— Kurt Vonnegut
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
— Robert A. Heinlein
The key to a happy life is to let go of your status anxiety, get out there, and really start living. There’s an effectively infinite number of things to learn, books to read, places to go, people to meet, landscapes to explore, cuisines to taste, animals to see. There’s just so, so much to experience in life, and so little of it has anything to do with money.
You say that, and yet
> places to go
Travel is expensive.
> people to meet
If you live in a small town and want to start meeting people radically different from the people you usually meet, you should probably move to a larger city. Large cities are expensive.
> cuisines to taste
Eating out is expensive.
> things to learn, books to read
These are perhaps the ones that require the fewest resources, and even these require enough of a work-life balance that you're not completely exhausted by the time you finish at your third job. Depending on how your economic circumstances are, a healthy work-life balance might not pay the bills.
Now, for the upper middle class readership that HN is most likely composed of, sure, the costs of all these activities are negligible. But I think it's a stretch to say that a homeless person on the street should "get out there and really start living." To do that, they need enough money to get to a stable situation first, and the sort of money that's trivial for us to come by is not always so trivial for everyone else...
Backpacking through Europe is cheap. Backpacking through Southeast Asia even cheaper. Incredible food awaits and it’s very very cheap.
You don't want to do it? That's your choice.
An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
They can:
- work their way up the ladder in their current job. (If not possible, look for another job where it is.) - find a job with upward mobility that doesn't take much training and is quick to start. Welding, plumbing etc. And prioritize training for it. Then transition.
When either of these are reached you can rinse and repeat. And hopefully while doing so, learn how business/life works because you are actively working to engage with it to improve yourself.
Some things that people want o do require resources, and the number of ways to get those resources is diminishing. We're fortunate in tech to be somewhat shielded from it.
Why can't we demolish every residential structure under 5 stories tall in central London and build flats? Why can't you build in the green belt?
There are some good reasons - the negative externalities of one-off housing in the middle of nowhere are huge (I say, writing from a one-off house in the middle of Ireland), but there are some bad reasons too, like homeowners using "social and affordable" to concern-troll their way in to ensuring nothing actually gets built.
And yeah, dev salaries in the UK are shockingly low compared to the US (and Ireland for that matter, so far as I can tell) but when the supply of housing is constrained higher incomes don't help for long. Making $250k might enable you to buy a $2 million 4 bed 2 bath near decent schools in San Jose, but give it a while and you'll need $350k, then $450k, etc. (or remote work will break the back of the NIMBYs with any luck).
These are not just first world problems. These are problems that could, potentially, destroy entire economies.
Immigrants will soon be facing the same issues (high housing, high education costs, lower wages).
I reckon in about 20-30 years the arbitrage opportunity to immigrate to Western countries will be eliminated, it already is much reduced compared to 30 or 40 years ago. QoL in Western countries will be lower, and higher in the rest of the world.
I often think of a documentary I saw about Somali refugees who came to America in the early 2000s (sadly I can't find it anymore.) They ended up moving back to Africa because they hated life in America. Working two terrible minimum wage jobs just to pay rent and food. They made no friends and had no free time or money.
They were happier living in a UN funded refugee camp spending time with friends and family.
I think the only way Western countries have any chance of reducing the falling QoL is space exploration, but I don't think their is enough energy and motivation.
If I buy farmland and build a house in Ireland, I know I'll be forced to demolish it after my neighbours complain (and a long review process). In many places there would be no such enforcement.
I think you are taking this point too literally. The question is: what proportion of your life are you spending pursuing career goals?
For a bit of background on this, I strongly recommend Skidelsky & Skidelsky (2012) How Much is Enough? [1]
[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/216918/how-much-is-...
- More wealth is better? Then 0/10 for chill/work maybe is ok, but it make no sense to have 8/8 for chill/chill. - More fun is better? Then 8/8 is ok, but it makes no sense to have 0/10 for chill/work. - More fun in the near future is better? But it is clearly stated that fun will be unachievable in the game since work will prevail as the dominant position.
You have more choices available than either climbing the corporate ladder or sitting on the couch watching Netflix. Neither of those lead to any sort of fulfillment in my opinion, so I don't know why you would limit yourself to those options.
Also the idea that if you don't win the competition and reach the top of the corporate ladder you're doomed to a life of failure and misery is just pure nonsense. By definition, the vast majority of people will not reach the top.
Life is not a constrained game like the Prisoner's Dilemma, you aren't limited to "lie" or "confess", you can also tunnel out with a spoon, bribe the guard, find a loophole in the law, etc, etc. You're only limited by your imagination.
> billionaires can optimize for the sake of optimizing, rather than to keep their head above water
No, I would imagine billionaires optimize for the sake of being better able to do whatever made them billionaires in the first place, not just for its own sake.