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“People simply empty out”

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Re: “People simply empty out”

#431

Post by Mikeb85 »

brador wrote: post #213
grey-area wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd contend that it wasn't designed to any significant degree. As the parent poster is trying to tell you, it just is. The system we have is just the result of the emergent behaviour of humans interacting, it's more down to chance than design, even if some elements seem predictable. We haven't yet found a way to fairly spread privilege in our societies, so we're stuck with the least worst system, but I would note tha…

Only way to stop hoarding is abundance.

No, the only way to stop hoarding is to cultivate non-attachment...

Re: “People simply empty out”

#432

Post by thenomad »

goggles99 wrote: post #235
blackhole wrote: post #5

I feel like too many people get sucked into the idea of furthering their career, to the point that they forget to further their own life. What is the point of existence if we never get around to experiencing it? "It's not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed, it is the things we do not." - Randy Pausch

How many hours per day have humans worked historically compared to now? Just to survive (not starve to death). Do you think man works more now than historically? Man was cursed (after expulsion from the garden of Eden)/ or evolved (depending on your beliefs) to work, a lot.

There's considerable evidence that most serfs in the Middle Ages (Europe) worked the same or less hours as we do today.

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...

Re: “People simply empty out”

#433

Post by vendakka »

nhangen wrote: post #359

I have three things to say about this: 1. Many people are horrified by the thought of not being a simple worker bee. They say they want change, but they don't. They want the security of someone else taking care of them. The reason wealth exists is because there are people that cannot live this way, and thus, make their own way. You cannot fault hard working business owners because their employees put themselves in a…

Life is suffering? I find that to be overly pessimistic. Life is not simple and there will be sorrow. However, there will be joy as well. "Suffering" is a very strong word to use. There is happiness and there is sorrow. To expect only happiness is not pragmatic, but to expect only sorrow is unfortunate.

Life can be beautiful, even if it is not always so.

Re: “People simply empty out”

#434

Post by smrtinsert »

mattmanser wrote: post #267
orofino wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the problem though - you don't need to buy the BMW or the suburban McMansion. Save that money instead and when you're in your 40 you can tell the boss that he should give you job to a whipper-snapper, you're headed to Thailand. No one holds a gun to the consumer's head, they just convince themselves they need thing. Then they whine when they haven't saved more than 300k for retirement at age 50 and social secu…

The vast majority of people will get married and have kids and actually want to enjoy life a little bit while working 9-5. They want to stay near their close family & friends, because they love them and want to see them and want their kids to grow up around them. Which means spending X per month on a house. They want to have a car that doesn't embarrass them when they drive into work or round their friends, because o…

agreed. the fact is life pretty enjoyable including the occasional financial strain. its the journey not the destination.

Re: “People simply empty out”

#435

Post by _flag »

ctdonath wrote: post #336
kphild wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there is zero effort put into figuring out a better system, since those in position of wealth and power don't have an incentive to change what feeds them. With less than 5% people employed in agriculture [1], it must be possible to allocate resources in a way that does not require most people to waste their lives in jobs. The universal basic income, for instance, would achieve that without abolishing capitalism.…

Just 5% of people are employed in agriculture precisely because "those in position of wealth and power" DID allocate resources in a way that does not require most people to waste their lives toiling in fields. Without such high-profit motivation to invest in advanced research & infrastructure projects, we'd still be stuck with most people working in agriculture the hard way. Glorify employment? The socioeconomic worl…

> The socioeconomic world is as good as it is because most people are employed, doing something which contributes to maintenance and advancement of society & technology.

Can you justify this? If we use the US as an example and look at the most common jobs, we find that over 4 million people are employed as salespersons, another 3 million as cashiers, followed by 3 million people employed serving food (including fast food), etc. [1]

As the population has been moved away from agriculture, and recently manufacturing, they have become increasingly employed in the service sector. These people are not creating and advancing the technology of tomorrow, they are preforming basic tasks that could easily be done by the customers themselves (eg. automated checkouts).

What's more, there is now millions of people employed in areas such as advertising and sales, where people are essentially tasked with manufacturing wants and increasing the amount of money people spend, which not only defeats the entire basis of a functioning economic system (rational consumers making rational choices), but ensures that additional numbers of people are employed in the manufacture of superfluous goods that people are deceived into buying.

Is there any indication that if we seriously consider what is and isn't necessary in our society, the working population couldn't easily be cut by half without any kind of imminent collapse?

1. http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/Screen%...

edit: spelling

Re: “People simply empty out”

#436

Post by LekkoscPiwa »

brightsize wrote: post #417
LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reply to this: anytime I see 50 year old bold fat guy in a Porsche 911 it's depressing. EDIT: should really be pathetic and sad and not depressing, but I think you get my point. Youth and health are so precious that no amount of money compensates ever.

How about a 50 year-old slim guy with a full head of hair and a 911? Is that pathetic? Why? That would be me (minus the 911). I'm too frugal to buy a 911 but if another guy has socked away two or three million $ (or more) over the course of his tech career, how is this different than a 25yo with a big exit buying a 911? You seem a bit misinformed about age, a bit of an age-ist perhaps: I'm healthy and can bench press…

jewish proverb/saying: it is better to be young, rich and healthy than old, poor and sick.

all your efforts are to look younger, but this is lost as your youth is long gone. if you think you made great use of it by sitting at the office... well not even sure how to comment on this.

let me rephrase it: guy in 911 in his 50s even in great shape is a little bit like a woman in her 50s in great shape who just had a boob job done.

Re: “People simply empty out”

#437

Post by ctdonath »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #424
ctdonath wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're not paying, they're trespassers. Out. They're free to pursue their right to life without violating someone else's, and they've got far more ability to provide for themselves than you're giving them credit for. Charity has its place, I advocate and facilitate it, and am not under any delusion that it comes from compelling others to contribute.

The problem with your theories being, of course, that property is theft in the first place.

ycombinator.com is an odd place for you to advance that notion

Re: “People simply empty out”

#438

Post by anifow »

mrow84 wrote: post #218
grey-area wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd contend that it wasn't designed to any significant degree. As the parent poster is trying to tell you, it just is. The system we have is just the result of the emergent behaviour of humans interacting, it's more down to chance than design, even if some elements seem predictable. We haven't yet found a way to fairly spread privilege in our societies, so we're stuck with the least worst system, but I would note tha…

I've been a fan of the emergent structure hypothesis for quite a long time, but I do feel that you are pushing it too far. There have been, historically and presently, power and wealth grabs by the already powerful, and manipulation of political and social structures to suit their needs. To some extent this was easier historically, partly because there were fewer laws, but even now, with the legacy of hundreds of yea…

The way I see it, political power grabs are simply a continuation of wealth accumulation. Money is limited in its value, but it's the best universal proxy for value that we have so people often equate them. It's better to see money as path to things that are actually valuable, such as food, water, shelter, and the ability to provide these for others or to hire them to do things.

If you think about wealth in this abstracted sense, a notch away from money, then you can see how basic trading dynamics might apply.

Yakovenko modelled the trading dynamics in a perfect game of chance (coin flips determine winners and losers). Something interesting emerged.

http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/12/7/075032

What it shows is that if everyone starts with the same amount of money, after a bit of random trading, their wealth is normally distributed (this is obvious if you are familiar with the binomial distribution). A few people are doing well, a few are doing badly, and most people are around where they started. As the trading continues though, it turns into a power curve where most people are doing badly and a few are taking everything. Its the same thing that happens when a rich man sits down at a poor man's poker table. He can keep putting him all in on every good hand and he only needs to be right maybe 1 in ten times and he wins everything. There's a runaeay effect after you hit a certain point.

Of course, things are a lot messier at this higher level interpretation of wealth since its harder to attach numbers to wealth in the form of political power, good health, and other factors which have a compounding effect (good health and political power help you make more money, but they cost money, so there's a feedback loop, but you xan equate them for simplicity). This is why people complain about a shrinking middle class.

The good news is that human life is messy we often allow our relationships to balance things out. The bad news is that we have gotten better and better at sterilizing our social and physical environments so the past might not predict what's coming next.

Re: “People simply empty out”

#439

Post by gexla »

_delirium wrote: post #16
blackhole wrote: post #5

I feel like too many people get sucked into the idea of furthering their career, to the point that they forget to further their own life. What is the point of existence if we never get around to experiencing it? "It's not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed, it is the things we do not." - Randy Pausch

Hence the somewhat curious (and I think, very American) idea of the "Golden Years". If you put your head down and work hard, taking no vacations, until you're age 65, then you flip 180 degrees in the other direction and retire into a life of full-time leisure. So if you live long enough, it really won't be a waste; you cash it in all at the end! A Scandinavian psychologist somewhat recently proposed a typically Scand…

> Hence the somewhat curious (and I think, very American) idea of the "Golden Years". If you put your head down and work hard, taking no vacations, until you're age 65, then you flip 180 degrees in the other direction and retire into a life of full-time leisure. So if you live long enough, it really won't be a waste; you cash it in all at the end!

Also odd is the flip at the other end of the scale. You live your childhood, go to college and don't need to think much about career and then all of a sudden you get sucked into the cycle (graduating from college.) I was working from an internet cafe in the Philippines the other day (my connection at home was down and I needed to knock some stuff out) and while I was busting my ass the the kids (late high school and college aged) in there were playing games or checking Facebook. Occasionally there is someone in there working on homework.

The economy here in the Philippines sucks. These kids will graduate from college and be lucky to make minimum wage, which is $5 - $6 per day. A good job where I live in the Philippines is a call center position which pays something like $300 / month. Of course, the call centers require that you have a college degree. Even a lot of cashier positions at the local stores require a college degree. Because labor is so cheap, it's not uncommon to walk into a small store and see a half dozen workers behind the counter where in the U.S. you might only see one or two. That doesn't mean the service is better though. ;)

So, talk about slavery. I want to tell these people who are going to college and playing online games during their off-time that they are being conned. They are wasting their time going to college and then wasting their free time thinking college will bring success. What they really need to be doing is exiting the system and plowing their own path. There is nothing preventing them from doing what I do, sitting right next to them making in one day what they might make in a month. Good thing they haven't figured that out yet, I might have a bit of competition!

Re: “People simply empty out”

#440

Post by taigeair »

It's my opinion that people live the life they choose. No one is tricking you into it. Who's to say which way of life is right?

Some people enjoy the pleasures of material things and stability. Some enjoy risk and experiences. People always are a bit jealous of the other side but probably are happier with the road they chose.

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