fuck this shit I'm gonna go to the countryside. It's so ez. Brb shitting $100k+ on some land + building a house that's up to code. Brb paying $10k+/yr in property taxes.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    A guy on youtube bought a bit of forest for 20000 euros. It had two ruins and a tiny river inside. Enough to live happily with a few solar panels.

devoply 7y ago

Also when you are at that level what is asked of you and your time is much less when you are at a lower level, so the motivation to quit is less than it would be if you were not in that position.

david-gpu 7y ago

I would differentiate between power and freedom, as the author does. Power would be the capacity to affect other people's actions, often arising from having a position of authority over them, but can also occur in the form of influence over them (soft power). Freedom would refer to having the means to choose our own actions with fewer or weaker external constraints. The author has achieved some degree of financial freedom, but not much power from what I can see, beyond the limited power that his modest net worth can buy.

cm2012 7y ago
I'd argue those are the same things, just different amounts of it.
protonfish 7y ago
Maybe to avoid the ambiguity we could use the terms "political power" and "personal power."
- apatters 7y ago
  The article uses the terms power and freedom, and explicitly defines them. > I would define power as the ability to make other people do what you want; freedom is the ability to do what you want.
  - protonfish 7y ago
    I don't think it's cool to take a common and ambiguous term like "power" and claim that it will now only refer to a single, narrow meaning. It's not constructive. Better to qualify the term in a way that everyone in the discussion knows what you are talking about.
    - ummonk 7y ago
      Since we're discussing a linked article, it is perfectly reasonable for people to use the terms that have been defined early in the linked article.
    - chibg10 7y ago
      The original author clearly has a point to make and providing an explicit definition of the relevant terms helps communicate them. If you want to discuss something else about "power", the comment section of this article is probably the wrong place to do so.
sooheon 7y ago
And strength is the currency which you can cash out as power or freedom. What you choose is up to you, but you need to be strong to get what you want.

cm2012 7y ago

Agreed completely. Most people would sure as hell feel that lack of power if someone they loved was in danger/got sick and they couldn't help them.

adriand 7y ago

The reason the author's viewpoint is compelling is because it is somewhat unique. Your viewpoint is the standard one. Most people share it and that's why most people do exactly what most people do: work their tails off to try and accumulate power and money, often without thinking about why they're doing so and what they are truly working towards. A few weeks ago I saw a startup founder speak and one of the things he talked about was work/life balance, which for him had been skewed towards work, extraordinarily so, for many years. "I've now realized," he said, "that I need to rebalance things, because the reason I'm working so hard is to be able to enjoy life and spend time with my family." I laughed to myself, because this is someone who has built a company with $100MM in annual revenues. He could sell today and fulfill his stated ambition immediately. The reality, I suspect, is either that he's still in love with building something (a positive motivation that resonates with me) or is still trying to accumulate even more power and money (a less positive motivation that also, quite honestly, resonates with me too). Someone like that is someone I understand. Based on your comment, you're also someone I understand. But I have met, and believe I also understand, people who are not wired like us. They truly have no power but do have a great deal of freedom. Either choice is valid, but if you look at someone who is free and insist that they are just as power-hungry as you are, that's sad - because if you can't see the choice they made, then it probably means you haven't made a choice either. And you should! Not making a conscious choice about your priorities is a great way to create a mid-life crisis. ;)

tigerlily 7y ago
> then it probably means you haven't made a choice either. So true. I remember a colleague once saying "Not to choose, that is also a choice."
- cfmcdonald 7y ago
  Was that colleague Neil Peart?
ChuckMcM 7y ago
I think you capture the essence fairly well. Choice is a weird thing, it can be oddly paralyzing. My favorite example is that when I was just starting out, a good computer was very expensive (like $3,000 for a desktop, or probably closer to $7000 in today's dollars), and so when I bought one, I had researched all of the options that might fit in my budget and pruned the list down to the one or two "best" components given what I could spend on them. Flash forward 10 years and between salary growth and the cost of computers plummeting, I found I could walk into Fry's and literally put together any computer I wanted. Even the "monster" configurations that PC Gamer used to have I could buy. It was really hard for me to figure out what to buy then. "Success" is one of those things that in my experience is always in the future, because to have achieved it for me would mean I was "done" and I'm certainly not done. As a result, as I've gone through life I've become more deliberative about how I spend my remaining time, and trying to remind myself that it is the only resource that must be spent every day, you don't get it back.

skybrian 7y ago

I'm not sure this is really disagreeing? It's just quibbling over what "power" means. When we say someone has or seeks power, financial independence is not what we're talking about. There are a lot of retired folks, and this doesn't feel like power, in the sense that most people don't know or care about your opinion. (Unlike the author, who has his opinion in the New York Times.) When you buy stuff, it just feels like an ordinary transaction. There is technically a form of power in that, but it's different.

hinkley 7y ago

Upper class people without the more pernicious forms of classism tend to refer to themselves as “comfortable” rather than upper class. We’ve discussed this “comfortable” phenomenon before and I think the classism is the main differentiator. If this line of Us and Them isn’t important to you then of course you wouldn’t necessarily notice when you’ve crossed it.

bhntr3 7y ago

I agree that the author's perspective is very privileged. The terms powerless and trapped are nearly synonyms. Yet he overvalues freedom and says power is overrated. I think a more interesting statement might be that wielding power is overrated. It seems like you could have financial and personal freedom without holding power over another individual. This is something I've tried hard to do (and I think been successful at.) Perhaps it's an illusion. But I think what the author and others are noting is that most people who gain power then feel compelled to use it. Once you start to wield power, it seems necessary to compound it. Because power is a hierarchy with a nearly limitless ceiling. There's always a bigger fish. I've never felt comfortable wielding power. It comes from many things: I'm skeptical of central planning. I think most evil comes from misplaced certainty. I'm over privileged and I recognize the inescapibility of unconscious bias. It goes so deep that I prefer declarative programming to imperative. I'm not even comfortable dominating my computer. Maybe it is just a privileged form of guilt only accessible to those who have attained sufficient power for their own comfort. But my choice to abdicate conventional power and refrain from participation in some conventional power structures (corporations, etc.) has confused a lot of friends and family. Regardless of being privileged, it doesn't seem common to actively choose to avoid wielding power.

majos 7y ago
This reasoning confuses me. Your abdication of power cedes it to whoever's next in line. Maybe you are unsure of your ability to appropriately wield power, but that is only a good reason if you think you'd be worse than the next person in line. My attitude is that power-seekers are likely to be bad power-wielders, so you'd have to be a pretty bad power-wielder to make things better by abdication. Maybe this is a matter of principles for you?
- bhntr3 7y ago
  Great point. I'm not advocating for an anarchist utopia. I think Ursula Leguin's The Dispossessed lays out the problems with that pretty well. We've probably all participated in organizations with ineffective leadership. I do think it's better to be a clear, decisive and consistent leader than a "cool" boss if you're participating in a power structure. So it's not even a moral issue. It's just a personal one. I think it's rare for us to really ask if we enjoy holding power over others and whether those people benefit from it. Are there fruits of power (wealth, status) worth it? When does that change? There is an imbalance of power across all demographics. If I step aside maybe the person who gets is traditionally more powerless. The question of whether I wield it better than them is hard to judge. There's a lot of nuance to when a good leader becomes a bad one. I think it's very difficult to judge our own working of power objectively. And of course power corrupts. If there is a moral issue, it's just that I think a lot of our systemic power structures are archaic and ineffective at directing human potential. There will always be people craving and consolidating hierarchical power structures. I'd rather engage in organic, decentralized, emergent ones when I do participate.

agumonkey 7y ago

> he can now just move to the countryside and enjoy life. And write when he wants. This is power. Allow me to exagerate a bit. This is mostly knowledge. Minus the bit of land that you'd need to pay, making a house, growing veggies etc etc is just knowledge. It's just not modern western world education.

jhatemyjob 7y ago
> Minus the bit of land that you'd need to pay, making a house Lol guyz fuck this shit I'm gonna go to the countryside. It's so ez. Brb shitting $100k+ on some land + building a house that's up to code. Brb paying $10k+/yr in property taxes.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  A guy on youtube bought a bit of forest for 20000 euros. It had two ruins and a tiny river inside. Enough to live happily with a few solar panels.