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Comment by Clubber | Hacker News Reader

>downright offensive at worst

People are so easily offended these days.

Having said that, if you work for a company and you get fired and blacklisted, you still don't eat. If you work for a wage, you HAVE to work for somebody or you starve. If you work for somebody, that somebody has a lot of sway over how your life looks. Better be good at kissin' ass.

Also, if you don't think the US healthcare industry will take every penny of your life's earnings upon your eventual and inevitable deterioration, you're fooling yourself.

FWIW, I'm a wage slave too.

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You’re a wage slave when you work for yourself too, probably even more so. You can’t even completely take a week or two off in most cases. Your work eats your entire life.

>You’re a wage slave when you work for yourself too, probably even more so.

It certainly can be like that especially early on. Hopefully you would grow enough to hire good people to manage the business. If you work for somebody though, that will never happen.

>It certainly can be like that especially early on.

All the slavery with none of the wage.

>If you work for somebody though, that will never happen.

The alternative to starting a business that you'll hope will be self-sustaining and still earn you a respectable living is to work for the highest bidder, invest, and become financially independent. Odds of the latter are much higher for the average software engineer than the former.

There’s also quite a few jobs where programmers can automate away a good portion of their work

So the goal is to go from wageslave to wageslave owner?

> If you work for a wage, you HAVE to work for somebody or you starve.

You really don't. There is no way you can starve in the USA unless you do it on purpose.

5 million households in the USA constantly have poor food security. About double that had intermittently poor food security. I do not think they are doing it on purpose.

And if they went to any hospital starving they would get fed.

Please note the literal use of the word 'starve'.

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