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Comment by jstewartmobile | Hacker News Reader

Bukowski is absolutely right here, and Taleb also hits this topic pretty hard in his drafts.

The worst years I've had working for myself have still been better than the best years I've had as an employee, and that was justice! It's like with all of the problems in the world, I'm going to spend my days being a lackey to make more money for someone who already has plenty so I can ride the status/consumption bandwagon even harder.

My slave mentality deserved slave results. Praise God I accidentally broke free!

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The Taleb draft you linked really hit home, thank you for that. Time to profoundly rethink some things.

It's one of those things that we all kind-of already knew, but it takes a Nassim Taleb or a Charles Bukowski to lay it out there in black-and-white.

Could you point me in the direction of where Taleb has written on this topic?

Here's the relevant draft from SITG: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/employee.pdf

He also has the same idea peppered throughout Antifragile.

And here [1] (Reddit AMA) "The point is that if you want to be a writer, an artist, or a researcher in something solitary, better have a job that is steady and not taxing intellectually. Think of Spinoza, Einstein, Bayes..." It is not what initiated this thread but it is related in the sense that you can find a job to cover your basic expenses but not being demanding intelectually to pursue other interests.

I read the same from the artist Leon Ferrari [2] [3] he was an engineer and the son of an artist. His father told him to have a career and just then be an artist. This was an anti-fragile advice.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/38onec/i_am_nassim...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le%C3%B3n_Ferrari

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Ferrari-Leon-Prologo-Andrea-Giunta/dp...

I've long told my recording clients, "real musicians have a day job" because it described so much of the best talent to come through the studio.

In Black Swan doesn't he talk about how terrible it is to be an entrepreneur and how much better it is to be an employee?

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” - taleb

I would have replaced carbohydrates by ego, but that would have been a bit too rich for him to say.

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