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I used to work in a senior position as a programmer making quite a lot, and of course, everyone around me including friends and family considered my successful.
by vouaobrasil 3y ago
I used to work in a senior position as a programmer making quite a lot, and of course, everyone around me including friends and family considered my successful.
But, a few years into that job, I considered it to be the most unhappy time of my life. I quit and became independent. I started building a series of passive income streams. I'm not really working very hard at it, and I certainly make hardly any money compared to before. But I'm a lot happier.
Now I "work" maybe 10 hours a week, and I spend the rest of my time chillin', working on projects that migth be profitable or might not be, reading, writing about whatever I want, etc. But I've got enough and it's the best time of my life.
Yes, I don't have kids and that's partly what enables my alternative lifestyle. But it just goes to show that private land ownership coupled with the family lifestyle necessarily leads to increasing wage-slavery, especially once areas become saturated and land becomes scarce.
What we need to do is move towards a system where private land ownership on a mass scale (not talking about your house) goes away and owning land for yourself to live and eat on is no longer an investment strategy but a way to establish a relationship with the biosphere. The current system is broken....
- ssss11 3y agoOn a little tangent - similarly I was quite senior early in my career and a combination of burnout, politics, and toxic leaders led me reconsider my career on the eve of my first child being born. I transitioned to a mid-level role which is comfortable, easy in comparison, pays most of my prior salary, way less hours and responsibility, and less politics. I’ve won. For now. (I would do what you do if I had no kids!) Anyway what strikes me these days is social peers now reaching where I was, but at a normal rate, and trying to impress me with how senior they are compared to me - this notion of seniority equaling success is ingrained in society. Little do they know (or remember) that I have been there and they may learn the same lesson in time. I let them gloat, give them some wisdom, and sit back waiting to see what will happen.
- barelyauser 3y agoConsider the meaning of interest rates. I work 10 hours in exchange for 10 moneys. I could exchange it for 10 hours work from some other guy. But what does it mean when I purchase a government bond and make 1 currency per year of interest? I can purchase 1 hour of work in exchange of nothing. People are not working for me because I work for them (a fair system). They work for me because I'm the dragon with a pile of gold, and gold must come back to me.
- rafaelmn 3y agoExcept when inflation eats your savings at faster than 1 unit per year. Even in low inflation/normal interest rates you need a lot of savings to live off of interest alone.
- melagonster 3y agoBut rates is designed to pay the loss from inflation. little inflation requires rich people investing something.
- elif 3y agoI have a similar story, went from making 250k to 0 in 2019 just to reset my mental health. No kids, house paid off. It was more successful than I ever could have thought. Lockdown came and I decided to extend the sabbatical. Then everyone moved on from COVID but working still didn't feel right to me. So I still don't have a job, but my investments are supporting me, and my wife and I decided to have a child so now I'm a full time stay at home father. I never would have seen this for myself when I was trapped in the wage cycle.
- waihtis 3y agoThe gaping hole in your average communist's redistribution pipe dream is always supply and demand, which cannot be explained away - so you conveniently ignore it and think there's some magic reality where everyone is happy with living in a degrowth mindset having very little of anything. Of course we all know what ends up happening - an elite is formed via alternative means, and usually mass deaths, either from lack of resource or organized massacre.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 5350-uiop-1130 3y agoi think it's fair to want a middle ground between a 1% having 90% of all assets and absolute communism.
- waihtis 3y agoI think so too, the problem is the reigning narrative right now is arbitrary redistribution of wealth because "capitalism has caused all ills in the world" - which isn't driven by sensible people like you or the parent poster, but degrowth extremists
- spacemadness 3y agoI hate to break it to you, but your reply reads very extremist and non-sensible since you attacked the poster and called them a communist.
- vouaobrasil 3y agoI don't really subscribe to a communist philosophy. Communism was still attached to the idea of mass industrialism and some sort of vague equality for all. I just would be interested in having more equality in the realm of large land ownership for people that live on the land, which would include (1) Restrictions on foreign investments (2) Restrictions on large corporations/rich people owning lots of houses and real estate (3) A minimum, sort of "Universal Basic Land" similar to "Universal Basic Income" where everyone is entitled to at least some land
- peteradio 3y agoMethinks someone is a gardener.
- tanseydavid 3y agoChauncey Gardener?
- potsandpans 3y agoCan you tell me about your passive income streams?
- vouaobrasil 3y agoBooks, courses (I have a PhD, so some some expertise to create specialized courses), and YouTube tutorials (once you make a good tutorial, they keep returning income).
- spacemadness 3y agoI watched a coworker completely change modes after buying a house in the Bay. He questions nothing the organization does anymore and it’s almost like watching a politician speak the way he talks about anything in meetings. It’s very transparent and rather chilling. I can only imagine he’s now terrified of losing his job now that he has a ball and chain of a mortgage payment.