Someone is stealing your life (1990)
lycaeum.org
lycaeum.org
The whole piece is like that.
Self-defeating. Blame others for problems. Finding trivial problems insurmountable. And also - flat out false.
He overlooks some basic things - like that you can work part time, freelance, or save up your money and then not work for a few years.
Some jobs and are enjoyable and people like their work.
There's no rule that says you have to be a shitty boss.
You don't need a credit rating to do business.
But mostly, it's just all self-defeating negative nonsense. I've basically never been salaried, I started in business with no credit rating at all (I avoided credit cards like the plague, so I got a credit rating at all relatively late in life), and I've never had to slavedrive anyone.
It's easier to blame others than to look for solutions. Probably feels better. But it's nonsense. You can build a pretty good life with some effort. Takes effort, true. But it's there if you want it.
I know, because I used to be that guy. My early career path looks like this: work at dad's restaurant, work at mom's jewelry store, temp agency, Cutco salesman, furniture assembler, temp agency, retail salesman in the mall, ear piercer, retail salesman in the mall.
Then I finally got my act together (thanks to a not-entirely-honest-but-still-greatly-appreciated recruiter) and went Navy, freelance IT, freelance programmer, salaried programmer, freelance programmer, published iOS app, entrepreneur.
Own everything. Take all responsibility for everything that happens to you, even if it wasn't your fault. This leads to some instant satisfaction in terms of feeling more in control of your life. And long term, you do a hell of a lot better.
I try to own everything, even if it wasn't my fault. Especially if it wasn't my fault.
Basically people with a high internal locus of control drive change and own the outcomes (good or bad). People with an external locus of control accept change and blame external factors for the outcomes. Distinct difference in the happiness / satisfaction between the groups, if I recall correctly.
I know people that's happened to, and they tend to "own it," and I'm not sure that's healthy,
This is essentially a veiled ad-hominem attack. You don't know the author's motivations or reasons for taking these jobs. You can't a priori assume that he took these jobs because he's lazy and unmotivated.
And no, it's not a strawman. Lack of direction, lack of ambition, lazy, unmotivated. See how they all go together?
Well, it's obviously not working for the guy. He has clearly voiced his dissatisfaction with his life, which includes the jobs that he has taken. Someone that is doing what they love, even if it isn't making that much money, will be happy.
Yes, but it does not follow that he is therefore directionless or lacks ambition. Plenty of successful doctors and lawyers have the same problem.
"Someone that is doing what they love, even if it isn't making that much money, will be happy."
Over simplification. I have known numerous people who loved what they where doing without being very happy about the things that came along with that. Artists, musicians, teachers. Just because you love what you do doesn't automatically make you happy, believe it or not.
Taking random jobs to put yourself through medical school is much different than taking random jobs with seemingly no direction. If he does have some ambitious life goals, he doesn't make it very apparent in this article.
"I have known numerous people who loved what they where doing without being very happy about the things that came along with that."
If you are doing what you claim to love, yet you hate everything that comes along with it..I don't think you are doing what you really love.
I suppose from the article, we can surmise that the author loves being a hospital orderly or the guy that runs the drive-thru at jack-in-the-box and is just unhappy about the things that come with it. Right?
He's a successful author and columnist. Hopefully, this now gives him the right to say a lot of low-paying jobs are shitty ones that barely treat you as a human being, and not everyone is able to work their way through them, despite how much fortitude they may otherwise have.
This thread is full of ridiculous ad hominems. I don't think your comment even makes any sense. So you both used to work a string of dead-end jobs. While you're willing to note that you, yourself, ended up becoming an entrepreneur, you're not willing to grant this author the same possibility that perhaps he simply started out with a poor lot in life like yourself, and ended up also working his way up.
It seems the authors works as a novelist/writer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ventura. He probably didn't overlooked this exit strategy.
If you want to get out of the drudgery and soul-hemorrage of the rat race, then you need to be prepared for the risk. Most people aren't. They do the mental math, figure that they need the salary or the stability or the medical coverage too much to risk it, and they take the blue pill. They resign themselves to their fates. And that's fine. It's a respectable and probably smart choice for most people, but it's a choice nonetheless. People shouldn't lose sight of that fact.
It is indeed a choice. The consequences of reversing that choice get much more complex as you gain responsibilities in life. Ultimately, however, your life is on you. No one else can care like you do.
Our primary responsibility, if it is really one, is to care for ourselves; we have no choice but to take it. One of the main responsibilities we accumulate is the responsibility to care for ageing relatives.
There are other major responsibilities - care for environment, for society - that are not born out of our prior choices (though our ability to handle those responsibilities is greatly affected by our past choices).
You don't see the contradiction here? What if someone is ill and really needs the medical coverage? What if they have dependents?
Just because you are fortunate enough to be healthy and relatively responsibility free (if you are), doesn't mean that everyone else is in the same boat, and that people who make a different decision do so because they have infinite choice.
This is a big problem with most of the just-world arguments I see about these issues - they never acknowledge that not everything in life is a choice, no matter how much we want to make it so.
Covering your ears and humming loudly at the problem doesn't eliminate your responsibility to address it; nor the consequences for doing so.
and what problems are those?
That not everyone comes out on top? Of course this is the case. I am interested in alternatives that don't involve limiting the success of the people that are actually creating wealth or taking exorbitant amounts of money through taxes.
When you've lived long enough, you realize that there aren't many ideas that are truly unique. Most "new" ideas are just old ideas that have been sugar-coated to make them more palatable. So I'm waiting for your new and unique idea that will somehow give people a better chance at life, success, an freedom than capitalism.
The problems in question are not that not everyone comes out on top - it's that "not coming out on top" involves a great deal of exploitation and coercion. More so than most will admit. The problem is that "coming out on top" now means you control a hugely disproportionate sum of wealth - and thereby exert a disproportionate influence on society, invariably to the expense of others.
"limiting the success of the people that are actually creating wealth."
And therein lies one of the problems - the rewards do not go to those who make the wealth, and that's exactly the point the author of the article was making.
If an engineer invents a radical new process for fabricating microchips, who is paid the huge sum of money resulting from it - the CEO or the engineer? Which one actually created wealth and value?
"When you've lived long enough, you realize that there aren't many ideas that are truly unique."
This is merely condescension. Age doesn't grant you any magical insights, and you don't have to reach a certain age to know there are no new ideas. I figured that out a long time ago. That said, you want to talk about defeatists attitudes? "There are no new ideas" is a cake taker in that department.
I don't have all the answers, and I don't claim to - but we have absolutely zero chance of addressing social issues if we as a society won't even acknowledge them. And just because I don't have a better alternative right now, doesn't mean that no one else does either - or that I won't in the future.
No, but I'm waiting for it.
"The problem is that "coming out on top" now means you control a hugely disproportionate sum of wealth"
...that you've earned. I don't see a problem.
"and thereby exert a disproportionate influence on society, invariably to the expense of others."
Then let's not allow people with money to set the rules. Capitalism isn't the problem. It's corrupt politicians that take kickbacks. I would also like to mention that money is power. In any time in history, the more money you have, the more power you possess. It will always be the case. If not money, then whatever currency we are using. It's not like you can't go out and earn your own.
"And therein lies one of the problems - the rewards do not go to those who make the wealth, and that's exactly the point the author of the article was making."
You can't make a blanket statement like this, because it's not true in most cases. When the guy in the article was working as a "Jack-in-the-Box counterperson", what was he willing to risk all of his time and money to run the business? It sounds to me like he wants the same amount of profits as an owner, but none of the risks.
As I've stated earlier, I don't think people would really like it if companies were allowed to hire people at no pay, work them day and night for the hope that they will make a profit (which is what it takes as an owner). Just ask anyone here that is trying to start a company. You might make it big, but you will probably fail many more times before you succeed.
Most people want a comfort blanket. They don't want to have to worry about profit margins. They want to know that they will get paid every month.
"If an engineer invents a radical new process for fabricating microchips, who is paid the huge sum of money resulting from it - the CEO or the engineer? Which one actually created wealth and value?"
If the engineer is under contract and using the resources, money, and lab of his employer to create this radical new process, he is getting paid a salary he agreed upon (which wasn't by force). If he is using all of his own equipment, under no contract, it can make him very rich. I don't really see a problem with anything you are describing, except your sense of entitlement.
"This is merely condescension. Age doesn't grant you any magical insights, and you don't have to reach a certain age to know there are no new ideas. I figured that out a long time ago. That said, you want to talk about defeatists attitudes? "There are no new ideas" is a cake taker in that department."
Do you actually think I believe there isn't anything new? I was merely pointing out that there are thousands of years of history and experience in the economic, finance, and politics department, which can show you what works and what doesn't (and if your idea is radically new or just a rehash of something old).
Age can grant you insight, if you learn from history and your experiences.
Ponzi schemes are a good example of this. They will always fail in the end, yet people continue to fall for them.
"I don't have all the answers, and I don't claim to - but we have absolutely zero chance of addressing social issues if we as a society won't even acknowledge them. And just because I don't have a better alternative right now, doesn't mean that no one else does either - or that I won't in the future."
There are more important social issues to address than some guy that is whining about his life.
Keep waiting then, because it's not going to happen. I would never suggest anything of the sort. It's not nearly creative enough of a solution, for one thing.
"...that you've earned. I don't see a problem."
Just because you don't see a problem, doesn't mean that there isn't one.
So, say, a CEO who is hired to run a company and assumes no financial risk on their own for doing so has "earned" the right to 40x more salary than the people who actually make the products? Somehow that doesn't seem right. Do they work forty times harder? Forty times more? Neither is physically possible. Do they assume forty times as much risk? Having seen more than a few golden parachute deals, I think it's obvious that they don't.
"what was he willing to risk all of his time and money to run the business?"
Most business people are saavy enough to start their businesses with other people's money. See: Venture Capitalism.
"It sounds to me like he wants the same amount of profits as an owner, but none of the risks."
This is a gross misrepresentation of the author's position.
"If the engineer is under contract and using the resources, money, and lab of his employer to create this radical new process, he is getting paid a salary he agreed upon (which wasn't by force)."
He must agree to a salary somewhere if he wants to eat and have a place to live. This is not choice. It's not overt force either, but it does have something of coercion about it.
"If he is using all of his own equipment, under no contract, it can make him very rich."
Most people could not afford such equipment even if they are inclined to use it. They therefore have no choice but to work for someone else.
"I don't really see a problem with anything you are describing, except your sense of entitlement."
This is an ad hominem. I have not stated anywhere that I or anyone else are entitled to anything, nor would I ever.
"Do you actually think I believe there isn't anything new? I was merely pointing out that there are thousands of years of history and experience in the economic, finance, and politics department, which can show you what works and what doesn't (and if your idea is radically new or just a rehash of something old)."
This much is blatantly obvious. And?
"There are more important social issues to address than some guy that is whining about his life."
More ad hominem. Also the issues being addressed by the author are bigger than his own life. He states as much if you actually read it carefully.
First, your CEO, it's true, did not likely put financial risk on the line to take the position obtained. But the CEO's 40x salary was put in place by the elected representatives of those who did put financial risk on the line--stockholders. If they see that salary as a good investment based on their risk why should they not be allowed to make that investment?
Secondly, your point on coercion. Yes, you can certainly argue that the engineer was "forced" at some level to take a job, and thus some salary. But in a world living with people you will never be free of all influences or coercion. Similarly if a company wants to build a product it is "forced" to hire employees and thus reach an agreement on salary. This too, by your line of reasoning, is a form of coercion.
This does not address the argument that rewards are being disproportionately bestowed on someone who took no risks, and arguably, produces less wealth or value on the whole than the people who actually do the work of creating and building products and services.
"Similarly if a company wants to build a product it is "forced" to hire employees and thus reach an agreement on salary. This too, by your line of reasoning, is a form of coercion."
Not at all. Coercion implies a disparity of leverage. The company has money (the means of survival, in this society) at their disposal. The employees do not, or else they wouldn't be looking for a job, would they?
In the worst case scenario the company doesn't get to make a product but still retains it's money, but the would-be employees have nothing, and are either reduced to subsistence level living, the charity of others, or simply starve.
It's not for you to decide, because it's not your money. Why do you think you should have the right to decide how someone else (company or person) spends their money? If you don't like this fact, work somewhere else and don't buy their products.
"Most business people are saavy enough to start their businesses with other people's money. "
Many people also don't need VC. See: every company that's bootstrapped.
"He must agree to a salary somewhere if he wants to eat and have a place to live. This is not choice. It's not overt force either, but it does have something of coercion about it."
You seem to have lots of opinions on our current system, but no idea how you could make it better.
"Most people could not afford such equipment even if they are inclined to use it. They therefore have no choice but to work for someone else."
It depends on the industry. Have you heard of bank loans?
"This is an ad hominem. I have not stated anywhere that I or anyone else are entitled to anything, nor would I ever."
I don't need you to state it. I can see it all over your posts. Using words like "ad hominem" doesn't change this fact.
"This much is blatantly obvious. And?"
you probably haven't actually looked into it. If you had, you might not
"More ad hominem. Also the issues being addressed by the author are bigger than his own life. He states as much if you actually read it carefully."
I'm beginning to think you don't actually know what that word means. I read the article carefully. He's trying to make it look like the world is a terrible place based on his own experiences. If you based our entire system on his experience, it will look bad. However, when you take a step back and look at it as a whole, it's pretty damn good.
I agree the tone is defeatist, but I don't blame the author or hold resentment for the expression of the suffering.
Poverty is a learned, psychological problem. Escaping the trap is possible, but not easy for most.
The disease of poverty can cured with education and liberty, many believe. Where education and liberty fail, poverty brings us all down and holds us all back from our potential.
Poverty isn't just for the poor. A significant portion of the wealthy also have a poverty of mind and perpetuate poverty by not investing in the future.
Just because capitalism works some of the time for a few of the people, doesn't mean that it's above criticism, and has no problems.
Since the majority of folks on HN have benefited from capitalism, it's not surprising that they are not as open to hearing criticisms of it.
Even if we take it as given that relatively wealthy American programmers have experienced continual improvement in their lot over the past couple of decades, that doesn't mean that we will continue to do so - or that everyone else has experience anything remotely similar. I would argue that we - developers - have experienced more upward mobility than most careers in the last couple of decades, and it is precisely because of this that we are relatively privileged.
In short, our experience doesn't necessarily generalize to society at large.
Sure, you choose your career (to a large extent) but society needs developers AND plumbers, and too many people choosing to be developers would push down developer wages to the point where being a developer would no longer be desirable. It can't work for everyone.
We need a solution that does not create an underclass of people that society needs but does not value. In a truly fluid job market in which there was always hiring in every industry and every worker was able and prepared to do any kind of job, capitalism might take care of that. Unfortunately, that's not reality.
I think that the system we have is much better than many others that have been tried in the past, but that doesn't mean that it's optimal or that we should stop trying to improve.
I didn't imply that they are, but ignoring that people have innate abilities - and by extension, innate weaknesses - that shape their choices is simplistic.
"2. The technology that enables these things is not going to disappear, of that we can be pretty sure"
I didn't say it would. However, the economic conditions that make working in fields related to it probably eventually will.
Anyway I agree, 'does it scale' is a totally valid point and I often think it myself when people give life lessons on Hacker News. Social scalability I call it. But like I said, the ins and outs of how to apply the principle to the argument at hand are just too long to get into here.
Capitalism works for more than "just a few people" "some of the time". No system is perfect.
"Since the majority of folks on HN have benefited from capitalism, it's not surprising that they are not as open to hearing criticisms of it."
and why have they benefited from it? Because they were all born rich? Capitalism benefits people that want to put the time and effort into it.
All of your responses so far have been you, crapping on capitalism. Where is your alternative?
Highly debatable. Fly to a third world sweat shop and toss this idea around a bit. I don't think the folks there will be nearly as willing to listen to you as people here have been.
"No system is perfect."
Refusing to acknowledge the flaws in said systems is not a virtue.
"and why have they benefited from it? Because they were all born rich? Capitalism benefits people that want to put the time and effort into it."
They have benefitted from it because by and large, we are all upwardly mobile, well paid individuals working in an industry currently experiencing strong market demand. They have also benefitted simply by virtue of being born in America, where they are wealthier than most people in the world by virtue of simply being here (see, I can acknowledge the strengths of Capitalism as well).
Also, this statement is essentially the just-world hypothesis.
"All of your responses so far have been you, crapping on capitalism. Where is your alternative?"
Crapping on capitalism would be silly, since I've benefitted enormously from it. That said, it would be equally silly to be blind to it's many short comings.
I never said I have an alternative, but no one will ever have one if we don't admit some of the short comings to ourselves. Just because a person can't propose an alternative, does not mean that their observations on short comings are incorrect or off base.
"Just start your business" as a mean to all ends doesn't scale. Your last paragraph also seems to ignore that, for some people, just getting by takes (sometimes a lot of) effort. You may be clueless at some key point in your life, make a bad decision and get caught in inextricable situations.
The difference between left- and right-wing views on economy boil down IMO to ethics. Both sides agree on the fact that the world is unfair, but they differ on how to address the problem.
From the extremes, the left promotes forced altruism, which has historically been proven not to work so well; whereas the right promotes egoism (relying Adam Smith's Noodly Appendage to shelter itself from remorse), which, with the ever growing rift between the very rich and the rest of the world is currently coming to its own absurd conclusion.
I'm not attacking him. His message places a lot of blame externally. That leads to not looking for solutions and building a better life.
Marxism isn't the solution. I've been to a lot of the Marxist/ex-Marxist countries, and they're all worse off than similar neighbors who didn't endure Marxism.
But that's not the big point. The big point is that placing the blame externally kills off your ability to solve problems yourself.
True. It's probably a matter of seeing where form ends and where meaning begins (which is of course based on a false dichotomy :-).
> The big point is that placing the blame externally kills off your ability to solve problems yourself.
That's your big point (and I agree with you on that).
His point is a reformulation of a key facet of Marx's analytical economic theory, with which I agree. I wouldn't however ever think of advocating any of Marx's proposed solutions, which took out the human nature out of the equation, for great disaster.
I know it may seem like a small nit to pick, but you can agree with one and disagree with the other (like me).
If all you think about is solving your own problems, in the self-help sense, then placing blame externally is bad and non-productive indeed (as it makes you passive).
But if you think about how society as a whole impacts the lives of most people, then it is an empirical issue, and I'd guess most peoples lives are rather much impacted by external factors... So considering them is sensible there (as it focuses attention on the most important factors).
Some traits are an emergent property of systems, and while it's technically correct to say that this is blaming "other people," it's not a useful idea. It's like getting mad that someone lied to you, and blaming their neurons.
The system we're in has some undesirable traits, and it's useful to think about them and how they might be fixed.
Unless you're suggesting that every person on earth should be an entrepreneur to be happy, I think it's worth thinking about how to make the rest of the opportunities more hospitable to a happy life.
This is exactly blaming other people, from the article -
> It was during the years of office work that I caught on: I got two weeks' paid vacation per year. ... In other words, no time was truly mine. My boss merely allowed me an illusion of freedom, a little space in which to catch my breath, in between the 50 weeks that I lived that he owned.
There's many ways to work full-time less than 50 weeks out of the year. Instead, the author chooses to point the blame outwards.
The whole article is heavy on that external blame. It's bad, it closes your mind off to many, many possible solutions. There's definitely lots of problems with working full time for just a paycheck, but it's unhelpful to people to wrap that in such a defeatist externally-blaming way. That kills your mind off to finding solutions.
Guess what? Your personal situation is not applicable to everyone - or, for that matter, even most people.
"But working stiffs can't afford houses now, fewer communities are clean, none are safe, and your kid's prospects are worse."
"Compare this to what my employer gets: If the company is successful, he (it's usually a he) gets a standard of living beyond my wildest dreams, including what I would consider fantastic protection for his family, and a world of access that I can only pitifully mimic by changing channels on my TV."
These are legitimate observations, not mere complaining.
Macroeconomic reasoning by analogy, especially personal ones, is not very rigorous, and can sound defeatist; the same article could perhaps be more rigorously written from a more academic perspective with statistics rather than personal analogies.
However, there is a certain subset of HN who don't seem to get macroeconomics - every time anyone discusses it, people come up with microeconomic solutions that wouldn't scale.
But if you say that, then you have already accepted a premise that the piece is calling into question, namely: why should that be the choice that everyone faces? Why should the only options be self-sacrifice to the drudgery of the rat race for the sake of security, or a different kind of self-sacrifice for a different reward, that of "independence"? Why should we structure our society so that, for the average person, self-sacrifice is the only way to survive, much less get ahead?
To say that there's a better way, but that the better way involves social changes that a single person can't simply choose to make for herself, is not just to whine and blame others. It's a reasonable criticism of our economic, social and political institutions -- one worthy of debate, no doubt, but not worthy of dismissal.
Why should we structure our society so that, for the
average person, self-sacrifice is the only way to
survive, much less get ahead?
You could get ahead of where you were last year.
A rising tide lifts all boats.
Do you have an alternative? Humans have tried many different methods over many thousands of years and our current system is the result of trying and failing many, many times. It's the most fair and allows pretty much anyone to be successful.
Life is difficult because we have more freedoms. We don't have someone making all of the decisions for us (which might be easier), but the result is more choice. If you don't make the right choices, you could end up living on the street or in poverty. Buy you could also end up with lots of money and a nice life.
I suppose an alternative would be no choice. You are forced to work for the government.
I'm not the parent poster, but I suggest that co-ops have led to greater employee satisfaction. There are also non-co-op companies where employees all have a say in business decisions, and they have done well and have great employee satisfaction and retention.
The current (big) business climate dictates that the sole purpose of a company is to maximize shareholder value at all times, at all costs. I suggest that the purpose of a company is to provide value to all stakeholders, and find a healthy balance.
This solves the moral hazard problem quite well.
I have a feeling that all of these ideas that you and many others want to try have already been tried. It's resulted in the type of company structures we have today.
Personally, I've been involved in enough groups and organizations to know that not everyone should have a say in business decisions. Lots of people have ridiculous ideas and it would result in the downfall of the group/company (I've seen it happen). Other people just aren't interested. They want to collect their paycheck and go home.
"The current (big) business climate dictates that the sole purpose of a company is to maximize shareholder value at all times, at all costs. I suggest that the purpose of a company is to provide value to all stakeholders, and find a healthy balance."
You can start a company right now that does this. Why not try your theories out? That's the beauty of our current free system (at least in the US). You can try out ideas that may or may not work without having to force everyone to abide by your rules.
"I suggest that the purpose of a company is to provide value to all stakeholders, and find a healthy balance."
This should be up to the person that owns the company. I don't like the idea of forcing others to my ideals.
Yes, of course. They're all around us. We focus on Googles, Facebooks, Chevrons, and so on, but there are examples to be found of more diverse ways of conducting business.
I would like to provide you an example I read about, perhaps a year ago, of a Midwest company where all of the employees gather with the directors to discuss and vote on important decisions. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to dig it up.
In Germany, as an another sort of example, it's (sometimes?) legally required to have employee representation on the supervisory board (http://www.biscayneconsulting.net/images/laborfuerst.pdf). Compare this with the common US system of the staff elite, conducting business decisions behind closed doors, leaving the employees wholly unaware of their own future.
> I don't like the idea of forcing others to my ideals.
It's not like I'm suggesting some sort of government mandate. Creating awareness and subsequent social pressure can cause tremendous change. While the definition of a corporation is generally static, trends in corporate behavior and general concepts of priorities change over time. Look at 'shareholder value' in Wikipedia, for example.
I do agree that this is up to the corporate founder(s). However, I think that Americans are generally unaware that there are other systems which may be perfectly viable, and yield a greater quality of life for everyone involved. I also think that current interpretation of laws has led to a rather odd system, where corporate directors make decisions which are distinctly bad for long-term business, for the sake of satisfying shareholders and securing short-term, personal gain.
As for starting a company to embody my beliefs, I have. Even if successful, though, I won't have enough capital and momentum to demonstrate any of this for some number of years. Until then, it's just small-business-as-usual. :-)
These are highly debatable points.
I don't see any debating going on with your post.
It seems to me as though we've tried 'kings/dictators' lots of times, and we've watched communism devolve into 'kings/dictators', and we may very well be in the process of watching capitalism devolve into 'kings/dictators' as wealth and political power seem to being concentrated more and more in the hands of a small group.
I personally agree that blaming others doesn't help. Each individual makes their own decision in the end.
Except that most people are forced to go through more than a decade of training to accept employment by others and do as they are told. That puts people at a disadvantage when it comes to learning how to act independently.
The solution may be for each person to make their own choices, but it doesn't help to pretend that there are no forces working against that.
Why is it concentrated into a small group? Everyone seems to think the answer is to take the money by force from the people that earned it and give it to the people that "need" it.
"Except that most people are forced to go through more than a decade of training to accept employment by others and do as they are told. That puts people at a disadvantage when it comes to learning how to act independently."
They aren't forced, they choose to make this decision. Anybody can start a company and make money (and not work for anyone), but much fewer choose to go down this path. It's because it takes too much work. Sacrificing your free time for something that may or may not succeed isn't easy. I've been doing it for the past 5 years and I'm only now actually making a profit.
Another problem I've noticed is that many people give up too easily. They want success right now..and if it doesn't happen, they deem it as a failure.
"The solution may be for each person to make their own choices, but it doesn't help to pretend that there are no forces working against that."
This solution is already available and working.
Of course they weren't earned.
"that school is optional for kids who don't like following silly or time-wasting instructions."
No, but I do have a problem with the teacher's unions. It's the reason shitty teachers continue to stay employed in our school systems.
I actually wish that parents had the option of taking their tax dollars and using it toward a private school. It might force school systems to actually improve, or lose funding. People sure hate monopolies, but don't mind when the government essentially does the same exact thing.
Not 'everyone' thinks this. It's good to be cognizant of Marx and Smith et al., but sooner or later you have to stop thinking in dichotomies and take off the training wheels.
"Anybody can start a company and make money (and not work for anyone), but much fewer choose to go down this path. It's because it takes too much work. Sacrificing your free time for something that may or may not succeed isn't easy. I've been doing it for the past 5 years and I'm only now actually making a profit."
You do realize that you're contradicting yourself here? How can anyone start a company and make money, and yet it's hard work and may fail? How can anyone start a company when many people barely have the free time you talk of sacrificing?
It seems to me that this line of thinking is ultimately just asking for the removal of choice entirely. If you 'get ahead' without any self-sacrifice then you either managed this solely through an act of wishing or entirely on the backs of others. Is a world without choice preferable? Is it meaningful to ask the question when reality is clearly otherwise?
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/frzzq/iama_prolific_du...
"I pay you to work 8 hours and you're on Hacker News for 6 of them. Close that browser and get back to work."
(btw, I also don't see employers as stealing life from employees)
I would use 'fraud' instead of 'theft', though in reality it's close enough.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ventura
Flashtastic personal site, here:
Which, I guess, is exploitation :)
1 point by foljs 43 minutes ago | link [dead]
It's also easy to believe that what goes on in your small part of the world is according to the "fundamental principles of human society".
Most of the shit you take from your employers wouldn't fly on advanced Western European (inc. Scandinavian) countries.
To quote G. Bernard Shaw, "he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature."
It has nothing to do with whatever he posted in this thread.
Now I don't know a lot of math, but even I know that 2 goes into 10... FIVE times! They are charging me FIVE times what it cost them to make that meal!
Sure, they came up with the money to open the restaurant, and the time to make the meal, but does that give them the right to rip me off? Because I spent my life earn my money, and by stealing my money THEY ARE STEALING MY LIFE!
Now you could say that I could always go and open my own restaurant, but that would require credit which THEY wouldn't give me, and ripping off other people, which I refuse to do.
Cooking? What's cooking? Never heard of it.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Freeganism
Note: these ideas do not necessarily reflect the views of the management
Well that seems reasonable.
The reason an owner is entitled to higher pay is that they are also entitled to no pay or negative pay.
My father in law is a partner in a law firm. For the past year he has made less money than his non-partner associates, working on half salary to compensate for a lack of revenue. The working drone is much more protected against speed bumps. A bad month generally won't result in a pay cut or layoffs for the bottom of the food chain. It does directly affect the business owners. That's the risk/reward payoff.
I can see people getting a stuck-in-a-machine-with-a-stacked-deck feeling at a lot of large companies, because many sort of are giant, dysfunctional, bureaucratic machines. Coupled to that, many people see working for a large corporation as their only practical option.
Of course we know that it is possible to start out with little (YC is the living proof of that), but that might only be exceptions to the rule. I am not yet sure that our society really is not skewed. Or at least there might not be a universal law protecting the chances for the "small people". It seems possible that in a few years time, Apple Facebook and Google control the internet and again the options of the small people will be reduced to low-margin sharecropping.
Atm I am leaning to the belief that chances are good enough. If that is the case, the only sensible estimate for the fair price of work seems to be market value. I have yet to see another definition of fair that works. So if the employers can get away with paying their employees little money, it must be because the market does not afford more. There might be millions of jobless waiting to take over their jobs, for example - what would the jobless think about the fair price for a job?
Then again, politics define at least some of the rules of the market (as an extreme example, government could decree a maximum wage) . But if the author thinks the market is broken, he should say so, and state in what way it is broken and how it could possibly be fixed. Just calling somebody a thief doesn't accomplish anything.
It sounds like this guy expects a cut of the profits for just working, which will never happen (unless you are the government).
He doesn't like working for anyone, yet he does nothing to actually change his situation except blame anyone and everyone for his problems. He reminds me of the person that says that wealth and becoming rich is 'just luck'.
"You are giving your life away"
If you change it that way, then I agree 100%.
This line:
"Do you expect us to be forever passive while you get rich stealing our lives?"
Really bothered me. There's nothing wrong with getting rich, and there's nothing wrong with paying people what they're willing to work for. Instead of placing the blame on someone else, perhaps people like this should look inward.
This is where people miss something important, in my opinion. On the surface there's nothing wrong with paying people what they're willing to work for. But when you dig a little deeper, "what they're willing to work for" is really just a proxy for market forces and labor supply and demand. Just because someone accepts working for a certain price doesn't mean it's what they wanted. If they enjoy putting food on the table, they have surprisingly little choice.
It's just that simple then? Starting a business is a risky and difficult proposition, and few people are cut out for it - and of those, even fewer realistically have the option to do so. Not everyone can build their way out of a problem, and it has little to do with their free will. If that's the case you can't argue that it's their "choice."
There seems to be this ever present assumption on the Hacker News forums that if you don't like your job, why, it's just as easy as putting together a CRUD app and iterating until you get customers.
It's not. Plenty of people try the "build something" option and never get anywhere close to being paid what they're worth. You just don't hear about them because no one wants to hear about someone who tried and didn't make it.
"It's not up to me, as a boss, to take care of someone."
No one is implying that it is - but they are implying that that's part of the problem right there - a system where no one has to care about anyone else, only exploit them.
Both have benefits, and both have risks. There's no easy ticket, at least in this life, so employer and employee have to meet in the middle. The market helps that happen.
You had me until your last point, which was when you used the term exploit. I think that tells the tale right there.
How exactly is that not exploitation? What would you call it?
"The market helps that happen."
The market helps whoever has the most money, or the most of a scarce resource.
I think a big part of the issue is our economy isn't aimed at letting everyone live like a king for just breathing, it's aimed at maximizing how fast we can transform raw resources into things people want and maximizing how much stuff we can get people with money to want to want.
The slog from subsistence to utopia is, and will be, accomplished one step at a time. Improved productivity (often achieved through the transformation of raw materials), increases output relative to effort and time spent working. The dividends paid by this improved productivity is almost always reinvested, typically by reducing effort, but maintaining (or increasing) time.
tl;dr the economy is very much aimed at letting everyone live like a king just for breathing, but breathing alone is not yet productive enough to satisfy anyone's needs.
This is patently untrue based on my own personal experience but forget me, to just cite two of the many famous examples that immediately come to mind:
1) Zappos gives their employees complete freedom in how to do their job and has succeeded wildly.
2) Google pays their employees quite a bit in salary and perks and is one of the most successful companies in the world.
The whole piece is full of claims that are provably false and claims about how it is impossible to fix it. Sure, many companies treat their employees like cogs in a machine. I worked for one. Then I started my own company to do things differently and I was able to. It wasn't easy but compared to anywhere else in the space-time continuum I feel like we, in 2011 in the United States, are in one of the best environments for entrepreneurship.
For example: "you'll find yourself having to treat others - your employees - as much like slaves as you can get away with"
No. You won't find yourself having to do anything like that. There are well known companies that don't do that and make tonnes of money. That is what I am arguing.
Just noticed (1990) in the title. I am not sure it was there before. Either the title was updated or I missed it. In any case, the article makes more sense if you take that into account.
Work has never been my purpose in life so much as a means to an end. I've never been a "drone" so much as a wanderer that has stopped to warm his hands by the fire of a camp. If/when I don't like what I do anymore, I will simply cease to do it and wander on to the next thing. There is always a way to survive, though it may not always be obvious (and sometimes may not even be legal.)
At some point, many people find a person or group of people that they decide to center their life around, and put down lasting ties, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But that kind of life does require more planning and forethought, and often a lot more concessions to their own personal wants and needs. If you're fine with that and what you get in return (family and friends), then you never become a drone. If you're not fine with that, then you have to decide what it is that you DO want, and go after it.
Life is about taking pride in what you do and going after what you want, not about whining, me me me.
It pains me to say this, but this sentiment strikes me as seriously naive. Plenty of people work like animals, are driven like crazy, and have "vision." And for quite a few of them, their employer could give two craps.
Dismissing what he says is dismissing philosophy or sociology, disciplines that for their very nature do not accept the status quo and want to test the rules our world is based on.
By the way, after reading some of his writing, I can say that he writes really damn well.
When did we forget the difference between problems and conditions? Problems are things with solutions within our power. Conditions are things without solutions within our power.
I feel the author could benefit greatly by learning how to determine what could be solved with one's own effort--and an employer stealing life away is solvable, IMHO, in numerous ways.
There is no theft, just voluntary trade. He exchanges his time and effort for a pay check and then blames his employer for the deal he accepted.
Some people are ragging on him here for being lazy in his career; I'm going to call him on being unbelievably lazy in running this whole spiel as if he just thought of all these ideas himself.
There isn't the slightest acknowledgement that there's huge branches of modern thought that deal with this very problem using countless different approaches and reaching countless different conclusions. This isn't to say that all that thought is useful or contains a helpful path to reform, but ignoring it completely is just dumb.
He's either atrociously undereducated or extremely disingenuous, take your pick.
-10 more points for talking about everything as if it's specific to America and the particular timeframe.
Furthermore, maybe he does, but I wouldn't call him 'lazy' for not providing some sort of citation: there's enough cultural baggage associated with Marx that as soon as you say that word, a certain portion of your audience's brains turn off.
Better to be 'lazy' and possibly reach some of those people than not.
What's the point of 'reaching' people if you've got so little new to say? Its not a matter of 'citation', it's a matter of acknowledging that there are a host of proposed solutions (and critiques of critiques, and so on) out there. By pretending that none of it exists, you wind up with a tl;dr column that says what's been said before.
His contribution is in fact a subtraction from the sum total of human knowledge, in that the only thing original about it is wrong - the notion that the phenomenon that he talks about has something specifically to do with America between 1950-1990.
He was either 'failing to read anything', or, more likely, reading a fair bit and intentionally stripping all reference to this existing knowledge out of his column for whatever reason. The result was unsurprisingly sophomoric, which I suppose is why it has 150 points on HN.
A better conclusion would be: "I'm giving my life to my employer, I don't like that, I better change something in my life."
2 points by foljs 52 minutes ago | link [dead]
HN is not really a good place to post this.
Here the audience is mostly aspiring "entrepreneurs" dreaming of making it big, so they are tied to the rat race and take all the "american dream" BS to heart.
Apart from a statistical insignificant minority that will "make it", the majority can always come back to it in 10-20 years, when they are bitter and wised enough. -----
HN is not amero-centric
"The American Dream BS" is not correctly stated in the original piece, thus cannot be the "BS" cannot be what HN folks want to follow
* Anyone can make it if they choose to. Not everyone succeeds on the first try, but the odds are with the person who chooses to learn from mistakes and try better the next time.
* Success is ill-defined when one makes money and prestige the only inputs. As an example of what one small subset of the world thinks, view the third quotation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_O._McKay#Quotations