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Comment by sph | Hacker News Reader

Hear me out. 40 hours dedicated to your employer, however you slice them, is modern slavery. Why the hell are we creating all this technology to slave even more, with only energy to drool in front of Netflix and repeat the next day?

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.

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Wow, 250k a year to go to work 8-5 is “modern slavery”. On a bit of a high horse there.

Slavery is quite a loaded word, agreed.

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.

Seriously. I'll take that job any day. I am in the same boat for <$150k and consider myself blessed when I'm not reading HN commenters bragging about their salary. At least you have a shot at retiring early in exchange for a set of responsibilities that plenty of people share for much less money.

It was a figure pulled out of my ass. I've never earned half that, and these days I'm eating ramen because I am not accepting the status of modern society and trying to spend all my time and mental energy to find a third way. Hence this rant.

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.

It’s totally reasonable to criticize the status quo, and to me at least it is totally okay if that is coming from a place of privilege. But there are also so many out there(most even) who can’t afford to think about anything but the next paycheck to put food on the table for their family or for themselves. I think replacing “modern slavery” with “modern society” is a great improvement! They don’t call it the rat race for nothin!

For what it's worth, there's many people who agree with you, myself included. Modern society has created unnecessary work, stressors and pressures that are quite artificial. Everybody goes along without questioning it, at least not aloud.

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.

> the world is working just fine and I am unable to adjust to it

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.

My theory is that anyone that attempts to negate another's opinion based on their 'privilege' is not worth having a conversation with. It quickly turns into a downward spiral where eventually the only ones with a valid point of view are the poorest and most wretched amongst us. Its like the people that do a stolen land acknowledgement before a meeting and then drive home in a 100k Tesla feeling smug that they made a difference.

You don't think $250k comes with high expectations as well? Salary doesn't always correlate with stress - min. wage workers are probably just as stressed, if not more -, but from my experience, my stress level has increased the more I earn. I also used to think that I'd do anything for that kind of money, but I now realize that I wouldn't.

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.

You are right, every job I have had has come with more money for the most part and more stress.

250k is peanuts compared to the value that developer creates for the company.

"Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I read HN on company time."

Oh, we agree more than we disagree.

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.

> Slaves can't quit and do something else.

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.

I get you, because I’ve been down this line of thought as well. But I’ve concluded the whip hand is not even that of society, but nature itself. Everyone is driven by the biological need to eat, at the end of the day.

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.

Those are very good questions, but here's the thing.

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.

Because money, when you have enough of it, works for you. So we do our best, in the system we were born into, to squirrel away as much money so as to be able to retire ASAP, while remaining as sane as can be.

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.

FWIW I agree with everything your saying, I think. I started out pr and only recently have had enough money to consider investing and high yield savings and bonds and all that shot, but it still gels zero sum, like inflation or the next black swan will just wipe it all out anyways if I ever try to retire and live off of what I’ve squirreled away, as sibling comment puts it.

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.

Was saying to my wife the other day that its impossible to just quit the world in the west. Even if I save enough to buy a plot of land and build a hut and can grow all of my own food. Property tax is due every year. The government refuses to allow people to just disconnect.

I don't disagree with you in principal but its hard to tell my kids to say goodbye to their friends and that we are selling the house and moving to a cheaper area where they will attend a rougher school because daddy has a philosophical objection to working for a boss.

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.

Would you prefer subsistence farming?

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