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Ask HN: What to do if you hate working for someone else and arent an entrepreneur?

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Re: Ask HN: What to do if you hate working for someone else and arent an entrepreneur?

#51

Post by jacques_chester »

staunch wrote: post #23
makotech222 wrote: post #4

Congratulations, you have discovered socialism. Most people find extreme injustice in seeing the value of their labor being stolen by the capitalist class. Socialism is an economic system that does away with the employer-employee distinction and allows all workers to take ownership of their own labor. In practice, this means the democratization of the workplace, and the end to the autocratic workplace. Edit: To actua…

Socialism is only a valid answer if you don't understand technology. If you think there's a fixed pie and we have to forcibly break it into rations so that everyone gets at least something . But technology offers a much better solution, which is grow the pie large enough that everyone has as much as they want. There are no physical limitations to this concept. The universe is rich with everything we need for billions…

Marx wasn't really advocating that there is a fixed pie which needs to be forcibly carved up. Mostly he built his ideas around the distinction between different kinds of "value", particularly the labour value and exchange value of goods.

His clever insight, the basis of his theory of exploitation, was that labour value and labour power are different. The labourer sells labour power. The difference between the labour value of the good and the labour power sold accrues to the capitalist.

One of the several ways he was wrong was that prices aren't really set by labour value at all. All economic value is subjective, influenced by many factors. The average amount of labour is neither here nor there.

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you hate working for someone else and arent an entrepreneur?

#52

Post by dazc »

cc81 wrote: post #36
weirdstuff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cuba is a cherry-picked example and is misleading. Other socialist countries that are doing better: China; Denmark; Finland; Netherlands; Canada; Sweden; Norway; Ireland. Don't forget Cuba has been forced into economic isolation by the US. And places like Venezuela and Detroit were overly dependent on too few industries and are plagued by massive wealth inequality. You can also find persistent systemic poverty in cap…

How do you define a socialist country?

By including China, I'd say, very broadly?

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you hate working for someone else and arent an entrepreneur?

#53

Post by weirdstuff »

cc81 wrote: post #36
weirdstuff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cuba is a cherry-picked example and is misleading. Other socialist countries that are doing better: China; Denmark; Finland; Netherlands; Canada; Sweden; Norway; Ireland. Don't forget Cuba has been forced into economic isolation by the US. And places like Venezuela and Detroit were overly dependent on too few industries and are plagued by massive wealth inequality. You can also find persistent systemic poverty in cap…

How do you define a socialist country?

Too complex for an HN post and ultimately my definition will far too short, so I'll just cop out by saying "I know it when I see it".

Usually defined by a relatively more weighted public sector ownership and operation of the factors of production. It's about worker control. And my overall feelings of it is relative to places like the U.S. which practices a form of democratic-ish corporatist oligarchy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you hate working for someone else and arent an entrepreneur?

#54

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #41
andrepd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. >I resent spending 48 weeks a year in an office and stressing over issues that will only make the company's owners richer but won't change much for me. I say don't change much because a 2-3% raise once in a while is nice, but it's nothing in comparison to the thousands/millions extra it will make the company, while the only result for me is that I get to keep my job and do more of that. Who wouldn't resen…

Or maybe most people just don’t have such a simplistic view of the world? People who advocate for socialism just want the rewards of capitalism without any of the risks.

Well seeing how most Americans haven't been getting the rewards of capitalism(wages have been stagnant since the 70's, regional inequality + healthcare + housing has made the actual COL much higher), it makes perfect sense that people would start pushing for something different.

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you hate working for someone else and arent an entrepreneur?

#55

Post by guywithaphone »

I am in the same boat. As someone in IT, I find that most organizations don't value my incredible achievements... this year, I made a decent sum of money selling a seasonal product. My long term goal is to start one or more businesses with the blueprint from "the 4 hour workweek".

I have started to become an entrepreneur because there a billion different ways to make the world a better place (some are marketable) and in part because I want to be rewarded for the value i produce instead of the time I put in.

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you hate working for someone else and arent an entrepreneur?

#56

Post by tarboreus »

staunch wrote: post #23
makotech222 wrote: post #4

Congratulations, you have discovered socialism. Most people find extreme injustice in seeing the value of their labor being stolen by the capitalist class. Socialism is an economic system that does away with the employer-employee distinction and allows all workers to take ownership of their own labor. In practice, this means the democratization of the workplace, and the end to the autocratic workplace. Edit: To actua…

Socialism is only a valid answer if you don't understand technology. If you think there's a fixed pie and we have to forcibly break it into rations so that everyone gets at least something . But technology offers a much better solution, which is grow the pie large enough that everyone has as much as they want. There are no physical limitations to this concept. The universe is rich with everything we need for billions…

For the last 50 years, the pie has gotten larger and larger. And yet, the median slice is getting smaller. How big does this pie have to get before everyone is allowed to have a bite?

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you hate working for someone else and arent an entrepreneur?

#57

Post by DoreenMichele »

I have mostly managed to avoid working a normal job. Here are some things I have done:

College. It let me continue to live with parents and not get a job.

Military spouse and full time parent. It let me see the world, but when I got divorced, starting a career from scratch was challenging. Also, my quality of life went way up with getting a job and no longer being a homemakers. Homemaking isn't exactly a profession that gets a lot of respect or pays particularly well and the retirement plan tends to suck.

I have been doing freelance work in recent years.

I will recommend the book "How to survive without a salary" by Charles Long. If you can pay off all your debts, pay cash for a cheap house somewhere with low taxes, raise a garden, etc, you can get off the hamster wheel and do as you choose to a large degree. But it takes a lot of time to arrange and most folks don't actually want to make those sorts of sacrifices.

This is part of why so many people buy lottery tickets. Wanting an answer with no down side is a popular desire.

(No I am absolutely not being snarky. This is reality. Finding one's "dream job" and being jazzed to go to work every day is the exception, not the rule.)

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you hate working for someone else and arent an entrepreneur?

#58

Post by tarboreus »

RyanZAG wrote: post #47
weirdstuff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cuba is a cherry-picked example and is misleading. Other socialist countries that are doing better: China; Denmark; Finland; Netherlands; Canada; Sweden; Norway; Ireland. Don't forget Cuba has been forced into economic isolation by the US. And places like Venezuela and Detroit were overly dependent on too few industries and are plagued by massive wealth inequality. You can also find persistent systemic poverty in cap…

> My boss getting a new Tesla or yet another house from the extra profits doesn't make me happy. Hang on, last I checked everyone still gets employed in China; Denmark; Finland; Netherlands; Canada; Sweden; Norway; Ireland the same way they get employed in all the other countries. All the bosses in those countries you mentioned still drive the new Telsa and have bigger houses. So wouldn't this kind of socialism not a…

In these countries there is a larger tax rate and a much larger safety net for those who cannot or do not work. In addition, the government provides basic services like health care and, in some countries, child care that do a lot to close the gap. In most of these countries, they don't really have a conception of working "full time" vs. "part time," due to provided health insurance, meaning that people generally have meaningful work life balance. They also have better law around collective bargaining and the rights of employees. But yes, they're not like the USSR where everyone is provided with some kind of job.

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you hate working for someone else and arent an entrepreneur?

#59

Post by ryanwaggoner »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #54
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe most people just don’t have such a simplistic view of the world? People who advocate for socialism just want the rewards of capitalism without any of the risks.

Well seeing how most Americans haven't been getting the rewards of capitalism(wages have been stagnant since the 70's, regional inequality + healthcare + housing has made the actual COL much higher), it makes perfect sense that people would start pushing for something different.

Our system isn't perfect, and capitalism overall is shit, but actual socialism somehow manages to be worse. Americans aren't clamoring for socialism.

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you hate working for someone else and arent an entrepreneur?

#60

Post by RyanZAG »

tarboreus wrote: post #56
staunch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socialism is only a valid answer if you don't understand technology. If you think there's a fixed pie and we have to forcibly break it into rations so that everyone gets at least something . But technology offers a much better solution, which is grow the pie large enough that everyone has as much as they want. There are no physical limitations to this concept. The universe is rich with everything we need for billions…

For the last 50 years, the pie has gotten larger and larger. And yet, the median slice is getting smaller. How big does this pie have to get before everyone is allowed to have a bite?

Why do you say the slices have gotten smaller? The absolute percentage of people in poverty in the world has had a very rapid decline over the last 50 years. So something we are doing is working.
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