Why would anyone be surprised? Most people who strike it rich weren't working for the money anyway, so their incentives aren't going away. The question is whether (and how much) money will make the prospect of spending it instead of working for the rest of their lives more attractive than what made them work (presumably hard) in the first place...
Very interesting,I wonder how would this tie into a possible basic income scenario?Or the incentives of rich people are different from the average Joe`s?
Is this a feel good piece for the working class? Don't get me wrong - I have no experience with getting rich overnight (not that I'm not trying).
However, going back to employment seems like an utter waste of a millionaire's time - I have loads of plans which would make the world a better place, for example: launching an incubator/hacker camp for troubled kids in the poor area where I'm from. I only need maybe 1 or 2 millions to do that.
Why would I go back to working for a company where I have way less power to change basically anything, really?
I don't think this is suggesting that people would go back to conventional employment, more that they're not going to just kick back and relax for the rest of their lives. You're example of going to do something useful would still count as work to most people.
For most people I know, when they say they wish they had enough money that they didn't have to work, what they mean is that they wish they had enough money to escape the wage-labor relationship with an employer.
Indeed. There are plenty of things I could be doing, such as writing books or teaching martial arts, but there's not enough money in these activities to pay for food and accommodation.
I see. I think the two are really not the same. One is essentially total freedom, the other (conventional employment) is on a scale of 'do as you are told' - 'you 've got some say in how things are being run'.
Freedom in capitalism is financial independence. Yet most will never be free. Isn't that a failure? We can do whatever we want! Oh but we can't afford it.
If you launch an incubator/hacker camp for troubled kids, you'll realise you need a legal structure (company, nonprofit, whatever) and some employees. You want to control what's done with your money, and the structure needs a director/ceo/chairperson, so that should probably be you - right?
Congratulations, you now have a job and you belong to the ranks of "millionaires who didn't quit working for long" :)
I have a similar (possible) goal when I hit financial independence. I would love to run a non-profit that helps level out diversity in tech by teaching kids how to use a computer, program, and hack. I was very lucky to grow up with my own computer in my room.
> However, going back to employment seems like an utter waste of a millionaire's time
It's also a blocked opportunity for someone else. For every millionaire who clings on to his senior executive job even though he doesn't need to, there's a non-millionaire who is not getting that senior executive promotion this year.
I wish the article quoted statistics on how many rich people actually quit (and I mean really rich, not $5million, which isn't really enough to retire comfortable for life these days).
Some people don't make that over a lifetime. Problem kicks in when person switches lifestyle gear all the way up and spends it all in 5 years.
$200K * 20 years...
It would be enough for vast majority of people, but the problem is that if you suddenly get $5M, be it through inheritance or lottery or any sort of "sudden enrichment event", most people just go and spend it all in few years. There's a huge temptation to buy your way into a higher social bracket, but it only works if you have an income matching that bracket, otherwise that pot of money is going to run out sooner or later.
There was a TV show once, that interviewed rich people. Some lottery winners, some who made company money, etc.
One of the lottery winners made 2m and started his own business, some car workshop stuff and went bankrupt 2 years later.
A couple made ... I don't now >10m and the first time they visited them, they told that they will keep working in their normal jobs because they like them. Half a year later, when they got interviewed, they both quit their jobs and were building a house and the guy was always talking about that he fears it wouldn't get big enough.
One guy made big money by renting out building equipment, he had a big nice house which he let build completely to his wishes, but lost everything to bad investment. They even visited his old house and the new owner let the camera team in.
The new owner also said, if he would get rich again, he would sell him his house back, which I found kinda nice. But I always have the feeling that people who got rich are simply lucky, even if they didn't get it through the lottery. So he probably knew that guy wouldn't get rich in this life again.
If you 30 and get 5million you would have more than 5k per month even if you get 100 years old and didn't invest it somewhere. How is this not comfortable?
People don't understand time and age. You are right that 5k is more than enough money to live off of, if you are wise with how you spend it. It sounds to me like Keith has problems being creative and creating meaning in his life outside of work. No one wants deadlines reviews or any of that. People want to work, but on their own terms. That's what people want. Especially creative people.
More accurately, $5m invested properly (low-fee index funds, real estate etc) will yield approximately %2-3 annually after inflation (assuming "normal" inflation in the %3-5 range). That works out to around $100k annually, again inflation adjusted. Nothing's certain in life but $100k/year, inflation-adjusted should probably be enough for most people.
If you had $5M, you could buy 87719 shares of Wells Fargo at market rates. Those would yield .38 per share quarterly or $133,333 annually. You'd likely get annual dividend increases and wind up with around $13M if you compounded at a rate of 5% for 20 years. That assumes no dividend reinvestments--and 5% is conservative. It could be as high as 10%. In that case you'd have over $33M at the end.
Sure, you'd want to diversify, but I'm just making the case that it's more than enough to live off of for the rest of your life.
You could also buy 4 or 5 McDonalds restaurants or 20-25 houses and watch them appreciate while living off rental income.
Sure, but that's super ultra boring, and it doesn't improve your life in any way right this second. But...you could go and buy yourself that $1M house in a nice area. And a nice car for you and your partner. And mum's house needs fixing, we can do full remodeling. A friend has a business idea, let's chuck some money his way. Or better yet, let's invest some of that money into a cupcake business you always wanted to open.
Then poof, 2 years later that money is all gone.
Like, I seriously doubt that my first thought after winning the lottery would be to go and talk to an investment banker.
I don't know your neighbors case, but there are plenty of wealthy McDonalds franchise owners. I got this off Google just now (from McDonalds)
An average McDonald's franchise makes between $500,000 and $1 million in profits per year as of 2013, according to McDonald's Franchise Disclosure Document. For restaurants open at least 1 year in the United States, average total revenues are $2.6 million.
Neighbor does not live in the US but in a country with strict employment law and higher operating costs. I don't know the details of how a McDonalds franchise works, I have only eaten in one twice in >40 years alive, the last time being 25 years ago, but I imagine a fairly large chunk of those profits go to the MCD HQ, some go toward paying off the loan required to buy into the franchise which is personal debt not McDs debt, and by the looks of my neighbor some goes toward the staff eating the stock. I have no doubt fast food places make money, they are everywhere, but the hours are terrible and the lifestyle sucks.
Sorry, it took me a moment to stop laughing. Revenue is not profit for starters, and "profit" can be defined in so many ways. A more accurate representation for a franchisee is "total operating income" which is usually between 5-10% of net sales. This is what the owner/operator takes home before taxes. With net sales averaging $2.7m, that take home is usually around $150K. Definitely not peanuts, but considering the cost of a franchise and the amount of work involved, not living high on the hog.
The statement off the McDonalds website doesn't imply revenue = profit. There are a variety of net margins that differ by industry, and I wouldn't be surprised if the net income (what you call "take home pay") would be $150K.
The franchising royalties would be deducted before that net income. $150,000K * 5 is enough to live "high on the hog", especially since you wouldn't have to save it given you own 5 McDonalds you could sell, probably for a large profit down the line too.
Sure if you magically own five franchises; in that case you've already invested at least $5m, if not double that.
I can't find the link you're referencing, since the first return on Google isn't linked to McDonalds directly, but McDonalds franchisees and managers refer to one measure of "profit" as profits after controllables (PAC). This is nothing like net operating income.
Please refer to the parent thread, where we're talking about what you'd do with $5M. You really should read the conversation and get background on it before you jump onboard and try making others look stupid. You make yourself look dumb, or a troll, or both.
>You could also buy 4 or 5 McDonalds restaurants or 20-25 houses and watch them appreciate while living off rental income.
Even better would be the Chick-fil-a. They only cost 4K to start and it will give you something to do for 3 years while they put you through training and you work at various locations. It is a lot cheaper than other franchises but could pay out close to as much.
Have to agree .. I'm looking at my Steam back catalogue wondering how I'm ever going to find the time to play everything .. And it's almost time for another Xmas sale!
I'm north of 550, about half unplayed at this point.
After a grueling year of work ending in a layoff in 2007, I took a full year off in 2008. Played a lot of games, but also watched 4 films a day, became competent with several instruments, read a lot and started myself on the path to changing careers.
I have a stack of technical books on topics I'm deeply interested in that I don't have time to read. At this point, I see work as a major impediment to doing what I want with my life. It's a problem that I desperately want to solve, but I don't really have hope for a solution. I'm on the low-end of developer salaries.
Well, you managed to take a year off work which is pretty impressive! I've never had a year off and don't expect to until I retire :( You could always try remote work + moving to a cheaper country. Alternatively, if you can make money doing something you enjoy, it won't really feel like work.
So, I'm only six months in the wilderness, and hindsight may well prove me naive, but I never want to sit behind a desk again.
I left the business I founded 11 years ago 6 months ago - not because it was failing - they go from strength to strength - but rather because it was making me miserable - the fun freewheeling startup completely metamorphosed into a serious organisation complete with office politics and all the rest.
I cashed out for a relatively meagre sum - halved my net worth in the process, which now sits at about £1m 40:60 cash:assets. I'm 33. I plan to see every nook and cranny of the world and to take my time about it - bought an old Land Rover, driving everywhere.
A big part of the reason I left was identity. I had come to realise that my company was my identity, my life, my entire existence, and that I had remoulded myself continually to embody the company as it morphed and grew. Eventually I could no longer identify myself within the layers of inherited identity, and had lost all passion for the things that once drove me. I was CTO, not human, not alive.
Since leaving I'm slowly remembering life - despite having had time off over the last decade, there was only one one month period five years ago when I was uncontactable - other holidays were consumed by me staring at my phone and muttering curses as I'd hammer out emails.
It's going to take years to shed the burden, but already after six months I find myself slowly becoming less neurotic, less anxious, although I still have nightmares every night like clockwork.
The capital I have is not enough to retire on in the uk, but it is enough to retire in many other parts of the world.
Then again, I've always been pathologicallly lazy, and status has always been no more than a game to me, and I derive my identity (well, I did before I drowned it) very idiopathically, so perhaps I am an oddity rather than the norm.
This has ended up a ramble. I suppose my gist is that I currently believe it better to derive identity from something other than a manufactured corporate persona, or a job role. I just smile and say I'm unemployed.
Well done on buying an old Land Rover, and welcome to the club. The satisfaction I get from the upkeep and tinkering with mine is at least as great as the satisfaction I get from work. Honestly, if I never had to work there would another Land Rover and full rebuild. And I'd get to work on those side projects if I had the time. I could be very productive if I wasn't having to earn a living.
I had a series IIa back when I was myself and before I became a drone in the collective - rebuilt it completely, chassis, wiring loom, bulkheads, etc., fairey overdrive, loved it. Sold it during the early days of the business to be able to eat and pay for the internet connection.
I want to write. I want to be highly impractical and live in the mountains away from the madness. I recognise that what I want may well change, and that's OK too.
I'm advantaged financially but I've paid for it with far more than time. I suppose it all balances out.
How funny - I used to fly from Kinloss and Lossie as a cadet. It's a '87 110, in beautiful slightly weathered nick as it used to be someone else's expedition vehicle - chassis goes ping, not thud, engine runs smooth and burns less oil than expected, snorkelled up etc. gators on the steering joints and chrome balls. Need a winch, hi-lift and all that jazz, and we hit the road in May next. If anything I'm having to resist going overboard, as the last road trip (that month of freedom from the digital shackles five years back) was in a merc 190e, and it covered the 8000 miles to Kyrgyzstan, even if the exhaust system and "sump guard" (plastic excuse for) didn't!
Good for you. I used to want the big payoff myself too, but have come to set a similar goal to what you've ended up with.
£1m may not be "enough" in the UK, depending on how you want to live, but it's not that far off even in the UK if you structure your life accordingly (I recently reviewed my finances, and realised I spent more on trivial luxuries than what I used to live off total 10-15 years ago..).
In any case, it's "close enough" even in the UK - at least outside of the most expensive areas -, that it can get someone that big step from depending on a job to being able to take work now and again or pick more fulfilling options that might not be able to pay the bills on their own.
If you're in tech, as well, there's a lot of flexibility in picking up occasional well paid contracts. I just took on a contract from a guy in a similar position who'd just randomly travelling and doing contracts now and again to replenish his funds, who left the contract in question because he's going to spend 6 months somewhere he can't depend on getting an internet connection...
For my part I'm working my ass off at the moment, largely because I finally see an end-goal of a "modest" early "retirement" like yours in sight. For my part, I'll probably still keep "working", as I enjoy a lot of what I do, but there's a huge difference between "working" on projects that feel like you're playing and where there's no pressure to make it pay off, and having to deliver or not be able to pay the bills...
I also confounded identity & work and burned vacation time with stress and anger. I've also quit, though not able to go into the wilderness, at least in the natural park sense. Not working, as mentioned in the article, brings about its own form of wilderness.
Reminds me, I once tried a 36 hour day routine. What drove me nuts and eventually to quit was not eating lunch at noon everyday.
I married my girlfriend in the midst of turning everything upside down in August - after five years I realised that if she had managed to stick with me through my increasing derangement, there was nothing to wait for.
It has been a fairly... tough is the wrong word... diplomatic? discoursive? few months, but despite having just started a promising career, she's game for trying something completely different - if it all goes pear shaped then she can start afresh, as she'd invested only six months and emotional energy, as can I - but while we're unburdened by sprogs and gammy hips or what have you problems of age we agreed on taking the opportunity.
So it takes compromise, but even were I alone, I'd likely be doing the same - when you travel, particularly alone, you meet kindred spirits - some of my fastest friends are fellow travellers I've met in the damndest places.
> Since leaving I'm slowly remembering life - despite having had time off over the last decade, there was only one one month period five years ago when I was uncontactable - other holidays were consumed by me staring at my phone and muttering curses as I'd hammer out emails.
Life doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can both continue to work at a desk and also take unaccountable breaks - in fact, if you're rich enough, you can do whatever the hell you want. To be fair, the article does seem to insinuate people will return to like a totally normal 40-hour workweek, but you can also return to a 10-hour part-time job or start a non-profit or something.
Hmm. This seems like a pretty textbook case of Stockholm syndrome, if applied to society and expectations.
Do they have to work? Nope. If they live leaner, they needen't work another day in the rest of their lives. If they have hobbies, they can master those instead. They could be the best at them.
But instead, "society" says they have to work to have a worth. That's puritanical garbage that we need to nip at the bud. We're coming of an age, where machines can increasingly provide more and more, and we are still addicted to human labor and that connection of self-worth.
Of course you're going to find someone who wants to work. In those cases, the money is second to the actual stuff being done. It's most likely a hobby or something that they enjoy greatly, and probably would do for free.
Most people aren't like that. Their hobbies don't coincide with "acceptable business practices". And frankly, awesome. There's plenty of things to do that are enriching for all, and that have no discernible business value.
As for me, I wouldn't do the job I currently do now (systems engineer for a network operations). I'd much rather work in research and development discovering new things, or new ways to do things. I already do that in my spare time. But making money in my position is required, so I do things to survive, and fill in time of my hobbies. That would change, and bloody quick if I ever ran across fuck-you money.
With hobbies, I can start and stop them as I choose. My livelihood is not bound to the requirement that I do X to get money $Y.
If I want to do the hobby of "drink whiskey and watch all of netflix", so be it. If I want to take up surfing, awesome. Or if I want to dabble in the arts, there's noone to stop me. My hobbies would bounce around as to what's interesting, fun, or neat stuff to do.
Right now, what stops me, is that I am working class. I have to work in order to live. 40 hours a week is "theirs", and I have the rest of time to eat, sleep, and do whatever else.
(Edit: and wow, the stockholm syndrome is strong. So many people, trying to reclassify what work is and isn't. And then saying, oh yeah doing something is work. We're not talking work in the physics sense here, but in the capitalistic sense of "if you no workey, you no eaty and no livey".)
Nothing you just said contradicts the point being made.
Most people have to work on things they don't necessarily find fulfilling. That doesn't mean certain wealthy people don't find hobbies which also happen to make them money.
I understand that you wouldn't work to make money, but you would still work in the sense of undertaking an effortful activity.
So again, you would work, albeit not for money. Lest you continue with the (frankly rude) accusations, this is precisely what I would do as well. I just disagree with the notion that these hobbies don't constitute work (in the sense of 'not rest/leisure').
For all your railing against puritan work ethic, you have a very puritanical definition of work.
Seriously? You're arguing that hobbies and doing what you want is "really work"?
The idea of Work, in a Capitalistic sense, is activities you do for someone else, that make money for them above and beyond what you are paid for, and that you are compulsed to do with the threat of "no money, no food, no home".
With what I am talking about, I can change freely to whatever I wish to do, right now. I have no specter hanging over me threatening "no access and utilization of basic resources". If I want to chill and do nothing, I do precisely that. If I want to develop stuffs with electronics, I can do that as well. And when I'm bored, I can walk away with not a care. Try that in a "corporate setting".
And my "frankly rude accusations" match up pretty well with the original stockholm situation itself. In the end, if you don't "play nice" with capitalism, it threatens to end you as well, albeit slower than what the bank robbers wanted to do. And yet, so many people bounce to capitalism's defence. Hence, Stockholm Syndrome.
If you're going to argue definitions, you should probably quote your source. Dictionary.com's primary definition for work is "exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something". There's no mention of you "having to do it for someone else", as you say. Although later definitions do mention employment.
So it seems like you're both arguing whether definition 1 or definition 3 of a word is the right definition.
So going to the bathroom is work, as is rolling one's body out of direct sunlight and ordering takeout. It's not surprising that people who don't have to work at a job any more continue to do things like breathe and change clothes, so let's not talk about that; rather let's talk about how people who don't have to work a job anymore continue to work a job - like what the article is about.
The idea of Work, in a Capitalistic sense, is activities you do for someone else, that make money for them above and beyond what you are paid for, and that you are compulsed to do with the threat of "no money, no food, no home".
So by that definition, independently wealthy people never "work" because they could always quit without financial worries.
They never have to work. They may choose to do so. But in the end, they have that as a choice. We are talking of compulsory labor, where I have to do something to make someone else even more money, so I can have something to eat and a place to sleep.
You don't have to work either. Your labor is not compulsory either, you don't have to do anything. You choose to work so that you can have something to eat and a place to sleep.
(I personally think this is an excellent choice on your part and you should be proud of yourself.)
Sure, folks would do some things that require effort. That's just most people, of course they are going to do some things they find enjoyable, even if it has some effort involved.
But that might be that they discover a new love for video games. Maybe they will start going for speed records, even though they are 45 years old. In between sessions, they'll smoke weed and eat and entice their wife, who has similar passions for similarly lazy activities. Neither works, as they are wealthy enough not to. They take breaks as wanted, leave on a whim, and drop it for a month before coming back to it.
This is hardly the same thing as work: You could replace this with any other hobby, and it still wouldn't count as work. Something might come of it, and they might enjoy life immensely, but hardly work and hardly puritanical.
But weirdly enough, it is effortful under your definition. Unfortunately, yours doesn't actually meet people's expecation of daily work or the sort of work the article eludes to.
Sure, I agree that most people aren't doing work that they would do for free.
I don't think that's true for most wealthy people. By and large, every wealthy person I know is working on things they find deeply interesting and challenging. The problem is with people (who have to work to live) assuming that people who don't have to work to live are working in the same kind of roles just due to some social pressure.
>Of course you're going to find someone who wants to work. In those cases, the money is second to the actual stuff being done. It's most likely a hobby or something that they enjoy greatly, and probably would do for free.
Yes, that's the type of people the article is talking about. A good example is somebody like Apple's Jony Ive with a net worth of ~$130 million[1]. He doesn't have to work another day in his life, and yet he still does. And he's not just working every day remotely from home in some ceremonial role. He still goes to the Apple office and is actively engaged with leading the design teams.
His "hobby" seems to be designing materials into products millions of consumers will like. He happens to express that hobby at the Apple office instead of his hoe garage.
If you walked up to him and told him he's only continuing to work because he's brainwashed from Puritanical Stockholm Syndrome, I think'd he'd rightfully feel insulted.
We can acknowledge that you wouldn't do systems network engineering if you didn't have to work for money but that's not Jony Ive's situation. For him, hobby==work.
Sure, some may, but how many of them find it so fulfilling that they would do it without pay? That's why it's called "compensation"--it compensates you for the time you spend when you would rather do something else.
There's a difference between grueling labor and fulfilling labor. Far be it from me to preach puritanism, but endeavoring to build something is very fulfilling by nature. Hard work for hard work's sake (or divine reward or whatever) is silly, but I think you're throwing out the baby with the bath water.
>There's a difference between grueling labor and fulfilling labor.
Perhaps, but what's fulfils one's life is in no way necessary to be labor -- which, especially in its modern form (9-5, desk work, meetings etc), is a highly constructed cultural artifact as opposed to anything inherent in how people as a species need.
Many people find being part of a team that build something great or useful to be fulfilling and take pride in their work even if they're only a small replaceable part of the process. The blue collar profession related subreddits are a pretty good example of this.
Pretty much all lower level software development is no more remarkable than working on an assembly line. Code I've written helped streamline testing for a tiny bit of code that's a tiny part of a single piece of software that's part of a massive software hardware system that can be used make it harder to slip an IED under a dead camel without anyone noticing. Is that really any less important than the guy checking bearing tolerances before shipping the bearings to the manufacturer of the machine used roll the threads on the bolts that will affix to the airplane the hardware the software system uses?
We're all just a tiny part of a bigger machine on some level.
In the West work is a proxy for purpose, value and citizen. But, as you said, that's about to change. Drastically. An unprecedented disruption. So then what? And if not, then what?
That was a (relatively speaking) slow change. Upcoming automation as I see it will displace large numbers of jobs in multiple sectors in a matter of years not decades.
Besides, a transition that happened two times in the past so that people still needed for jobs (farmers -> factory workers, factories -> services) is by no means necessary to continue happening indefinitely.
Of course there might be new occupations around the corner, but given that most of every material and cultural need is already satisfied, except for eternal life, I don't see what occupations billions of people could transition to that people or businesses would pay money for.
> but given that most of every material and cultural need is already satisfied
Couldn't that be said in every point in history?
Were the farmers losing their jobs in the early 1900s thinking to themselves, "man, I could really go for an interconnected network of computers right now"? I'd be surprised if it even crossed their mind. But eventually, with not having to work on the farm anymore, they had the time to sit back and come up with the idea and implementation. Now, in 2016, it is difficult to imagine living without it.
I find it hard to believe we've reached the pinnacle of human achievement.
The pinnacle of human invention will be that which our (automated, intelligent) children invent. We will be indirectly responsible, but we won't be able to compete. We can already this happening eg in healthcare technology, or with AlphaGo. It's not hard to imagine many of the greatest discoveries will be via abstractions we can't even grok, and will need to be "translated" for us to even begin to understand, much like with the cutting edge of mathematics and physics.
For the vast majority of humans, what they can reasonably accomplish in their lifetimes is surpassed by automated systems today, at least that which pertains to the things that in the past were requisite for everything to function (farming, transportation, common services like cooking, cleaning, etc).
It's not hard to imagine the need for paying jobs will drop to zero as everything humans normally need is captured by monopolistic automated systems. From whence comes the need to take care of our own? What's to stop most humans from becoming like the horse, that which no longer has capitalistic meaning? Our overwhelming love for each other (/sarcasm)?
Theoretically, there can be an inflection point when society cannot keep up or something. Or it could be a sudden thing when our Next Big Thing was the final piece of the puzzle. I'd say its impossible to predict but I won't dismiss it and I think we should prepare for it.
That's key. To say "people will do the work that requires more intelligence" is easy to say. This issue is that IQ tipping point is nudging up. What good is an IQ of 100 in a world made for 110 and up?
This friction starts when the 100s "push back." You don't have to be a genius to raise hell, do you?
Before that shift from the fields to the factories there were no factories. Most people couldn't conceive of what people would do if they weren't farming not to mention all the wacky things that people do today.
Certainly there is no contract with the universe, but seeing as how people have pretty much worked most of the time for all of human history it seems like the height of hubris to think that RIGHT NOW things are going to fundamentally change.
Lets take horses. They were essential for many areas, for a very long time. Once a horseless carriage was constructed, horse ownership declined. After a tipping point, the cost for a horse, in terms of food, water, lodging cost more than the horseless carriage.
Eventually, horses were unemployable. They were still animals - strong animals at that. But the cost of maintenance and upkeep was more than they could output. So many went to the sausage and glue factories.
Some people still have them, and they are huge money-sinks. Their owners know it, and budget accordingly. But none use them for actual labor - machines are much more efficient.
So, what do we do when human labor is less than the resources to keep said human alive? Sausage/glue factories for them as well?
> what do we do when human labor is less than the resources to keep said human alive? Sausage/glue factories for them as well?
The Soylent factory for me, please!
But to answer your question: there's going to have to be a rewrite of taxation and laws - see experiments with basic income - to cater for a world in which wealth is still being created but is being distributed less as the labour isn't required.
Whomever commands the robots of the future is probably looking at a big tax bill.
Nah. There will always be demand for people to do things. People want all kinds of goods and services. Not all of them will be automate-able. People will do those things. And they'll get paid for it.
Other than the personnel section in a business is "Human Resources", in the same light as "Material resources" or what have you?
Capitalism views humans as a resource to be used and exploited. When that equation no longer makes sense for that person/group, they are gotten rid of. Look no further than factories that move elsewhere to lower their costs.
I'm from Indiana, and I'm sure you've heard of that Carrier factory debacle. They initially made the decision to move because it would make them $2 billion more per year. It was a purely numbers-driven solution. That's all that capitalism can "see".
And frankly, humans are "unquantifiable". No measurement, no data, and no decisions on that. It's the same with the environment as well - if there's no data that ties directly to me, who cares (even if we all take part). It's the tragedy of the commons. And we in the end, all suffer.
Yes, capitalism views humans (and horses) as resources. But capitalism does not control the creation of new humans which makes humans different from horses.
If that's all that's keeping us from being turned into glue (kefka used quite the stark example there...), that doesn't sound anywhere near sufficiently safe to me.
There are a lot of people out there who want to limit reproduction. And these days, they have better arguments.
> So, what do we do when human labor is less than the resources to keep said human alive? Sausage/glue factories for them as well?
To continue your analogy, "put them out to pasture". It could be argued that what is good for us as a people, is not always good for our conscious. What to do?
>Before that shift from the fields to the factories there were no factories. Most people couldn't conceive of what people would do if they weren't farming not to mention all the wacky things that people do today.
"There are things we can't conceive" is not a very convincing argument.
Sure.
There are also things we can conceive fairly well.
The difference is the speed at which we can automate new jobs: we've greatly improved and substabtially automated automation.
It's not that automation will eliminate all jobs, just that automation will eliminate most jobs in every field faster than humans can be trained to do them.
The worry is that humans will become the horses of the 21st century -- and we seem on track to be. Understandably, many humans are concerned by this prospect.
Away is only half the story. If you get another job NBD. The cycle continues. And up until now, you're right.
AI is not just tools. AI replaces brains as well. This breaks the cycle. You know what they saw about past results and future returns? Apply that heavy and frequently.
>We're coming of an age, where machines can increasingly provide more and more, and we are still addicted to human labor and that connection of self-worth.
Is the feeling that you are withering away if you are not progressing in life merely a "society" thing though?
Progressing in life and progressing in something that capitalism deems "valuable" are two different things, though. My photography has greatly improved, but nobody gives a crap. Still, I feel I've progressed, and that's fulfilling in itself.
> But instead, "society" says they have to work to have a worth
I disagree. The drive to work and/or be productive is one of the reasons we're the apex predator, and not our prior evolutionary human-like variations. It's not "society" that says you have to work, but your DNA.
Example... do you notice the drive among the powerful/wealthy individuals, governments, and corporations - to get to space and colonize our solar system and beyond? That drive does not exist if we sit on our laurels. Those are the people pushing the species forward - it would be simple to do nothing, and for them to sip very expensive coffee and entertain themselves until their life expired.
> We're coming of an age, where machines can increasingly provide more and more, and we are still addicted to human labor and that connection of self-worth.
This isn't about "human" labor, it's about working in general. Perhaps your occupation is designing, improving, or repairing these machines you speak of. That is work, and has a noticeable impact - opposed to camping, hiking, sipping coffee, and existing for the sake of existing.
tldr; if/when a society meltdown occurs, I don't want you on my team.
I don't agree with this. The vast majority of govts around the world are facilitating inequality. In the last decade how many amazingly intelligent people who could have furthered the whole world have missed out? We'll never know, but I bet it's a lot. Most heads of govt are megalomaniacs.
I agree we have a drive to improve but our current system is a long way from efficient by design.
> I disagree. The drive to work and/or be productive is one of the reasons we're the apex predator, and not our prior evolutionary human-like variations. It's not "society" that says you have to work, but your DNA.
Whereas most anthropological and genetic studies indicate that homo sapiens did not "win", but instead we mated with them and joined the disparate species.
> Example... do you notice the drive among the powerful/wealthy individuals, governments, and corporations - to get to space and colonize our solar system and beyond? That drive does not exist if we sit on our laurels. Those are the people pushing the species forward - it would be simple to do nothing, and for them to sip very expensive coffee and entertain themselves until their life expired.
Sigh. And here we go, with moralizing capitalistic thought with expansion and growth.
You pack in the assumption that capitalism pushes society forward and will continue to do so. I also seem to remember the Wright bros story. They patented the aeropane in the US, whereas it was free to use elsewhere. They locked down the industry so it was their way or no way. Eventually, the US military had to step in, due to WWI, and end their protections.
In the end, capitalism is great at looking that it furthers science and the arts. But the bad sides are that it: 1. retards cooperation between different entities 2. pits person against person 3. encourages to maximize money against all other means
> tldr; if/when a society meltdown occurs, I don't want you on my team.
Don't worry. You wouldn't be on my "team" anyways. It'd be your loss, given I know many things, including many arts and sciences from the SCA.
I don't really think that most studies indicate that.
Any proof about your claim?
As far as I remember there is possible evidence of some interbreeding, but it absolutely is not the cause of Neanderthal disappearance.
As for the anti-capitalism rant please tell me that you have visited Russia, east Europe, Venezuela and the awesome places in the world where the capitalist evil has been destroyed for some time.
And once you go there please feel free to stay if you enjoy it so much.
I have seen some of those places and, thanks a lot, but I prefer the evil capitalism by far.
> I disagree. The drive to work and/or be productive is one of the reasons we're the apex predator, and not our prior evolutionary human-like variations. It's not "society" that says you have to work, but your DNA.
I disagree. The large amount of mooches, bums, alcoholics, and freeloaders around clearly points out that the evolutionary hypothesis you posit is wrong.
In general, any time you find yourself trying to justify something with evolutionary psychology, you are probably wrong. I really hate the abuse of the field and the trendy brainless use of "DNA-this" "in-our-DNA that" in popular jargon. Evolutionary psychology is just Social Darwinism for the 21st century with a new name. Unless there is a study that tested and confirmed an evolutionary psychology hypothesis, consider it wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psyc...
Let's break it down to DNA then, and not "dna-this" or "dna-that" - which I agree is popular and usually incorrect.
Can we agree that your DNA(and most species) does give you an innate drive to reproduce? Past(last 100000+ years) and present mating suitability in a male is perceived by his ability to feed/defend/nurture their mate and offspring. The large amount of "mooches, bums, alcoholics" you reference would be poor mates, yet they continue to reproduce. They do so [mostly] with the assistance of another willing member of the class of "mooches, bums, alcoholics". However, the people that are not "mooches, bums, alcoholics" make more desirable mates, because they have a higher potential to feed/defend/nurture their mate and offspring. That means that yes, your biology is still telling you that you need to work, even if it is only to achieve higher mating success, and fulfill your biological imperative.
Hrm...I really don't like the direction my own thought is taking as I write this down. It ends with "well, then those (people) should be eliminated for the good of the species", and no one wants to hear that, whether it is correct or incorrect. It can be interpreted in a very dark and nasty context, and that is absolutely not what I'm trying to promote or champion.
In a nutshell, I'm arguing that I will win at the biological imperative because of my drive to work and succeed. Those people that don't want to work and succeed would contribute to their species by going off somewhere quiet, and avoiding consumption of the resources needed by their fellow species members that are grinding away at "life" in the evolutionary sense - not in the "pursuit of happiness" sense, which is subjective and altogether distracting.
Yep. And this argument is in parity with those people who wear white robes with pointy hats, and burn crosses in people's yards whom they do not like.
It's also similar to Phrenology, the "science" of skull size, weight, and shape that indicate intelligence. Of course, non-whites were all inferior.
There were many interests all surrounding Margret Sanger, with Planned Parenthood and the original intentions of that group. Ideally, blacks, Jews, "retards", and any other undesirable were sterilized as to not continue their genes.
But talking of eugenics, even in a roundabout way has a lot of baggage. Is there a way to do it right? I'm not sure. I'd think voluntary methods could work, but only if they were truly voluntary. Remember, the kind of people we have coming in government believe that one can electrocute the gay out of someone (Pence).
> Yep. And this argument is in parity with those people who wear white robes with pointy hats, and burn crosses in people's yards whom they do not like.
Erm...is it? I thought that groups' entire mindset came from some religious interpretation of doing a deity's work. Maybe I'm wrong, but when a bunch of people(such as those that you mention) are so ridiculously self-destructive, I can only assume some-or-other <insert-religious-stupidity> is behind it.
I'm not making a case for any of the things you mention(sterilization...really!?). I'm making a case for the working people building a working civilization and non-working people can't participate or benefit.
> In a nutshell, I'm arguing that I will win at the biological imperative because of my drive to work and succeed.
No, you are just using the same flawed reasoning over and over again. The way it can also work is that a bigger and more aggressive man comes along, kills you, and takes your woman.
Even the words you use come from Social Darwinism: "success" and "imperative" at some goal. The innate drive you talk about has nothing to do with reproduction - it is a set of instincts that makes mate finding and mating pleasurable. Goals and even establishing the causal connection between mating and reproduction requires reasoning faculties that not even most apes are capable of.
> Those people that don't want to work and succeed would contribute to their species by going off somewhere quiet, and avoiding consumption of the resources needed by their fellow species members that are grinding away at "life" in the evolutionary sense
And these people would listen to you tell them where to go and what to do because ...?
It is quite obvious that you are trying to use a single evolutionary psychology argument without having any knowledge of the field. Human mating strategies are incredibly diverse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mating_system#In_humans. You have some kind of Puritan mental hangup about work that you are trying to justify with flawed reasoning.
> It is quite obvious that you are trying to use a single evolutionary psychology argument without having any knowledge of the field.
No - you're assuming what I mean from text that I never wrote.
> The way it can also work is that a bigger and more aggressive man comes along, kills you, and takes your woman.
Precisely that. That's exactly how evolution works. At some point, we eschewed evolution for "feeling good". I have a problem with that, and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it.
> And these people would listen to you tell them where to go and what to do because ...?
They won't, and I wouldn't tell them to do anything, given that random humans have no reason to obey my forum-written thoughts.
> You have some kind of Puritan mental hangup
I'm not a puritan. Don't lump me in with people that search for meaning and invent a bearded one in a sky/sun/moon/long-dead-arab.
Sedachv, I get the impression you really want to argue with someone about something puritan-related. If you want to get together and rant about everything wrong they have done to our civilization and way of life, you would find I'm quite agreeable to that viewpoint. At the root of it all, I hate that I have to "work" so that other people can "not work". I want the "not work"-ing people to go away. Unfortunately, I can't go off and chase those ideals, because I am still taking care of my own biological imperative's fruit until they can are grown and capable of taking care of themselves. When people stop working early(most of them do not do so because they have become rich, as in the article), we have to take care of them. I don't want to take care of them.
Personal attacks are not welcome on HN, regardless of how irritated you are by someone. If you can't contain yourself from posting them, please at least proofread your comments and edit them out. For example, your final paragraph should consist just of its second sentence, and the comment would be far better for it.
There's definitely an issue with people claiming their own pet theory is supported by "evolutionary psychology" when it's not even supported by data. But it's the framework we currently have, so that's to be expected. When people thought God invented everything, people fit their theories into that too.
And what's the alternative? Evolution has no effect on psychology? Our perfect mind came from divine inspiration?
Evolutionary psychology is threatening as a concept to many liberal ideals we've worked hard for. Men and women are equal. People are rational and can be trusted to make their own decisions, or vote intelligently. Liberalism can be boiled down to a kind of "faith in humanity", and like the earlier faith, thou shalt not question it, especially with science.
But like before, it's better in the long run if we face the uncomfortable truths, whatever they be.
edit: everything I'm trying to say here has been better said in The Blank Slate.
The alternative is the same as for every theory: do not assume your hypothesis is correct until you have empirical evidence, and do not assign your moral values to theories.
Obviously the idea of evolutionary psychology follows from evolution. Neither evolutionary psychology nor social Darwinism are wrong - they are just names for a particular class of consequences of evolution and natural selection. They are falsifiable because the theory of evolution is falsifiable. As far as we have evidence, evolution is true, so saying that evolution has consequences is true. What those consequences are is not for you to decide based on your prejudices.
Saying things like "your DNA says you have to work" and poor people deserve to die out "because evolution, duh" is wrong.
I could perhaps sell my company for a retire-able amount in a few years but I'd just move on to another business anyway.. so why not instead develop my staff to run the current business independently of me, so I can do whatever I want anyway, but still own something for the long term? I'd be interested to hear from entrepreneurs who've wrestled with this one and came down on one side or the other :-)
Why because even then business needs managing. It's not going to manage itself. Even if you have a staff trained to try to take care of business, they will fail, and fail often enough that you have to intervene or your business will be out of business in a year. People are difficult. Really difficult. And outside of that the market is difficult, really difficult. It's always changing, and you have to change your company to adapt or it will die.
One of the best measures of quality of a company is how well it does after its founder dies/leaves. If your company can't run without you, you weren't building a company, you were building a job.
Agreed. But this doesn't mean you won't feel compelled to intervene and add value in difficult situations. I chose to cash out instead of continuing with the heavy burden of risking my net worth every day due to this. How is my old company doing? Fantastic, exactly because I focused on building a company and not a job. This is just to say that these two comments aren't mutually exclusive.
Longing for FU money sounds just like "getting a job where I have nothing to do" (maybe, slightly better). The idea of just idling all day, browsing your favorite sites seems so amazing, but when you do get that you realise the fulfilling-work imperative [1]. What you do everyday might be drudgery but it's more so when you have nothing on your todo list.
Getting rich might help you in having comforts without monetary considerations, and have more time with things you enjoy. All of it won't subdue the need to fulfilling work. While I can imagine some people who would happily spend all the riches on exorbitant possessions, the people who have a higher probability of making that amount of money might not have propensity to spend their lives in that manner.
If I didn't have to work, I would up my tennis time from 10 to 20 hours a week, boxing from 0 to 10, Go from 1-2 to probably 10 as well. That alone would give me about a 40 hour week. This is the time my kid spends in school, give or take per week, so it wouldn't change my family time, but I'm betting I would be much more fun to be around me after days like these than after 8 hours of development work. (ps: this is what I try to do at least one week a year, I take time off from work while my kid is in school and do this)
I don't care about 'fulfilling' work, money, things. I love being physically active and improving in my hobbies.
>Longing for FU money sounds just like "getting a job where I have nothing to do" (maybe, slightly better). The idea of just idling all day, browsing your favorite sites seems so amazing, but when you do get that you realise the fulfilling-work imperative [1].
Or you need better hobbies and job substitutes than "idling all day, browsing your favorite sites"...
How I wish I could spend all day filled with programming and continuing my language learning. Instead I'm doing first year EE at university and it's hard to find time to sit back and not worry that I should be working right now.
I missed the university entry requirements for CS in my mathematics qualification, so I was offered a place at the university to do EE instead, which I accepted.
If I got rich, I would do the following:
try to work "as I want". That means: shorter days in my most active time (like 10-4pm), go on vacation with my family often (in a rhythm of 6 weeks work - 2 weeks vacation).
I think, for me the main point of being rich is not to work no more - but to know I don't have to. Maybe I would even work better then with that peace of mind.
This is almost exactly what I have done. I took enough time off to accept the change, lose the working habit, and shed the rest of that identity. I came to find I love working in tech. Sometimes I work long hours when I'm enjoying the problem solving struggle, sometimes I just take off and go racing. To each his own.
Re: “I just felt unhappy at the lack of structure and not knowing what my purpose in life was. My skills were deteriorating and I was finding it difficult to interact with other people intellectually,” says Keith, now in his mid-thirties. “There’s a higher reason why we all go to work.”
So as automation / AI creates a larger and larger class of the permanently unemployed, what does this statement mean to them? And to us (i.e., fellow citizens, unemployed or not).
This was THE BIGGEST issue of the election that never was. We're extremely unprepared. Again.
One huge substitute is games: I know several permanently unemployed people who while away all the time on online games - there are some really addictive ones out there, the ones I know are hooked on League of Legends or DOTA or other games with e-sports, which give a substitute feeling of achievement (and it can be a real one if they get to the pro scene).
"I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce, and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry, and Porcelaine." (John Adam, 1780)
If most smart and educated people in the west work, then quitting that world effectively cuts you off from those interactions. Think bout if you'd rather have every Saturday off or every Wednesday? First and foremost we're social creatures and we do what it takes to stay involved within a social society.
I stopped working for 2 years in my mid-20s (by choice) and only started again when I was running low on money. If I was rich, "working" would never be on my mind.
Run, bike, hike, camp, cook, read, walk, have coffee, relax, etc.
I would never be going through the hell of getting a pH.d without the end goal being to find "work". I'd still be interested in the same stuff, but never would have had the motivation to drive down to this level of detail on my own.
Of course. That's what people do when they retire, they don't "do" nothing, but they don't "work" either.
But it's possible there's a sample bias; people who get rich are the kind of people who can't stop working, even if/when they can. Other people would totally stop working if they got rich but it's hard to prove, because they never do get rich.
Totally agreed. I know a few people who (financially) don't need to work for a living but still do, a couple of them regularly putting in 12 hour days 6 days per week. Of course, that's how they got "rich" in the first place.
In their case, making a lot of money was a pleasant side effect of their preexisting strong work ethic, not the driving force.
(...and don't get me wrong, these guys also play hard when they're not working)
"regularly putting in 12 hour days 6 days per week"
"Play hard" after 72 hours of working? They must be super-human. What about, you know, er, human contact? Like spending time with your family and friends?
The kind of people I know of that do 72-80 hours a week and are wealthy enough to do less, generally the circle of friends are the people you worked with/your clients. Doing good work for people at your own leisure and participating in the community in that fashion is actually something I see those type of people really get a lot of satisfaction out of- like the article says a status thing. Going to local Chamber of Commerce style events, sponsoring/participating in parades, events, youth leagues and so on. Being able to write the check to send the school science team to a national competition as just a generous member of the community at large can mean a lot.
Family gets neglected in that case, or nepotism'd so you can see them.
The act of doing business for those sorts of people is play.
Planning and participating in events is actually quite a bit of logistics work. It isn't just showing up to consume, it's presenting/booth stuff and so on. There's a difference between showing up to an event and participating/running the event that often gets put on the better planner types.
There's plenty of entry level employees "read single males" who are putting in 12 x 5 at work then, going home and pursue whatever hobby they now suddenly have money to pursue until 1am every day. It's still less of a time commitment than raising young kids.
Yeah. Raising kids is not a matter of time, it's a matter of energy. When you have kid you have to (and, hell, of course, you want to), be 100% with them when they want you to be with them. You don't postpone them, you don't schedule them. So that's much more energy draining than time-eating
This is where I think a basic income becomes interesting. The threshold for what each person requires to decide how to allocate their waking hours when their basic expenses are paid varies. But maybe being rich isn't the point, and it's actually about reducing the risk of not working. I think we'd see more founders emerge.
> people who get rich are the kind of people who can't stop working, even if/when they can. Other people would totally stop working if they got rich but it's hard to prove, because they never do get rich
That's exactly the problem I think. If you're driven enough to get rich you're too driven to stop. If you'd be happy stopping, you're not driven enough to get rich.
You are also able to reduce your cost of living significantly by always having free time. Not having a car (or at least having one but using it rarely), not eating out (cooking yourself), growing your vegetables, doing home DIY stuff, not dressing formally to show off social status, etc.
Spending on these things pretty much comes together with being "employed".
Climbing/ski/surfing bums and dirtbags live out of their cars. They probably spend more actual time engaged working (as opposed to meetings, distractions, commuting, breaks, administrative overhead, etc) at their sports than the 12-hours-a-day-6-days-a-week office workers do.
In trying to rationalize the article to myself, it occurs to me that, after a lifetime of measuring your own success/pride in dollar-denominations, a complete, instantaneous loss of income represents a likewise complete collapse of pride and an ensuing inability to even measure one's own perceived happiness.
Perhaps the restless retiree from the original story could use his dissatisfaction as a driver to find another means of self-fulfillment, rather than allow it to shock him back into (imo) tycoon-esque distraction.
For me it would really depend on how rich and what you define as work. There are lots of projects I would like to fund, supervise, produce, etc that with 10s of millions in the bank I would. I think I'd end up pretty busy.
>He stayed on at first, but soon stopped working. He spent a year travelling and spending money on “frivolous things” but found it difficult to enjoy his life, he says.
That's because he didn't have the right personality and nothing prepared him for it. Others have absolutely no problem not going back to the routine -- and can find any number of small personal projects and hobbies to keep them occupied.
Of course nobody just sits on a beach old day, because it gets boring in itself. But there are tons of other endeavours to try that are not work.
Of course, I think none of us really know till it happens.
However, I agree. I'm constantly coming up with new projects, ideas and activities for myself. At this time I am convinced that I would not be bored never having to work a formal job ever again in my life. I would assume that is true for many HNers.
Yeah, and then one of those hobbies becomes essentially full-time, and then you realize it has some marketable value, then next thing you know you're running a start up, completing the cycle of never-not-working-for-long.
Extrinsic motivation is intrinsic motivation that you project onto an outside agent.
You're not motivated by a job's salary, you're motivated by the nice things you can do with money--things you decided are intrinsically more important than the things you can do while broke.
>You're not motivated by a job's salary, you're motivated by the nice things you can do with money--things you decided are intrinsically more important than the things you can do while broke.
We're not talking about the same kind of motivation, obviously.
We're talking about motivation in the work itself vs being motivated to work because of others things you want to do with the money.
To make it an extreme example, in the first case you'd do the work even for free, or even pay to do it (like many people pay to do some hobbies), even if you had all the money you need.
That would be cool, but as a counter-point I'd like to say that financial independence would probably allow me to work on more outlandish ideas and things that will never earn a dollar.
Unless the marketable value is too low and does not cover the start-up costs.
In Germany for example health care insurance for start-up founders costs like 200€/month more than for unemployed (assuming they have savings and low income), because they set this fee by law and people do not like rich business owners there.
Or last week a court decided that commercial webpages must not link to potential illegal sites and it is their responsibility to check if it illegal, e.g. if the other site contains a CC-ND photo that was modified. From your hobby webpage you can link to it as you please, but if it is a start-up webpage you can get sued for 6000€, even if you do not know there is that photo.
Unless you like hanging out with stay at home moms, there's nobody around during the day. Might as well go to the office and work with interesting people and have somebody to go to lunch with.
if i had so much money that I'd never have to work again, I'd probably do the following:
1. quit my day job and travel the world (and I mean all over - south america, middle east and so on).
2. get a couple of houses (one for my parents, and another for me)
3. start contributing back to the community (If i get that kind of money, It's probably because I would have IPOd or sold my business - in which case, I would love to work on open source - no strings attached - MIT).
4. buy a few toys (cars and what not) that I've always wanted.
I've thought about this a lot, though I'm not planning on getting that kind of money any time soon. My plan would be to invest a lot of the money and then go back to school. I'd get a couple more master degrees as well as try for a PhD. I love learning and not having debt would make it better. On top of that, I would work freelance/consulting as a developer. I love programming and that is what makes me happy so I wouldn't want to stop doing that.
This is an article about one person, Keith from Silicon Valley, whose personal story the author tries to extrapolate (through a few cherry-picked quotes) and apply to society as a whole, to fit a puritanical "employment gives you purpose" narrative: a narrative which mostly serves the interests of employers. I wouldn't read too much into it.
No, your TLDR is not accurate. You're getting mislead by the common journalistic technique of adding a "human interest" angle to a story.
However, the "outer wrapper" is not the main story nor is it the TLDR.
Instead of journalists just presenting it like this:
<main story about research or science>
, they (or their editors) end up structuring articles like this:
<human-interest as color prologue>
<main story about research or science>
<human-interest as color epilogue>
Yes, the "<human-interest>" is Keith[2], but the main story is not about Keith. It's mostly a story built around Jamie Traeger-Muney[3] and her observations. There are also other observations from Timothy Judge's meta-analysis and professor Brooke Harrington.
I do concede that if your only takeaway was "Keith's story", it's possible that imprint was deliberate by the editors. (In other words, they know that psychologically, most audiences will remember a character's struggles and triumphs more than the abstract facts & figures.)
Incidentially, the articles argument alignes with what UBI proponents say: Most people won't stop working. They'll just go for more rewarding work while taking a pay-cut or demanding increased pay for shitty work.
I believe that to be true, but that's probably because I fall in the article's category; I don't think I will ever stop working. Maybe not the same thing (I do many things already that have nothing to do with coding, but for now I like coding the most). If UBI, I definitely would have started out when I was younger with very different work. If it comes now, I would not change anything.
While I partially agree with you, the author also emphasized the social status of actively working on something. That something could be founding a new venture, not necessarily being an employee, but I think the author's goal was to contrast working in some capacity vs a leisure-focused lifestyle. Full disclosure: I am a small business owner :).
I like this point of view. But for me, it's all in the meaning of "working". If you mean working = "selling a lot of your time to get a bit of freedom in your spare time", then the riches of the article are not working. To me they've just got a ticket to do what they want, in a non-slave relationship with their employer. Being able to quit if necessary, is so much more easy than having to think about your pension. That's not work anymore (at least to me, the poor soul who, eventhough he tries, has neither the luck to work on something big, neither the "commercial interest" to actually transform it into money and who's a bit jealous of those who can choose what they want to do :-), I'm biased :-) )
and even if you're a billionaire on paper you have to manage those investment so that they cash out at the right moment. you can't just quit doing everything. at that level it's a reverse debt where you (or pay someone to) have to chase everyone for money
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 258 ms ] threadHowever, going back to employment seems like an utter waste of a millionaire's time - I have loads of plans which would make the world a better place, for example: launching an incubator/hacker camp for troubled kids in the poor area where I'm from. I only need maybe 1 or 2 millions to do that.
Why would I go back to working for a company where I have way less power to change basically anything, really?
Congratulations, you now have a job and you belong to the ranks of "millionaires who didn't quit working for long" :)
It's also a blocked opportunity for someone else. For every millionaire who clings on to his senior executive job even though he doesn't need to, there's a non-millionaire who is not getting that senior executive promotion this year.
There was a TV show once, that interviewed rich people. Some lottery winners, some who made company money, etc.
One of the lottery winners made 2m and started his own business, some car workshop stuff and went bankrupt 2 years later.
A couple made ... I don't now >10m and the first time they visited them, they told that they will keep working in their normal jobs because they like them. Half a year later, when they got interviewed, they both quit their jobs and were building a house and the guy was always talking about that he fears it wouldn't get big enough.
One guy made big money by renting out building equipment, he had a big nice house which he let build completely to his wishes, but lost everything to bad investment. They even visited his old house and the new owner let the camera team in.
The new owner also said, if he would get rich again, he would sell him his house back, which I found kinda nice. But I always have the feeling that people who got rich are simply lucky, even if they didn't get it through the lottery. So he probably knew that guy wouldn't get rich in this life again.
I did a sabattical in 2014 and had plenty of stuff todo.
I didn't even know how I could start working again, because I didn't have any free time left for work.
Eventually I had to work again, because I needed money, but I tried to get it done remote at home.
edit: formatting
Sure, you'd want to diversify, but I'm just making the case that it's more than enough to live off of for the rest of your life.
You could also buy 4 or 5 McDonalds restaurants or 20-25 houses and watch them appreciate while living off rental income.
Then poof, 2 years later that money is all gone.
Like, I seriously doubt that my first thought after winning the lottery would be to go and talk to an investment banker.
An average McDonald's franchise makes between $500,000 and $1 million in profits per year as of 2013, according to McDonald's Franchise Disclosure Document. For restaurants open at least 1 year in the United States, average total revenues are $2.6 million.
The franchising royalties would be deducted before that net income. $150,000K * 5 is enough to live "high on the hog", especially since you wouldn't have to save it given you own 5 McDonalds you could sell, probably for a large profit down the line too.
I can't find the link you're referencing, since the first return on Google isn't linked to McDonalds directly, but McDonalds franchisees and managers refer to one measure of "profit" as profits after controllables (PAC). This is nothing like net operating income.
Please refer to the parent thread, where we're talking about what you'd do with $5M. You really should read the conversation and get background on it before you jump onboard and try making others look stupid. You make yourself look dumb, or a troll, or both.
Even better would be the Chick-fil-a. They only cost 4K to start and it will give you something to do for 3 years while they put you through training and you work at various locations. It is a lot cheaper than other franchises but could pay out close to as much.
When it comes to money, HN is often unbearably pretentious.
If you can't "retire comfortably" on 5 million USD, then you've got a hole in your heart that more money won't fill.
After a grueling year of work ending in a layoff in 2007, I took a full year off in 2008. Played a lot of games, but also watched 4 films a day, became competent with several instruments, read a lot and started myself on the path to changing careers.
I have a stack of technical books on topics I'm deeply interested in that I don't have time to read. At this point, I see work as a major impediment to doing what I want with my life. It's a problem that I desperately want to solve, but I don't really have hope for a solution. I'm on the low-end of developer salaries.
The kind of stuff I want to focus on now though requires deep, focussed effort over an extended period of time.
I enjoy what I do but not as much as what I could be doing, if that makes sense.
I left the business I founded 11 years ago 6 months ago - not because it was failing - they go from strength to strength - but rather because it was making me miserable - the fun freewheeling startup completely metamorphosed into a serious organisation complete with office politics and all the rest.
I cashed out for a relatively meagre sum - halved my net worth in the process, which now sits at about £1m 40:60 cash:assets. I'm 33. I plan to see every nook and cranny of the world and to take my time about it - bought an old Land Rover, driving everywhere.
A big part of the reason I left was identity. I had come to realise that my company was my identity, my life, my entire existence, and that I had remoulded myself continually to embody the company as it morphed and grew. Eventually I could no longer identify myself within the layers of inherited identity, and had lost all passion for the things that once drove me. I was CTO, not human, not alive.
Since leaving I'm slowly remembering life - despite having had time off over the last decade, there was only one one month period five years ago when I was uncontactable - other holidays were consumed by me staring at my phone and muttering curses as I'd hammer out emails.
It's going to take years to shed the burden, but already after six months I find myself slowly becoming less neurotic, less anxious, although I still have nightmares every night like clockwork.
The capital I have is not enough to retire on in the uk, but it is enough to retire in many other parts of the world.
Then again, I've always been pathologicallly lazy, and status has always been no more than a game to me, and I derive my identity (well, I did before I drowned it) very idiopathically, so perhaps I am an oddity rather than the norm.
This has ended up a ramble. I suppose my gist is that I currently believe it better to derive identity from something other than a manufactured corporate persona, or a job role. I just smile and say I'm unemployed.
I want to write. I want to be highly impractical and live in the mountains away from the madness. I recognise that what I want may well change, and that's OK too.
I'm advantaged financially but I've paid for it with far more than time. I suppose it all balances out.
£1m may not be "enough" in the UK, depending on how you want to live, but it's not that far off even in the UK if you structure your life accordingly (I recently reviewed my finances, and realised I spent more on trivial luxuries than what I used to live off total 10-15 years ago..).
In any case, it's "close enough" even in the UK - at least outside of the most expensive areas -, that it can get someone that big step from depending on a job to being able to take work now and again or pick more fulfilling options that might not be able to pay the bills on their own.
If you're in tech, as well, there's a lot of flexibility in picking up occasional well paid contracts. I just took on a contract from a guy in a similar position who'd just randomly travelling and doing contracts now and again to replenish his funds, who left the contract in question because he's going to spend 6 months somewhere he can't depend on getting an internet connection...
For my part I'm working my ass off at the moment, largely because I finally see an end-goal of a "modest" early "retirement" like yours in sight. For my part, I'll probably still keep "working", as I enjoy a lot of what I do, but there's a huge difference between "working" on projects that feel like you're playing and where there's no pressure to make it pay off, and having to deliver or not be able to pay the bills...
Reminds me, I once tried a 36 hour day routine. What drove me nuts and eventually to quit was not eating lunch at noon everyday.
It has been a fairly... tough is the wrong word... diplomatic? discoursive? few months, but despite having just started a promising career, she's game for trying something completely different - if it all goes pear shaped then she can start afresh, as she'd invested only six months and emotional energy, as can I - but while we're unburdened by sprogs and gammy hips or what have you problems of age we agreed on taking the opportunity.
So it takes compromise, but even were I alone, I'd likely be doing the same - when you travel, particularly alone, you meet kindred spirits - some of my fastest friends are fellow travellers I've met in the damndest places.
Life doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can both continue to work at a desk and also take unaccountable breaks - in fact, if you're rich enough, you can do whatever the hell you want. To be fair, the article does seem to insinuate people will return to like a totally normal 40-hour workweek, but you can also return to a 10-hour part-time job or start a non-profit or something.
Do they have to work? Nope. If they live leaner, they needen't work another day in the rest of their lives. If they have hobbies, they can master those instead. They could be the best at them.
But instead, "society" says they have to work to have a worth. That's puritanical garbage that we need to nip at the bud. We're coming of an age, where machines can increasingly provide more and more, and we are still addicted to human labor and that connection of self-worth.
Most people aren't like that. Their hobbies don't coincide with "acceptable business practices". And frankly, awesome. There's plenty of things to do that are enriching for all, and that have no discernible business value.
As for me, I wouldn't do the job I currently do now (systems engineer for a network operations). I'd much rather work in research and development discovering new things, or new ways to do things. I already do that in my spare time. But making money in my position is required, so I do things to survive, and fill in time of my hobbies. That would change, and bloody quick if I ever ran across fuck-you money.
Most of us are the same way. I think this is ultimately the point being made.
With hobbies, I can start and stop them as I choose. My livelihood is not bound to the requirement that I do X to get money $Y.
If I want to do the hobby of "drink whiskey and watch all of netflix", so be it. If I want to take up surfing, awesome. Or if I want to dabble in the arts, there's noone to stop me. My hobbies would bounce around as to what's interesting, fun, or neat stuff to do.
Right now, what stops me, is that I am working class. I have to work in order to live. 40 hours a week is "theirs", and I have the rest of time to eat, sleep, and do whatever else.
(Edit: and wow, the stockholm syndrome is strong. So many people, trying to reclassify what work is and isn't. And then saying, oh yeah doing something is work. We're not talking work in the physics sense here, but in the capitalistic sense of "if you no workey, you no eaty and no livey".)
Most people have to work on things they don't necessarily find fulfilling. That doesn't mean certain wealthy people don't find hobbies which also happen to make them money.
I understand that you wouldn't work to make money, but you would still work in the sense of undertaking an effortful activity.
So again, you would work, albeit not for money. Lest you continue with the (frankly rude) accusations, this is precisely what I would do as well. I just disagree with the notion that these hobbies don't constitute work (in the sense of 'not rest/leisure').
For all your railing against puritan work ethic, you have a very puritanical definition of work.
The idea of Work, in a Capitalistic sense, is activities you do for someone else, that make money for them above and beyond what you are paid for, and that you are compulsed to do with the threat of "no money, no food, no home".
With what I am talking about, I can change freely to whatever I wish to do, right now. I have no specter hanging over me threatening "no access and utilization of basic resources". If I want to chill and do nothing, I do precisely that. If I want to develop stuffs with electronics, I can do that as well. And when I'm bored, I can walk away with not a care. Try that in a "corporate setting".
And my "frankly rude accusations" match up pretty well with the original stockholm situation itself. In the end, if you don't "play nice" with capitalism, it threatens to end you as well, albeit slower than what the bank robbers wanted to do. And yet, so many people bounce to capitalism's defence. Hence, Stockholm Syndrome.
So it seems like you're both arguing whether definition 1 or definition 3 of a word is the right definition.
So by that definition, independently wealthy people never "work" because they could always quit without financial worries.
The rest of us, don't have that luxury.
(I personally think this is an excellent choice on your part and you should be proud of yourself.)
Sure, folks would do some things that require effort. That's just most people, of course they are going to do some things they find enjoyable, even if it has some effort involved.
But that might be that they discover a new love for video games. Maybe they will start going for speed records, even though they are 45 years old. In between sessions, they'll smoke weed and eat and entice their wife, who has similar passions for similarly lazy activities. Neither works, as they are wealthy enough not to. They take breaks as wanted, leave on a whim, and drop it for a month before coming back to it.
This is hardly the same thing as work: You could replace this with any other hobby, and it still wouldn't count as work. Something might come of it, and they might enjoy life immensely, but hardly work and hardly puritanical.
But weirdly enough, it is effortful under your definition. Unfortunately, yours doesn't actually meet people's expecation of daily work or the sort of work the article eludes to.
I don't think that's true for most wealthy people. By and large, every wealthy person I know is working on things they find deeply interesting and challenging. The problem is with people (who have to work to live) assuming that people who don't have to work to live are working in the same kind of roles just due to some social pressure.
Yes, that's the type of people the article is talking about. A good example is somebody like Apple's Jony Ive with a net worth of ~$130 million[1]. He doesn't have to work another day in his life, and yet he still does. And he's not just working every day remotely from home in some ceremonial role. He still goes to the Apple office and is actively engaged with leading the design teams.
His "hobby" seems to be designing materials into products millions of consumers will like. He happens to express that hobby at the Apple office instead of his hoe garage.
If you walked up to him and told him he's only continuing to work because he's brainwashed from Puritanical Stockholm Syndrome, I think'd he'd rightfully feel insulted.
We can acknowledge that you wouldn't do systems network engineering if you didn't have to work for money but that's not Jony Ive's situation. For him, hobby==work.
[1]http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/11/03/does-ap...
Perhaps, but what's fulfils one's life is in no way necessary to be labor -- which, especially in its modern form (9-5, desk work, meetings etc), is a highly constructed cultural artifact as opposed to anything inherent in how people as a species need.
Pretty much all lower level software development is no more remarkable than working on an assembly line. Code I've written helped streamline testing for a tiny bit of code that's a tiny part of a single piece of software that's part of a massive software hardware system that can be used make it harder to slip an IED under a dead camel without anyone noticing. Is that really any less important than the guy checking bearing tolerances before shipping the bearings to the manufacturer of the machine used roll the threads on the bolts that will affix to the airplane the hardware the software system uses?
We're all just a tiny part of a bigger machine on some level.
It's a physiological/psychological need to be involved in some activity with a purpose, connect with people, etc
Of course there might be new occupations around the corner, but given that most of every material and cultural need is already satisfied, except for eternal life, I don't see what occupations billions of people could transition to that people or businesses would pay money for.
Couldn't that be said in every point in history?
Were the farmers losing their jobs in the early 1900s thinking to themselves, "man, I could really go for an interconnected network of computers right now"? I'd be surprised if it even crossed their mind. But eventually, with not having to work on the farm anymore, they had the time to sit back and come up with the idea and implementation. Now, in 2016, it is difficult to imagine living without it.
I find it hard to believe we've reached the pinnacle of human achievement.
For the vast majority of humans, what they can reasonably accomplish in their lifetimes is surpassed by automated systems today, at least that which pertains to the things that in the past were requisite for everything to function (farming, transportation, common services like cooking, cleaning, etc).
It's not hard to imagine the need for paying jobs will drop to zero as everything humans normally need is captured by monopolistic automated systems. From whence comes the need to take care of our own? What's to stop most humans from becoming like the horse, that which no longer has capitalistic meaning? Our overwhelming love for each other (/sarcasm)?
This friction starts when the 100s "push back." You don't have to be a genius to raise hell, do you?
Previously we just shifted from the fields to the factories, and when that was done, to the offices and service industry.
If those are done too, there will be few, or no, replacements.
There's no contract we signed with the universe or the "laws of economy" that there will always be new jobs found to replace automated ones.
Certainly there is no contract with the universe, but seeing as how people have pretty much worked most of the time for all of human history it seems like the height of hubris to think that RIGHT NOW things are going to fundamentally change.
Lets take horses. They were essential for many areas, for a very long time. Once a horseless carriage was constructed, horse ownership declined. After a tipping point, the cost for a horse, in terms of food, water, lodging cost more than the horseless carriage.
Eventually, horses were unemployable. They were still animals - strong animals at that. But the cost of maintenance and upkeep was more than they could output. So many went to the sausage and glue factories.
Some people still have them, and they are huge money-sinks. Their owners know it, and budget accordingly. But none use them for actual labor - machines are much more efficient.
So, what do we do when human labor is less than the resources to keep said human alive? Sausage/glue factories for them as well?
(edit: spelling)
The Soylent factory for me, please!
But to answer your question: there's going to have to be a rewrite of taxation and laws - see experiments with basic income - to cater for a world in which wealth is still being created but is being distributed less as the labour isn't required.
Whomever commands the robots of the future is probably looking at a big tax bill.
Nah. There will always be demand for people to do things. People want all kinds of goods and services. Not all of them will be automate-able. People will do those things. And they'll get paid for it.
Humans are not just tools. Thinking of them in that way leads to conclusions that don't make sense.
Capitalism views humans as a resource to be used and exploited. When that equation no longer makes sense for that person/group, they are gotten rid of. Look no further than factories that move elsewhere to lower their costs.
I'm from Indiana, and I'm sure you've heard of that Carrier factory debacle. They initially made the decision to move because it would make them $2 billion more per year. It was a purely numbers-driven solution. That's all that capitalism can "see".
And frankly, humans are "unquantifiable". No measurement, no data, and no decisions on that. It's the same with the environment as well - if there's no data that ties directly to me, who cares (even if we all take part). It's the tragedy of the commons. And we in the end, all suffer.
There are a lot of people out there who want to limit reproduction. And these days, they have better arguments.
To continue your analogy, "put them out to pasture". It could be argued that what is good for us as a people, is not always good for our conscious. What to do?
"There are things we can't conceive" is not a very convincing argument.
Sure.
There are also things we can conceive fairly well.
It's not that automation will eliminate all jobs, just that automation will eliminate most jobs in every field faster than humans can be trained to do them.
The worry is that humans will become the horses of the 21st century -- and we seem on track to be. Understandably, many humans are concerned by this prospect.
AI is not just tools. AI replaces brains as well. This breaks the cycle. You know what they saw about past results and future returns? Apply that heavy and frequently.
Is the feeling that you are withering away if you are not progressing in life merely a "society" thing though?
Any specific ones that you have in mind?
I disagree. The drive to work and/or be productive is one of the reasons we're the apex predator, and not our prior evolutionary human-like variations. It's not "society" that says you have to work, but your DNA.
Example... do you notice the drive among the powerful/wealthy individuals, governments, and corporations - to get to space and colonize our solar system and beyond? That drive does not exist if we sit on our laurels. Those are the people pushing the species forward - it would be simple to do nothing, and for them to sip very expensive coffee and entertain themselves until their life expired.
> We're coming of an age, where machines can increasingly provide more and more, and we are still addicted to human labor and that connection of self-worth.
This isn't about "human" labor, it's about working in general. Perhaps your occupation is designing, improving, or repairing these machines you speak of. That is work, and has a noticeable impact - opposed to camping, hiking, sipping coffee, and existing for the sake of existing.
tldr; if/when a society meltdown occurs, I don't want you on my team.
I agree we have a drive to improve but our current system is a long way from efficient by design.
Whereas most anthropological and genetic studies indicate that homo sapiens did not "win", but instead we mated with them and joined the disparate species.
> Example... do you notice the drive among the powerful/wealthy individuals, governments, and corporations - to get to space and colonize our solar system and beyond? That drive does not exist if we sit on our laurels. Those are the people pushing the species forward - it would be simple to do nothing, and for them to sip very expensive coffee and entertain themselves until their life expired.
Sigh. And here we go, with moralizing capitalistic thought with expansion and growth.
You pack in the assumption that capitalism pushes society forward and will continue to do so. I also seem to remember the Wright bros story. They patented the aeropane in the US, whereas it was free to use elsewhere. They locked down the industry so it was their way or no way. Eventually, the US military had to step in, due to WWI, and end their protections.
In the end, capitalism is great at looking that it furthers science and the arts. But the bad sides are that it: 1. retards cooperation between different entities 2. pits person against person 3. encourages to maximize money against all other means
> tldr; if/when a society meltdown occurs, I don't want you on my team.
Don't worry. You wouldn't be on my "team" anyways. It'd be your loss, given I know many things, including many arts and sciences from the SCA.
As for the anti-capitalism rant please tell me that you have visited Russia, east Europe, Venezuela and the awesome places in the world where the capitalist evil has been destroyed for some time. And once you go there please feel free to stay if you enjoy it so much.
I have seen some of those places and, thanks a lot, but I prefer the evil capitalism by far.
I disagree. The large amount of mooches, bums, alcoholics, and freeloaders around clearly points out that the evolutionary hypothesis you posit is wrong.
In general, any time you find yourself trying to justify something with evolutionary psychology, you are probably wrong. I really hate the abuse of the field and the trendy brainless use of "DNA-this" "in-our-DNA that" in popular jargon. Evolutionary psychology is just Social Darwinism for the 21st century with a new name. Unless there is a study that tested and confirmed an evolutionary psychology hypothesis, consider it wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psyc...
Can we agree that your DNA(and most species) does give you an innate drive to reproduce? Past(last 100000+ years) and present mating suitability in a male is perceived by his ability to feed/defend/nurture their mate and offspring. The large amount of "mooches, bums, alcoholics" you reference would be poor mates, yet they continue to reproduce. They do so [mostly] with the assistance of another willing member of the class of "mooches, bums, alcoholics". However, the people that are not "mooches, bums, alcoholics" make more desirable mates, because they have a higher potential to feed/defend/nurture their mate and offspring. That means that yes, your biology is still telling you that you need to work, even if it is only to achieve higher mating success, and fulfill your biological imperative.
Hrm...I really don't like the direction my own thought is taking as I write this down. It ends with "well, then those (people) should be eliminated for the good of the species", and no one wants to hear that, whether it is correct or incorrect. It can be interpreted in a very dark and nasty context, and that is absolutely not what I'm trying to promote or champion.
In a nutshell, I'm arguing that I will win at the biological imperative because of my drive to work and succeed. Those people that don't want to work and succeed would contribute to their species by going off somewhere quiet, and avoiding consumption of the resources needed by their fellow species members that are grinding away at "life" in the evolutionary sense - not in the "pursuit of happiness" sense, which is subjective and altogether distracting.
It's also similar to Phrenology, the "science" of skull size, weight, and shape that indicate intelligence. Of course, non-whites were all inferior.
There were many interests all surrounding Margret Sanger, with Planned Parenthood and the original intentions of that group. Ideally, blacks, Jews, "retards", and any other undesirable were sterilized as to not continue their genes.
But talking of eugenics, even in a roundabout way has a lot of baggage. Is there a way to do it right? I'm not sure. I'd think voluntary methods could work, but only if they were truly voluntary. Remember, the kind of people we have coming in government believe that one can electrocute the gay out of someone (Pence).
Maybe he means it in the tongue in cheek "there's no disease that can't be treated with a 12ga slug" way. /s
Erm...is it? I thought that groups' entire mindset came from some religious interpretation of doing a deity's work. Maybe I'm wrong, but when a bunch of people(such as those that you mention) are so ridiculously self-destructive, I can only assume some-or-other <insert-religious-stupidity> is behind it.
I'm not making a case for any of the things you mention(sterilization...really!?). I'm making a case for the working people building a working civilization and non-working people can't participate or benefit.
No, you are just using the same flawed reasoning over and over again. The way it can also work is that a bigger and more aggressive man comes along, kills you, and takes your woman.
Even the words you use come from Social Darwinism: "success" and "imperative" at some goal. The innate drive you talk about has nothing to do with reproduction - it is a set of instincts that makes mate finding and mating pleasurable. Goals and even establishing the causal connection between mating and reproduction requires reasoning faculties that not even most apes are capable of.
> Those people that don't want to work and succeed would contribute to their species by going off somewhere quiet, and avoiding consumption of the resources needed by their fellow species members that are grinding away at "life" in the evolutionary sense
And these people would listen to you tell them where to go and what to do because ...?
It is quite obvious that you are trying to use a single evolutionary psychology argument without having any knowledge of the field. Human mating strategies are incredibly diverse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mating_system#In_humans. You have some kind of Puritan mental hangup about work that you are trying to justify with flawed reasoning.
No - you're assuming what I mean from text that I never wrote.
> The way it can also work is that a bigger and more aggressive man comes along, kills you, and takes your woman.
Precisely that. That's exactly how evolution works. At some point, we eschewed evolution for "feeling good". I have a problem with that, and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it.
> And these people would listen to you tell them where to go and what to do because ...?
They won't, and I wouldn't tell them to do anything, given that random humans have no reason to obey my forum-written thoughts.
> You have some kind of Puritan mental hangup
I'm not a puritan. Don't lump me in with people that search for meaning and invent a bearded one in a sky/sun/moon/long-dead-arab.
Sedachv, I get the impression you really want to argue with someone about something puritan-related. If you want to get together and rant about everything wrong they have done to our civilization and way of life, you would find I'm quite agreeable to that viewpoint. At the root of it all, I hate that I have to "work" so that other people can "not work". I want the "not work"-ing people to go away. Unfortunately, I can't go off and chase those ideals, because I am still taking care of my own biological imperative's fruit until they can are grown and capable of taking care of themselves. When people stop working early(most of them do not do so because they have become rich, as in the article), we have to take care of them. I don't want to take care of them.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
And what's the alternative? Evolution has no effect on psychology? Our perfect mind came from divine inspiration?
Evolutionary psychology is threatening as a concept to many liberal ideals we've worked hard for. Men and women are equal. People are rational and can be trusted to make their own decisions, or vote intelligently. Liberalism can be boiled down to a kind of "faith in humanity", and like the earlier faith, thou shalt not question it, especially with science.
But like before, it's better in the long run if we face the uncomfortable truths, whatever they be.
edit: everything I'm trying to say here has been better said in The Blank Slate.
The alternative is the same as for every theory: do not assume your hypothesis is correct until you have empirical evidence, and do not assign your moral values to theories.
Obviously the idea of evolutionary psychology follows from evolution. Neither evolutionary psychology nor social Darwinism are wrong - they are just names for a particular class of consequences of evolution and natural selection. They are falsifiable because the theory of evolution is falsifiable. As far as we have evidence, evolution is true, so saying that evolution has consequences is true. What those consequences are is not for you to decide based on your prejudices.
Saying things like "your DNA says you have to work" and poor people deserve to die out "because evolution, duh" is wrong.
Getting rich might help you in having comforts without monetary considerations, and have more time with things you enjoy. All of it won't subdue the need to fulfilling work. While I can imagine some people who would happily spend all the riches on exorbitant possessions, the people who have a higher probability of making that amount of money might not have propensity to spend their lives in that manner.
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/jobs/bored-to-tears-by-a-d...
I don't care about 'fulfilling' work, money, things. I love being physically active and improving in my hobbies.
Or you need better hobbies and job substitutes than "idling all day, browsing your favorite sites"...
A job where you idle all day sounds terrible because that's still 40 hours that just goes poof.
Rather, those 40 hours could go towards hobbies. And there's a lot of those.
So as automation / AI creates a larger and larger class of the permanently unemployed, what does this statement mean to them? And to us (i.e., fellow citizens, unemployed or not).
This was THE BIGGEST issue of the election that never was. We're extremely unprepared. Again.
It's a huge problem in Japan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori
And in other countries (not as big in mine, but it's growing):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET
Run, bike, hike, camp, cook, read, walk, have coffee, relax, etc.
But it's possible there's a sample bias; people who get rich are the kind of people who can't stop working, even if/when they can. Other people would totally stop working if they got rich but it's hard to prove, because they never do get rich.
In their case, making a lot of money was a pleasant side effect of their preexisting strong work ethic, not the driving force.
(...and don't get me wrong, these guys also play hard when they're not working)
"Play hard" after 72 hours of working? They must be super-human. What about, you know, er, human contact? Like spending time with your family and friends?
Family gets neglected in that case, or nepotism'd so you can see them.
The act of doing business for those sorts of people is play.
That's probably how Marissa Mayer was "working" 130 hrs/week :-)
That's exactly the problem I think. If you're driven enough to get rich you're too driven to stop. If you'd be happy stopping, you're not driven enough to get rich.
Spending on these things pretty much comes together with being "employed".
> I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.
In trying to rationalize the article to myself, it occurs to me that, after a lifetime of measuring your own success/pride in dollar-denominations, a complete, instantaneous loss of income represents a likewise complete collapse of pride and an ensuing inability to even measure one's own perceived happiness.
Perhaps the restless retiree from the original story could use his dissatisfaction as a driver to find another means of self-fulfillment, rather than allow it to shock him back into (imo) tycoon-esque distraction.
That's because he didn't have the right personality and nothing prepared him for it. Others have absolutely no problem not going back to the routine -- and can find any number of small personal projects and hobbies to keep them occupied.
Of course nobody just sits on a beach old day, because it gets boring in itself. But there are tons of other endeavours to try that are not work.
However, I agree. I'm constantly coming up with new projects, ideas and activities for myself. At this time I am convinced that I would not be bored never having to work a formal job ever again in my life. I would assume that is true for many HNers.
The answer is, extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation.
You're not motivated by a job's salary, you're motivated by the nice things you can do with money--things you decided are intrinsically more important than the things you can do while broke.
We're not talking about the same kind of motivation, obviously.
We're talking about motivation in the work itself vs being motivated to work because of others things you want to do with the money.
To make it an extreme example, in the first case you'd do the work even for free, or even pay to do it (like many people pay to do some hobbies), even if you had all the money you need.
In Germany for example health care insurance for start-up founders costs like 200€/month more than for unemployed (assuming they have savings and low income), because they set this fee by law and people do not like rich business owners there.
Or last week a court decided that commercial webpages must not link to potential illegal sites and it is their responsibility to check if it illegal, e.g. if the other site contains a CC-ND photo that was modified. From your hobby webpage you can link to it as you please, but if it is a start-up webpage you can get sued for 6000€, even if you do not know there is that photo.
You can spent all your time on an oss project and it is no job, since you do not get paid.
1. quit my day job and travel the world (and I mean all over - south america, middle east and so on).
2. get a couple of houses (one for my parents, and another for me)
3. start contributing back to the community (If i get that kind of money, It's probably because I would have IPOd or sold my business - in which case, I would love to work on open source - no strings attached - MIT).
4. buy a few toys (cars and what not) that I've always wanted.
5. leave the rest for my kids/family/future.
However, the "outer wrapper" is not the main story nor is it the TLDR.
Instead of journalists just presenting it like this:
, they (or their editors) end up structuring articles like this: Yes, the "<human-interest>" is Keith[2], but the main story is not about Keith. It's mostly a story built around Jamie Traeger-Muney[3] and her observations. There are also other observations from Timothy Judge's meta-analysis and professor Brooke Harrington.I do concede that if your only takeaway was "Keith's story", it's possible that imprint was deliberate by the editors. (In other words, they know that psychologically, most audiences will remember a character's struggles and triumphs more than the abstract facts & figures.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_interest_story
[2] and also mentions Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Karen Gorden
[3] http://www.wealthlegacygroup.net/wlg-about/documentation/jam...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html