It's just so hard to believe the abundance view! I wish I could. Our economy simply does not reward people for being good or ok at things. You have to be amazing. So you are forced into competition simply to survive and pay for your existence.
That's the zero sum trap in itself! What a painful place to be, I'm sorry.
It's a big ocean and we can all swim in it without having to push someone else down to accomplish it.
Sadly There are certainly a huge of people trying to convince you otherwise; consider the words of that famous London School of Economics student who (along with Richards) wrote:
He's tellin' me more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to drive my imagination
[..]
And a man comes on and tells me
How white my shirts can be
But he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarrettes as me
But of all the dimensions of amazing (and there are gazillions, not just coding or money collecting but parenting, spousing, woodworking, piano playing) there are also gazillions of local "amazing" thresholds. I'm not a great piano player but I really have a good time playing, and playing music with my friends.
Plus you may be a "superstar" without realizing it. A couple of weeks ago I was at a party and someone I consider quite accomplished, more than me, said to my kid (presumably not realizing I could hear): "now, we can't all be superstars like your Dad, but at least I have managed...."
This makes about as much sense as "the laissez-faire fascist worldview" or the "growth at any costs environmental worldview."
> "fuck you got mine" in the biggest christian nation on earth.
I fail to see what Christian's have anything to do with the matter. And we aren't a Christian nation, we're a secular nation with a lot of Christians, huge difference.
> "that's why we don't do it, it isn't because of a zero-sum neoliberal worldview; it's because no one wants to pay for it."
Uh, the zero-sum neoliberal worldview is EXACTLY why we don't do it - because such a worldview says that if no one wants to pay for it then it's not worth it despite the fact that it could vastly improve welfare throughout the world and ensure more peace and stability than any "democracy spreading" wars ever could.
>"And we aren't a Christian nation, we're a secular nation with a lot of Christians, huge difference."
If you want to play semantics, fine you're right. There is no state religion (excepting the fact that christianity is part of our founding myth, it's all over the US currency, in our pledge of allegiance, in our symbology etc). But the point is there are hundreds of millions of Christians in this country, a religion whose foundational text (New Testament) is filled with endless cries to help the poor, to give away the material pleasures of life to help another, and yet we embrace the exact opposite. It's an example of how we've perverted our principles.
You are mistaken due to that bad metaphor. There is a vast difference between deploying some troops anywhere in the world, and setting up a permanent supply chain for food to everywhere in the world that needs food; tons of places don't even have decent roads nor the local government approval/agreement to allow the relief or not steal the relief. They are not remotely comparable. Getting food to the places it'd be needed is absolutely not a solved problem.
This is only true locally. I can derive a huge amount of happiness by being the best singer at a party, or the best at telling jokes in the pub, or the best at $SKILL in my team.
Even if you consider global geography (as with competing on the Internet as a startup, or looking for a job as a remote worker), you only have to be the best in that narrow area of what is available at that time (or the best at marketing it, or the best at selling it, or just the best at turning up and being presentable).
There are many, many opportunities to be "amazing" locally. You just need to define what, and where. The article uses the word "mindset", because happiness about what you think more than anything else.
Americans love corporations for some reason. If you make $100k/yr at a job and mostly surf the web, people consider that 'made'. If you are on welfare from the government, you're a no good bum. Why?