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Yes, I believe that you can have a functional society where everyone follows his or her passion, but to see it, you have to realize two things: 1. The current
by rfugger 16y ago
Yes, I believe that you can have a functional society where everyone follows his or her passion, but to see it, you have to realize two things:
1. The current allocation of labour isn't set in stone. Just because we have a certain number of accountants now, doesn't necessarily mean we need all those accountants for society to function in a way that makes us all happiest.
2. Almost everyone is passionate about eating and having a warm place to sleep. An accountant who quits his job to pursue a career as a rock star will likely soon run low on money, and may find renewed passion in accounting, if only as a part-time gig to feed and shelter himself and his family, while he finds greater fulfillment playing music in his spare time.
I also believe that nothing truly great gets done without there being a huge amount of passion behind it. Look at any great project you know and you'll see it there in the core people. They wouldn't want to be doing anything else. The world would be much better if everyone followed their passion. I think most of us are just too scared to let go of the security of making the safe, easy, predictable choices.
- stoney 16y agoIt's an interesting supply and demand question. If everyone suddenly started valuing "passion" more and "money" less, then as you said, given the current pay scales then maybe lots of accountants would switch to being rockstars. But as well as the running out of cash problem for the new rockstars, the remaining accountants would presumably be able to charge the rockstars a fortune to do their tax returns (fewer accountants = less competition), which might persuade some of the rockstars that accounting isn't that bad overall. This does break down in the extreme case where people don't value money at all, but that doesn't seem like a very likely scenario. Sure, I have a passion for being a rockstar, but if being an accountant for 3 years could give me enough money to pay for my rockstar career for the rest of my life then I might develop a passion for accounting.