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Comment by JohnFen | Hacker News Reader

Oh, we agree more than we disagree.

The only part I really take issue with is the notion that working for someone is modern slavery. I don't think it's anything even close that. Slaves can't quit and do something else. They can't even change who their "owners" are.

> I'd rather eat ramen, than get $250k a year and expected to be at my employer's beck and call 8am-5pm.

I know a lot of people who make that exact choice.

> The fact that pretty much no one seems to see anything wrong with this terrifies me.

I think lots of people see the problem and fundamentally agree with you. The issue is that solutions to the problem are difficult for most people.

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> Slaves can't quit and do something else.

I discussed the slavery point below, but here let me defend its usage: it is slavery if you consider the society as a whole, not just your job.

Chances are, if you don't want to work for a year, you probably can't afford housing because you are renting. Statistically, you do not even have money to support yourself for a year. Culturally, we do not share food with strangers and neighbours, unless it's a particular event.

One side of my family is from equatorial Africa. My great-grandfather had a hut made with his own hands, and readily available food. If he wanted he could have spent his time philosophising on nature.

We have invented machines so our quality of life is much higher than him, but in exchange our time is not our own. Statistically speaking, the average Westerner, if they don't think about earning money for a year, they end up without a house, possibly starving. That fate, the spectre of that inhuman life, is the metaphorical whip of our master.

The choice is made for us.

I get you, because I’ve been down this line of thought as well. But I’ve concluded the whip hand is not even that of society, but nature itself. Everyone is driven by the biological need to eat, at the end of the day.

So how did your great grandfather eat? Where did this readily available food come from?

Would other people provide him with endless food while he did this philosophizing? I imagine that any society, whether advanced megalopolis or tribal village, has a limit to their generosity towards complete nonproducers and would eventually demand something out of them, even if it’s just the output of that philosophizing. Someone had to work to produce that readily available food, I would think.

If he grew/harvested his own food, then he’d be lucky if he never experienced a stressful or even deadly event of pestilence, drought, or even injury to himself rendering him incapable of doing the quite hard work of growing and harvesting it.

Producing food is hard work and modern technological capitalism can be seen as a process of creating more and more layers of abstraction between food producers and the mouths that need to be fed, and doing it more efficiently at that to generate more spare time for other activities like leisure or philosophizing.

Those are very good questions, but here's the thing.

What even is the point of all this technology is the only option is a free life of prehistoric subsistence, or the drone life of a desk worker?

I refuse to accept this false binary choice. We are not made into drones because the machines and industry needs constant maintenance. Society with its artificial busywork and bullshit rules is the reason one has to work 40 hours a week. We have to earn a ton of money because, at the end of the day, half of it goes into the pocket of plutocrats, not to keep the gears oiled.

This is a huge topic for a comment on a forum thread, I am just trying to understand why other people deep into technology, automation, like us, are unable to visualize a world where technology works for us. Frees us from nature. Because right now we are using technology against ourselves. To control us, to make us more productive, to make our bosses more rich and politicians more powerful.

Technology is a tool. A force multiplier. But we are not using to increase our living standards, only to keep this circus turning, at our expense.

Because money, when you have enough of it, works for you. So we do our best, in the system we were born into, to squirrel away as much money so as to be able to retire ASAP, while remaining as sane as can be.

Technology these days is just icing on the cake. We don't need faster computers or ChatGPT to be able to feed all of humanity. We've been there for decades.

FWIW I agree with everything your saying, I think. I started out pr and only recently have had enough money to consider investing and high yield savings and bonds and all that shot, but it still gels zero sum, like inflation or the next black swan will just wipe it all out anyways if I ever try to retire and live off of what I’ve squirreled away, as sibling comment puts it.

It feels like there is no escape from work. Either you’ll spend every minute fishing for berries and hunting, or tilling sowing and reaping, or working at a desk and grocery shopping.

I truly admire the ascetics that give it all up and put their fate at the mercy of chance.

Was saying to my wife the other day that its impossible to just quit the world in the west. Even if I save enough to buy a plot of land and build a hut and can grow all of my own food. Property tax is due every year. The government refuses to allow people to just disconnect.

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