You are shooting down a strawman. The choice is not always or even mostly between "working entire life in forced mediocrity" vs "buying freedom". I have worked in a job, and I now own a successful business (and so I am reasonably wealthy) and I have actually enjoyed both. I was happy in my job, was paid decently, and I did some really interesting work. Then why I did I leave? The desire to be closer to family, that was the first motivation and a sense of adventure. Most of my former colleagues from where I worked (after 10+ years on the job) are quite happy too, and some of them have 20-30 patents to their name.

And statistically speaking, most Americans actually report being happy in their jobs. Anecdotally, I know many of my own employees turn down a lot of headhunter calls, often offering a lot more money - I assume that is about as real a test as it gets that they are happy in what they are doing.

This is not to tell you what is right for you. If you want to start a business (like I did) by all means, go ahead. I am just saying reality is a lot more nuanced, and a lot more complex.

I'd bet there were happy slaves, too.

A corporate job is slavery:

"Slavery is a condition of control over a person against their will, enforced by violence or other forms of coercion. Slavery almost always occurs for the purpose of securing the labor of the person concerned."

This is grimly apparent to me since I'm typing this out at work on a weekend. There's a big demo is on Tuesday and I'd better have my part done, or else. I'd give anything to have just enough money to work on my own projects instead.

People do find satisfaction in working for someone, but why in the world wouldn't you want to decide what to work on?

Anyway, the 1 million line project has finished compiling (after 15 minutes and 20 build helpers). Back to work..

Somebody gives you money for something you do. It's the same basic formula for startups and employees. Your definiton can not tell them apart.

BTW: That's only a theoretical counter-argument to a theoretical argument. I understand that in reality startups are vastly different from being employed.

Would anyone mind refuting anything I've said here?

I didn't down vote (I up'd to balance it :D) but I think it's a bit much to compare corporate work relationship to slavery. Real slavery is a huge step away from "wage slavery". I think we can discuss how much corporate jobs suck without the need to compare it to people who have it much worse.

Wage slaves are mostly slaves of their own mind. That's a big difference from having a ball and chain around your ankles.

> or spend a small number of years working super hard to buy my freedom? An easy decision for me.

I think that particular idea from PG's essay is... not quite right. It worked for him, but plenty of people work super hard and end up with nothing after a few years, so it's not really like it's an automatic benefit of doing as much as you can in a given time frame.

It's hardly a PG specific idea that you can work harder for yourself and make a lot more money. It's definitely not a sure thing that you'll succeed quickly, but if you're wiling to try really hard until you do you have a very good shot.

It worked for my grandfather as a farmer and my father as an artist. There's no reason it shouldn't work for me with technology.

There's doubtless a relationship between work input and output, but what I thought you were referring to was this:

http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

"Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four."

I do think that's a simplistic, but accurate, description of many successful startups.

I think it's also accurate regarding many unsuccessful startups, and therein lies the problem...