I know that I would much prefer to work 4 10 hour days than 5 8 hour days. I want to have as many days in a row as I can that I don't have to give to an employer.
People should have the time to explore their passions, projects and families more than a couple hours every day. Not dedicate half of their waking life, their mental and physical prime, to someone else's idea for food money.
Something snapped for me the past few years, but I'd rather eat ramen, than get $250k a year and expected to be at my employer's beck and call 8am-5pm. Go be an hungry artist. Go work for yourself on the things you care about.
The fact that pretty much no one seems to see anything wrong with this terrifies me. Being a corporate drone has become the norm.
My point is your time on this Earth is more valuable than $250k. It is not being a slave, but it is not being a free man either.
There are people in abject poverty that do not have to ask for permission to anyone to spend two weeks doing whatever they want, or to end the day early today.
I do not believe freedom is one-dimensional, on one side the Egyptian slave, on the other, the FAANG engineer. The latter has only a theoretical ownership of their time, but in reality, to keep a roof over their head, society pretty much favours only one choice: As much time as you can give, for as little money as you would take.
I am not prescribing anything to anybody. It is just sad that criticising the status quo is seen as proof of privilege. It is ungrateful of me to entertain the idea that life can be much more, as I have at times enjoyed the fruits of our modern society... Seems like a convenient ad hominem.
I will admit that I am by nature someone who takes the alternative path. It's entirely possible that the world is working just fine and I am unable to adjust to it. However, I can't change my nature and have to find a different way to live, because there is no other option for me.
It is not. Believing that everything is just fine would be actual proof of privilege. Because the average Westerner has a roof over their head, heating, food and are chronically dissatisfied, depressed, purposeless, powerless against their bosses and those in high power that rule over us (yet they tell you your vote counts!). But somehow they are shamed by their peer if they voice their dissatisfaction, and told "oh, you would prefer a life of subsistence? Because that is the only path!"
Where have all the philosophers, activists, idealists of the 19th century gone? Those that thought of a better world, workers to be respected, a fair economy? Many would like to think we have arrived, that this is the fated utopia they have worked for.
Nonsense.
This discussion probably reeks of "first world problems" to people who have different stress tolerance levels or preferences in life. However, be mindful of the people around you who are functionally capable of earning $250k, but mentally more fragile to the stressors that come with that level of responsibility. There's many of us who would turn that money down, happily.
I'm in my 20s and I've realized that there is little point in killing myself to retire early at 40. By that time, the best years of my life have passed. For what? All to earn a high salary and be proud, while hating my life.
The only part I really take issue with is the notion that working for someone is modern slavery. I don't think it's anything even close that. Slaves can't quit and do something else. They can't even change who their "owners" are.
> I'd rather eat ramen, than get $250k a year and expected to be at my employer's beck and call 8am-5pm.
I know a lot of people who make that exact choice.
> The fact that pretty much no one seems to see anything wrong with this terrifies me.
I think lots of people see the problem and fundamentally agree with you. The issue is that solutions to the problem are difficult for most people.
I discussed the slavery point below, but here let me defend its usage: it is slavery if you consider the society as a whole, not just your job.
Chances are, if you don't want to work for a year, you probably can't afford housing because you are renting. Statistically, you do not even have money to support yourself for a year. Culturally, we do not share food with strangers and neighbours, unless it's a particular event.
One side of my family is from equatorial Africa. My great-grandfather had a hut made with his own hands, and readily available food. If he wanted he could have spent his time philosophising on nature.
We have invented machines so our quality of life is much higher than him, but in exchange our time is not our own. Statistically speaking, the average Westerner, if they don't think about earning money for a year, they end up without a house, possibly starving. That fate, the spectre of that inhuman life, is the metaphorical whip of our master.
The choice is made for us.
So how did your great grandfather eat? Where did this readily available food come from?
Would other people provide him with endless food while he did this philosophizing? I imagine that any society, whether advanced megalopolis or tribal village, has a limit to their generosity towards complete nonproducers and would eventually demand something out of them, even if it’s just the output of that philosophizing. Someone had to work to produce that readily available food, I would think.
If he grew/harvested his own food, then he’d be lucky if he never experienced a stressful or even deadly event of pestilence, drought, or even injury to himself rendering him incapable of doing the quite hard work of growing and harvesting it.
Producing food is hard work and modern technological capitalism can be seen as a process of creating more and more layers of abstraction between food producers and the mouths that need to be fed, and doing it more efficiently at that to generate more spare time for other activities like leisure or philosophizing.
What even is the point of all this technology is the only option is a free life of prehistoric subsistence, or the drone life of a desk worker?
I refuse to accept this false binary choice. We are not made into drones because the machines and industry needs constant maintenance. Society with its artificial busywork and bullshit rules is the reason one has to work 40 hours a week. We have to earn a ton of money because, at the end of the day, half of it goes into the pocket of plutocrats, not to keep the gears oiled.
This is a huge topic for a comment on a forum thread, I am just trying to understand why other people deep into technology, automation, like us, are unable to visualize a world where technology works for us. Frees us from nature. Because right now we are using technology against ourselves. To control us, to make us more productive, to make our bosses more rich and politicians more powerful.
Technology is a tool. A force multiplier. But we are not using to increase our living standards, only to keep this circus turning, at our expense.
Technology these days is just icing on the cake. We don't need faster computers or ChatGPT to be able to feed all of humanity. We've been there for decades.
It feels like there is no escape from work. Either you’ll spend every minute fishing for berries and hunting, or tilling sowing and reaping, or working at a desk and grocery shopping.
I truly admire the ascetics that give it all up and put their fate at the mercy of chance.
If you are single and just responsible for yourself though, more power to you. Before I had kids I did something similar. I hit an absolute wall. Took a 50% paycut and left development. It was pretty good for a a couple years and then I started getting promoted and then got screwed over by office politics and started hating it. I went back to programming after that and the first job back was awesome. Very low pay but no crazy deadlines, small team, etc. Then I had kids and needed more $ so started job hopping. Now its just the suck every day.