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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Is being the 50th best basketball player on the planet good enough? Why do athletes continue to dedicate their lives in the hopes of being #1?

Once your basic needs are met and you have a comfortable standard of living, everything else is a game, and people like to win. Why does anyone need a fancy car? Why does anyone need to compete with their neighbors and coworkers? Why does a billionaire need a superyacht when an adequately sized one will do? This is simply how some (or maybe even most) people are wired.

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> people like to win

True, but there are a host of other things that people like. The idea that "winning" is the ultimate goal in life is more socially induced than immanent.

If as a society we decide to foster different attitudes and goals we will obtain different outcomes and different kinds of people (to a certain extent, of course).

> The idea that "winning" is the ultimate goal in life is more socially induced than immanent.

That idea will be a lot more prevalent among people who end up being the winners than among those who don’t, at every scale. Effort doesn’t get everything but it gets a lot.

It is game with millions of human lives being destroyed as a consequence at times.

If you don't like the game, you should probably vote for politicians that change the rules. There isn't a real bound on wealth within the system we're in, until that changes this is reality and expecting people who play it to be inherently moral is naive.

Note that Im not stating a judgement either way, just pointing out how the system currently works.

as pointed out in the parent comment that started this chain, politicians are captured by the same assholes who benefit from the system, as structured. if you change the politicians, they either buy or destroy their replacements. so if the system must change, what is to be done?

On a practical level, this may or may not be true depending on the politician.

I haven't seen an actual push for "taxing the super rich" go through. Sanders ran on that and lost. Reality at the moment is that at the moment if what you said is true it wouldn't matter because Americans don't care.

Except it doesn't work since politicians themselves that benefit from the system.

Think incentives, not ideals.

This system is all encompassing, politicians are in it as well.

The only real system change is through revolution, and revolutions are never pretty.

Why would it have to be pretty?

Change needs sacrifice.

Are you ready to sacrifice yours and your family and friends convenience and comfort for system change? Because everyone will suffer in some degree until a new system takes root.

That's the hard part, I'm all up for overthrowing this shit but the consequences are always the biggest deterrent.

Humanity, the game. In the original version, conquest, you got points for taking other people’s stuff, which almost always required injuring or killing them. With the addition of the extended economic growth (capitalism) expansion pack you could gain points by making things or providing services people wanted more than what they already had.

The economic growth expansion also brings a whole lot of new ways to exploit people for points. No need anymore to kill or injure them directly, you can decide to injure millions at once through a web of complex shell companies to extract some shiny rock the other people want and play the "it's all the free market" card to not get points deducted!

Honestly, no one has ever put it this way. I like the reference to sports! I'd still be happy as a backup QB for 10 years making bank though. Cushy!

Backup qbs don’t make much more then software engineers… just saying. The league minimum is like 700k.

A third stringer might make the minimum, but the backup is very likely to start at least a game or two during the season, and is often clearing a couple million dollars in annual salary.

https://boardroom.tv/nfl-backup-qb-salaries/

The league minimum for a rookie is something like 700k. It goes up with experience/longevity.

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