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Comment by avaer | Hacker News Reader

Because people generally will not pay for others to "be". And they will not give you food or shelter if you don't pay. And the money has never been more concentrated away from the people who would prefer to just be.

If you don't self-impose, society will structurally impose it on you.

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Well of course but there are many ways to survive very close to “just being” that are seen as not fulfilling potential or a wasted life. It’s not a full binary but living close to one end is shunned and we internalize it as a waste of space when really it is more sustainable for the planet and mind.

I lament the state of the modern world too.

Unfortunately, the modern world is run not by empaths, but by psychopaths. Even if we get to a state where we look out for each other, I fear it would be quickly subverted.

I saw this video of an American tourist in the Mediterranean, stunned that people would drink one coffee for hours and didn't feel pressured to order more.

He said, back home, he would have been getting dirty looks, if he wasn't constantly justifying his existence in a place by either consuming or producing something.

That coffee shop isn't paying much rent. When your local leech increases the rent, you have to sell more coffees, and kick people out who don't buy more coffees.

To expand on this: rent is a manifestation opportunity cost for a gated resource. So one person lounging around drinking coffee is no more judged on their activity in and of itself, but compared to the other "industrious" person who might have taken their place and been more productive. This is why marginal spaces/resources not being optimized for economic output are so important to exploratory and risky endeavors: https://paulgraham.com/marginal.html

I think they own the place. Another nice thing about being Mediterranean.

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