6 ms·
There's so many faulty assumptions here and so much more variety in the paths you can take through life than are proposed in this article. You have more choice
by imgabe 6y ago
There's so many faulty assumptions here and so much more variety in the paths you can take through life than are proposed in this article.
You have more choices available than either climbing the corporate ladder or sitting on the couch watching Netflix. Neither of those lead to any sort of fulfillment in my opinion, so I don't know why you would limit yourself to those options.
Also the idea that if you don't win the competition and reach the top of the corporate ladder you're doomed to a life of failure and misery is just pure nonsense. By definition, the vast majority of people will not reach the top.
Life is not a constrained game like the Prisoner's Dilemma, you aren't limited to "lie" or "confess", you can also tunnel out with a spoon, bribe the guard, find a loophole in the law, etc, etc. You're only limited by your imagination.
> billionaires can optimize for the sake of optimizing, rather than to keep their head above water
No, I would imagine billionaires optimize for the sake of being better able to do whatever made them billionaires in the first place, not just for its own sake.
- chongli 6y agoI tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different. — Kurt Vonnegut A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. — Robert A. Heinlein The key to a happy life is to let go of your status anxiety, get out there, and really start living. There’s an effectively infinite number of things to learn, books to read, places to go, people to meet, landscapes to explore, cuisines to taste, animals to see. There’s just so, so much to experience in life, and so little of it has anything to do with money.
- taigeair 6y agoI like those quotes!
- selestify 6y ago> There’s just so, so much to experience in life, and so little of it has anything to do with money. You say that, and yet > places to go Travel is expensive. > people to meet If you live in a small town and want to start meeting people radically different from the people you usually meet, you should probably move to a larger city. Large cities are expensive. > cuisines to taste Eating out is expensive. > things to learn, books to read These are perhaps the ones that require the fewest resources, and even these require enough of a work-life balance that you're not completely exhausted by the time you finish at your third job. Depending on how your economic circumstances are, a healthy work-life balance might not pay the bills. Now, for the upper middle class readership that HN is most likely composed of, sure, the costs of all these activities are negligible. But I think it's a stretch to say that a homeless person on the street should "get out there and really start living." To do that, they need enough money to get to a stable situation first, and the sort of money that's trivial for us to come by is not always so trivial for everyone else...
- adrianN 6y agoComfortable, fast, safe, travel is expensive. Just traveling itself is relatively cheap, you just need a backpack and shoes.
- ajmadesc 6y agoYou really don't understand. You need to be able to take more than a day off without getting evicted/loosing your car or eating oats most days. Go tell people that they don't need a home, their job and it's meager benefits like healthcare, and they should just be more stoic.
- adrianN 6y agoI just counted "a sufficiently stable life that it's still there when you return" as part of "safety" and "comfort". If traveling is a priority for you, you can live the life of a wandering monk, with the associated downsides.
- freethinky 6y ago
- n4r9 6y agoWorth mentioning that the first quote is directly from Vonnegut in an interview, whereas the second is spoken by a character in one of Heinlein's novels.
- a_imho 6y agoSure, the bills and the mortgage will miraculously pay themselves if we set our minds to it. Joking aside, those quotes resonate with most people I suppose, but the cold hard reality is that wageslavery is a very apt term to describe the current state of things.
- chongli 6y agoThe mortgage is definitely part of the status anxiety I mentioned. People need a house because they’re surrounded by peers buying houses. Let go of all that and life opens up for you. Backpacking through Europe is cheap. Backpacking through Southeast Asia even cheaper. Incredible food awaits and it’s very very cheap.
- a_imho 6y agoOK I will let it go, but what will my wife and kids say when they are evicted from the apartment and I'm nowhere to be found because I have no signal in Southeast Asia? Maybe some people buy houses because of peer pressure, but most just like to have a roof over their head when it is cold or rains outside. I know I do.
- imgabe 6y agoWhy wouldn't your wife and kid be backpacking with you? Kids are small, they fit in the overhead compartment.
- chalst 6y ago> You have more choices available than either climbing the corporate ladder or sitting on the couch watching Netflix I think you are taking this point too literally. The question is: what proportion of your life are you spending pursuing career goals? For a bit of background on this, I strongly recommend Skidelsky & Skidelsky (2012) How Much is Enough? [1] [1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/216918/how-much-is-enough-by-robert-skidelsky-and-edward-skidelsky/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/216918/how-much-is-...
- imgabe 6y agoThere is still the assumption there that the only way to make a living is via a "career" which necessarily entails doing something you don't care about and aren't otherwise interested in to make money. That is not the only option
- onion2k 6y agoYou do have to climb the ladder far enough to get enough resources be secure and healthy though, and that's becoming increasingly difficult. Memes about millenials never owning a home, being able to afford to have kids, or even being able to retire aren't simply jokes - the way society seems to be is heading means those things might actually come true. Some things that people want o do require resources, and the number of ways to get those resources is diminishing. We're fortunate in tech to be somewhat shielded from it.
- CalRobert 6y agoIn the case of housing the resource supply is constrained artifically by the cartel formed by local homeowners.
- onion2k 6y agoIt's definitely true that there aren't enough houses being built to keep up with the way people want to live, and that the houses that are built are the wrong sort of houses. I'm in the process of buying my first at the moment and it's immensely difficult to find something suitable and affordable (UK dev wages outside of London don't compare well with the US...). I'm not sure if that's entirely down to homeowners though, or construction companies only building massively profitable mansions instead of small first-time buyer size homes. There definitely isn't much to choose from where I live unless you have 2 good incomes to spend on it.
- Bang2Bay 6y agosimply put, most of these are first world problems.
- onion2k 6y agoPeople who can't afford to settle down, who are spending significant amounts of their income on rent, and who don't see much reward for their effort tend not to have children. In the long term that leads to an aging population, which can cripple the productivity and growth of entire regions. That can be combatted to an extent through immigration policies, but only if people actually want to move to a region that needs more people. These are not just first world problems. These are problems that could, potentially, destroy entire economies.
- CalRobert 6y agoThe challenge comes when you have to compete with the ladder-climbers for a severely constrained stock of housing.
- l3robot 6y agoNot to mention that even the utility function of the "millenials dilemma" makes no sense here, it's not even consistent like it has to be. What it represents here? - More wealth is better? Then 0/10 for chill/work maybe is ok, but it make no sense to have 8/8 for chill/chill. - More fun is better? Then 8/8 is ok, but it makes no sense to have 0/10 for chill/work. - More fun in the near future is better? But it is clearly stated that fun will be unachievable in the game since work will prevail as the dominant position.