I'd like an extended version of the story where the businessman realizes he's wrong, invites all his friends to give up their lives in the business-world and revert to subsistence living that provides freedom. Then society collapses because if everyone is doing the bare minimum, there isn't anything left over for basic government services.
Society would collapse also of everyone decided to do internet marketing. Or baking. Or anything, for that matter - since society requires that different people make different choices.
I'd like an extended version of the story where the businessman realizes he's wrong, invites all his friends to give up their lives in the business-world and revert to subsistence living that provides freedom. Then society collapses because if everyone is doing the bare minimum, there isn't anything left over for basic government services.
Society would collapse also of everyone decided to do internet marketing. Or baking. Or anything, for that matter - since society requires that different people make different choices.
>Society would collapse also of everyone decided to do internet marketing.
Sometimes it feels like we are already half way there.
But who pays for these social services to pay the doctors that heal him?
Immigrants waiting to get citizenship so they can enjoy the same safety net.
Residents also enjoy the same safety net. German social benefits do no distinguish on status. The only exception is if your residence permit is tied to your employment, in which case it’s a little more complicated, but only due to the horribly slow immigration office.
People love to take this story apart. I always took the message as “stop when you have enough”. It’s a lesson about contentment.
I have enough, and I turned my entrepreneurial spirit towards public good instead of revenue. I take days off when it’s sunny, and reintroduced play into my work. I am back to Paul Graham’s “do things that don’t scale”.
I am dismayed by the amount of greed among people far wealthier than me. Their quest to grow a number beyond rational purposes causes them and a lot of people around them immense grief. We would all benefit if they worked on other goals.
Society would collapse also of everyone decided to do internet marketing. Or baking. Or anything, for that matter - since society requires that different people make different choices.
>Society would collapse also of everyone decided to do internet marketing. Sometimes it feels like we are already half way there.
Exactly. (Especially now that ChatGPT makes those people even more productive.)
In a similar spirit there's Tolstoy's classic short story, "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" [1] I'd start just before chapter V if you want to get right into it -- the ending is truly delicious, and quite inline with OP's story, enjoy. [1] http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2738/
I could guess the ending from the title... As great a writer as Tolstoy is this one was a pretty obvious conclusion. We're all here temporarily anyway, amassing wealth on expense of health and well being is a fool's errand. Sure misery is frightening, but I find we sell our dignity too cheaply because of that fear. A life of servitude, selling nearly half our waking time in the prime of our time for fear of destitution strikes me as madness. Wouldn't it be preferable to die than to live with a leash, as golden as it may be painted? The comforts we can buy, of gadgets, big house, big car, fancy travel... As long as we report back and spend 90% of the year saying 'yes sir' to boss, client or market. What have we become? Well dressed, comfy serfs.
The far more elegant original version is from Heinrich Böll (1972 Nobel laureate in literature) and is entitled: "Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral", published in English as "Anecdote Concerning the Lowering of Productivity" (but literally translated: "Anecdote on Lowering the Work Ethic"). See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekdote_zur_Senkung_der_Arbei...
Yeah everyone here is totally missing this point “Who would make the iPhones then?” Nobody cause they wouldn’t exist
No they aren’t. They are pointing out that it’s a childlike fantasy that ends in pain and agony because a society based on subsistence is missing basic things like anti-bacterials, insulin, anesthesia for surgery, etc.
The remedy to pain and agony is opium not modern medicine. Stretching out the lives of workers is an economic imperative not a humanistic one. Our fear of suffering and death makes us easy to manipulate.