24 year old Ogilvy China employee dies from 'overwork'
shanghaiist.com
shanghaiist.com
Most of those cases can be traced back to a previously unknown heart disease though. In general, the probability of you dieing in an accident on your way to/from work is alot higher.
The fact that i read about 3 cases of sudden cardiac arrest in very young and seemingly healthy people on HN in a rather short period is a bit discomforting though.
-David Ogilvy (from Confessions of an Advertising Man, 1963)
No, you'll die of starvation. If you're not taking in sufficient nutrients, you'll die even if you do no work at all.
http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?cid=110...
I just mean to say that China is an enormous country, and statistically these things are bound to happen. Does anyone else perceive this type of media coverage as part of a greater strategy of propagandizing or is the oversturation of news outlets just hungry for enything sensationalist to grab eyeballs? Both?
This is out of maybe 90 people working extreme hours on the two projects in question.
I read about it on HN and Reddit.
Now, if you told me he was getting in at 9 and leaving at 5 every day for 6 weeks, this would make sense and I can see how this would be problematic for Ogilvy. With what we have in this article, I think he suffered from a heart condition.
I know of a case here, the guy was one of 3 managers at a toxic company, the other 2 guys quit, and he took on their burdens. He died of a heart attack, at age 34. He thought he wasn't able to quit because of his children, but the result was obviously worse for them.
So the question becomes: How did this person get to believe that when the desires of other men are of higher priority than your own physical health.
Like cell in your own hand, it did not object when the mind decide to send the hand through the fire, he gave his life so that the whole might complete its objective. Cooperative Compliance disorder.
When gatekeepers control access to wealth, stability, and a good life - and the alternative to working for the gatekeepers is poverty and disease - you basically will do anything the gatekeepers want, because the alternative is nearly as good as death itself.
Without knowing more about this incident, it strikes me as a symptom of a broken system, not a broken man.
Advocates of liberty and privacy are constantly savaged by the media, meanwhile the erosion of personal rights continue unhindered. I sincerely hope we begin to act before it is too late.
“Fascism is a form of political and social behavior that arises when the middle class, finding its hopes frustrated by economic instability coupled with political polarization and deadlock, abandons traditional ideologies and turns, with the approbation of police and military forces, to a poorly-defined but emotionally appealing soteriology of national unity, immediate and direct resolution of problems, and intolerance for dissent.”
I will leave the drawing of parallels to the current paradigm as an exercise to the reader.
The forces in this world to mis-inform the general population on these very important subjects is so strong, that I would say most people fail to truly understand what is reality and what is fantasy.
I believe women suffer from this mental illness a lot more than men. The fact that one end of the spectrum gets to be a mental illness and the other end of the spectrum is just someone choosing to be a doormat illustrates a big problem. Either they are both mental illnesses, or they are both just ways of going about things.
Humans who always cooperate or always defy to the detriment of their own life means that the module in their brain which decides when to comply, and when to resist, is a malfunction to be corrected by available means.
You present an idea (that it might benefit people for society to consider excessive cooperation a treatable mental illness). You posit the parent article as evidence for this idea.
Potatolicious replies, expressing his doubts. He presents an idea (that the system the man was working in caused his death, not an innate psychological condition). If valid, his idea eliminates the evidence for your idea, making it less credible and no longer relevant to the article.
What I see as a rational response to this is to either point out a flaw in Potatolicious's idea (if one exists) or to introduce information that would make it so that Potatolicious's idea doesn't invalidate yours.
Instead, you restate your initial point (albeit in greater detail), and introduce a kind of argument from continuum ("if people who are excessively oppositional are medicated, why shouldn't the other end be as well?"), which, although not invalid, doesn't do anything to refute Potatolicious's point about the relevance of your argument to the parent article. Furthermore, you introduce a new opinion, which is not related to your previous points or supported by evidence, and only serves to polarize people.
I'm trying to explain this in the hope that we as a community can move toward more directed and effective debates. I hope that helped.
Potatolicious is right, that the system is partially responsible for his death. And if most of the responsibility ends up on the evil system, then it could be said his excessive compliance should be praised and admired. That compliance isn't an illness at all. He was just eaten by a larger critter than he, and used as fuel for ulterior motives.
But his claim does not invalidate mine because suppose this evil corporation is 100% guilty, and they used all the Jedi mind tricks to brainwash him into working himself to death for their own gain. He complied when he should have defied. They were offering him money, the lack of which may be as bad as death to the victim, but ultimately the source of the error was when an instruction which results in destruction was followed by the unit.
If the unit had said: "I would rather be unemployed than deal with this terrible situation", he may be alive now. He's removed from the gene pool anyway, so evolution agrees with me, whatever that subunit did, it is to be destroyed.
I'm suggesting we destroy the faulty subunits in his mind during school, by labeling "Cooperative compliance disorder" as a real thing that can remove you from the gene pool.
Even if we knew with 100% certainty that the boss played a role in this guy’s death (which we don’t), then it would be up to the DA and the court, not the angry mob with pitchforks or the cowardly script kids on 4chan.
I've been saying since the late '90s that health insurance executives should be publicly exposed when they murder people, and I still feel that way. If the courts were actually cracking down on those fuckers, then I'd say that vigilante justice is unwarranted; but how many health-insurance murderers are in prison? The fuckers kill 45,000 per year (a 9/11 every 24 days) and I don't know of one who has gone to prison.
Why do we tear the shit out of two Middle Eastern nations (one of which had nothing to do with it) over 3,000 dead but allow health insurers to kill half a million over that same decade and not even give them personal civil liability?
Unfortunately, over two centuries the rent seekers have won again, so a reboot is required. How to initiate and sustain a successful reboot is the tricky part.
I sense from your writings that you are increasingly frustrated with the current state of affairs. I just want to emphasize that you aren't the only one, and if you were to formalize your dissent into an actionable movement, many would support you. The time may have come for the Technocrat to take his place on the world stage...
A true "correction" would be bloody and very destructive, since no one in power is going to give up power willingly. They are more likely to go to the extreme and "cull" the masses to reduce what they see as the "problem".
This would work best if implemented with direct democracy and a program of lean government held liable to be fully transparent on all spending.
A blogger who goes slightly more in depth with a proposal of this idea can be found here: http://www.naturalfinance.net/2013/04/improving-economy-by-e...
Of course the currently vested interests would fight this to the grave, but there is a point at which the people will no longer suffer the reign of Feudal lords (I predict that to be about 40% unemployment, or 70% youth unemployment).
I still think that this man must be avenged, possibly many degrees up the chain. Where in the hierarchy that happens, I don't have the information that would be needed to call that shot.
A better goal in this case is getting people informed about the truths and the back stories of our nice electronic sand where they came from, who made them, in what conditions, etc.
I agree. And I'd like to see alternatives. I'm glad that China is industrializing. That's a really good thing. However, I'd prefer the option to pay $200 more for a device made in humane conditions.
Why must he be avenged? I mean, that is pretty rather strong language there. Why shouldn't his superiors just be subject to an investigation and held accountable for specific wrongs and oversights?
Michael, there's an order and law to be respected, and I think indeed you'll only find success in the fights of injustices if you walk in an avenue already established (know that this world will by and large resist most all progressive and novel ideas, you either have to disguise your ideas in sweetly packaged trojan horse forms, or have yourself backed by immense power to see any substantial change effected).
However, I'd prefer the option to pay $200 more for a device made in humane conditions.
Me too. We've gotta find some way to let the world know this.
May I have your e-mail address please? I'd like to speak to you about some things.
Is there? The people in charge of this society have made themselves above all laws and order.
If murder were truly illegal for everyone, explain health insurance. Why do rich people get to hide behind their companies when they let people die for profit? Highly inconsistent, that is.
I think indeed you'll only find success in the fights of injustices if you walk in an avenue already established
Well, I have mixed feelings about that. Nonviolent overthrow of an oppressor is always better than the violent kind, but violence is better than doing nothing and letting an evil elite reign.
If there's a nonviolent way to get rid of the current global elite, I'd love to hear it. Technology is supposed to deliver on that; we don't "overthrow" them, we just outperform them. In practice, though, they seem to have redefined the rules to suit them (see: VC-istan) and keep us "in our place".
You can only tackle a problem once you acknowledge it exists. Unfortunately, I have yet to see that critical mass on HN regarding the issues you are passionate about. Until that happens, you will just be seen as a pessimistic contrarian by such folk.
I recommend that anyone who fiercely disagrees, or is confused by, Michael's viewpoints on this issue to read Chomsky's Understanding Power.
HN is about what hackers find interesting. A fair number of us have endorsed this particular topic and resulting discussion, enough to suggest that people find it interesting for one reason or another.
As a thought experiment, do you think it would be that difficult to get, say, 15 or 20 people who love professional bike racing to sign up, and coordinate voting up an article about Bradley Wiggins' difficulties at the Giro d'Italia, which some of us hackers find to be very interesting reading?