
Someone is stealing your life (1990) - zizek
http://www.lycaeum.org/mv/M2/ventura.html
======
lionhearted
> On the other hand - or so they say - you're free, and if you don't like your
> job you can pursue happiness by starting a business of your very own, by
> becoming an "independent" entrepreneur. But you're only as independent as
> your credit rating. And to compete in the business community, you'll find
> yourself having to treat others - your employees - as much like slaves as
> you can get away with.

The whole piece is like that.

Self-defeating. Blame others for problems. Finding trivial problems
insurmountable. And also - flat out false.

He overlooks some basic things - like that you can work part time, freelance,
or save up your money and then not work for a few years.

Some jobs and are enjoyable and people like their work.

There's no rule that says you have to be a shitty boss.

You don't need a credit rating to do business.

But mostly, it's just all self-defeating negative nonsense. I've basically
never been salaried, I started in business with no credit rating at all (I
avoided credit cards like the plague, so I got a credit rating at all
relatively late in life), and I've never had to slavedrive anyone.

It's easier to blame others than to look for solutions. Probably feels better.
But it's nonsense. You can build a pretty good life with some effort. Takes
effort, true. But it's there if you want it.

~~~
jarin
Also, take a look at the jobs he's listed as doing. That's not the career path
of someone who has any direction or ambition, it's the career path of someone
who takes whatever job comes along because he's out of money and desperate.

I know, because I used to be that guy. My early career path looks like this:
work at dad's restaurant, work at mom's jewelry store, temp agency, Cutco
salesman, furniture assembler, temp agency, retail salesman in the mall, ear
piercer, retail salesman in the mall.

Then I finally got my act together (thanks to a not-entirely-honest-but-still-
greatly-appreciated recruiter) and went Navy, freelance IT, freelance
programmer, salaried programmer, freelance programmer, published iOS app,
entrepreneur.

~~~
lionhearted
I've been out of money and desperate at various times. It sucks. But if you
point the blame only outwards, you're very likely to remain broke and
desperate.

Own everything. Take all responsibility for everything that happens to you,
even if it wasn't your fault. This leads to some instant satisfaction in terms
of feeling more in control of your life. And long term, you do a hell of a lot
better.

I try to own _everything_ , even if it wasn't my fault. Especially if it
wasn't my fault.

~~~
jarin
Exactly, the moment when you realize that 99% of bad things that happen to you
or success you're NOT getting are directly or indirectly the result of you
putting yourself in that situation is the moment you become free.

------
rwl
The upshot of this piece is much more significant than the comments here have
been willing to admit. Yes, you can write the author off as having a whiny,
blame-others attitude. Yes, you can say that if he would just take matters
into his own hands, the path of entrepreneurship is hard but ultimately
rewarding. And maybe that's right.

But if you say that, then you have already accepted a premise that the piece
is calling into question, namely: why should _that_ be the choice that
everyone faces? Why should the only options be self-sacrifice to the drudgery
of the rat race for the sake of security, or a different kind of self-
sacrifice for a different reward, that of "independence"? Why should we
structure our society so that, for the average person, self-sacrifice is the
only way to survive, much less get ahead?

To say that there's a better way, but that the better way involves social
changes that a single person can't simply choose to make for herself, is not
just to whine and blame others. It's a reasonable criticism of our economic,
social and political institutions -- one worthy of debate, no doubt, but not
worthy of dismissal.

~~~
rick888
"But if you say that, then you have already accepted a premise that the piece
is calling into question, namely: why should that be the choice that everyone
faces?"

Do you have an alternative? Humans have tried many different methods over many
thousands of years and our current system is the result of trying and failing
many, many times. It's the most fair and allows pretty much anyone to be
successful.

Life is difficult because we have more freedoms. We don't have someone making
all of the decisions for us (which might be easier), but the result is more
choice. If you don't make the right choices, you could end up living on the
street or in poverty. Buy you could also end up with lots of money and a nice
life.

I suppose an alternative would be no choice. You are forced to work for the
government.

~~~
georgieporgie
_Do you have an alternative?_

I'm not the parent poster, but I suggest that co-ops have led to greater
employee satisfaction. There are also non-co-op companies where employees all
have a say in business decisions, and they have done well and have great
employee satisfaction and retention.

The current (big) business climate dictates that the sole purpose of a company
is to maximize shareholder value at all times, at all costs. I suggest that
the purpose of a company is to provide value to _all_ stakeholders, and find a
healthy balance.

~~~
tomrod
The quick, easy, and non-communist way to do this is to have the opportunity
for employees to become shareholders through purchase of premium stock and
bonds.

This solves the moral hazard problem quite well.

~~~
swift
I don't agree that this addresses the problem of employees not having a say in
the management of the company they work for, unless you are talking about
early-stage employees who are actually likely to be able to obtain enough
stock to have influence.

------
edw519
Prime quote from the other side, "Someone is Stealing My Money":

"I pay you to work 8 hours and you're on Hacker News for 6 of them. Close that
browser and get back to work."

~~~
georgieporgie
I've never understood how wasting time on the job can possibly be termed
'theft'. It's irresponsible and a failure to fulfill expectations, but it's
not theft.

(btw, I also don't see employers as stealing life from employees)

~~~
tomrod
Theft of labor resources, if you're salary non-exempt and reading HN is not in
your job description :-)

~~~
georgieporgie
I understand the definition of it. What I don't understand is the use of the
word 'theft'. "Misappropriation of resources which exceeds our standard of
what is reasonable," perhaps, but not theft.

------
charleso
I was curious what the author had gotten up to since that piece was written
20-odd years ago. This appears to be the gent:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ventura>

Flashtastic personal site, here:

<http://michaelventura.org/>

------
swombat
It's easy to be indignant when you wilfully misunderstand and/or ignore the
fundamental principles of human society.

~~~
exit
foljs comment shouldn't have been flagged. some libertarian probably took
offense at the mention of scandinavia:

1 point by foljs 43 minutes ago | link [dead]

It's also easy to believe that what goes on in your small part of the world is
according to the "fundamental principles of human society".

Most of the shit you take from your employers wouldn't fly on advanced Western
European (inc. Scandinavian) countries.

To quote G. Bernard Shaw, "he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of
his tribe and island are the laws of nature."

~~~
yummyfajitas
All of foljs's comments are dead, starting 47 days ago. Most likely the
automated filter believes he is a spammer. Or perhaps moderators killed him
for trollish behavior (I don't know if they do this or not, but I know the
spam filter occurs).

It has nothing to do with whatever he posted in this thread.

------
istari
I walk into a restaurant. They charge me $10 for a meal. Yet they only paid $2
for the ingredients!

Now I don't know a lot of math, but even I know that 2 goes into 10... FIVE
times! They are charging me FIVE times what it cost them to make that meal!

Sure, they came up with the money to open the restaurant, and the time to make
the meal, but does that give them the right to rip me off? Because I spent my
life earn my money, and by stealing my money THEY ARE STEALING MY LIFE!

Now you could say that I could always go and open my own restaurant, but that
would require credit which THEY wouldn't give me, and ripping off other
people, which I refuse to do.

Cooking? What's cooking? Never heard of it.

~~~
grammaton
False analogy. You can choose not to go to a restaurant if you don't want to
pay the markup. You cannot choose not to work if you enjoy not starving.

~~~
JonnieCache
Yes you can. You just have to adjust your expectations.

<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Freeganism>

Note: these ideas do not necessarily reflect the views of the management

~~~
grammaton
Ah, so all you have to do is be willing to live like a scavenger and adjust to
a third-world standard of living.

Well that seems reasonable.

~~~
JonnieCache
Some people choose to do so, because it makes them happy. Does that make them
foolish? If so, what does that say about our economic relationship with the
people who actually _live_ in the third world?

------
phamilton
He paints the boss/owner as such a stress free and secure position.

The reason an owner is entitled to higher pay is that they are also entitled
to no pay or negative pay.

My father in law is a partner in a law firm. For the past year he has made
less money than his non-partner associates, working on half salary to
compensate for a lack of revenue. The working drone is much more protected
against speed bumps. A bad month generally won't result in a pay cut or
layoffs for the bottom of the food chain. It does directly affect the business
owners. That's the risk/reward payoff.

~~~
_delirium
That's often not the case in larger businesses, though: if the business does
well, the boss wins (bonuses, stock options); if it does badly, the boss also
wins (eased out with a golden parachute). In that case the owner still
shoulders the risk, but that owner (the stockholders) is too diffuse and
hands-off to really be functioning as a boss, so the company is de-facto run
by an executive management that gets a lot of pay while not shouldering much
risk.

I can see people getting a stuck-in-a-machine-with-a-stacked-deck feeling at a
lot of large companies, because many sort of are giant, dysfunctional,
bureaucratic machines. Coupled to that, many people see working for a large
corporation as their only practical option.

------
Tichy
The only interesting question is if it really is the case that if you are a
have-not, you never have a chance of starting a successful business.

Of course we know that it is possible to start out with little (YC is the
living proof of that), but that might only be exceptions to the rule. I am not
yet sure that our society really is not skewed. Or at least there might not be
a universal law protecting the chances for the "small people". It seems
possible that in a few years time, Apple Facebook and Google control the
internet and again the options of the small people will be reduced to low-
margin sharecropping.

Atm I am leaning to the belief that chances are good enough. If that is the
case, the only sensible estimate for the fair price of work seems to be market
value. I have yet to see another definition of fair that works. So if the
employers can get away with paying their employees little money, it must be
because the market does not afford more. There might be millions of jobless
waiting to take over their jobs, for example - what would the jobless think
about the fair price for a job?

Then again, politics define at least some of the rules of the market (as an
extreme example, government could decree a maximum wage) . But if the author
thinks the market is broken, he should say so, and state in what way it is
broken and how it could possibly be fixed. Just calling somebody a thief
doesn't accomplish anything.

------
rick888
A business can take years to become successful, which many times means either
not having a regular salary, sacrificing free-time with friends and family,
and working harder than you ever would at any job. Even if it meant employees
got a cut of the profits, unions and laws would prevent companies from being
run like this.

It sounds like this guy expects a cut of the profits for just working, which
will never happen (unless you are the government).

He doesn't like working for anyone, yet he does nothing to actually change his
situation except blame anyone and everyone for his problems. He reminds me of
the person that says that wealth and becoming rich is 'just luck'.

------
takameyer
I work the office cubicle software job, but this doesn't bring me down too
much. At times the mindset the author describes can creep up, but I can deal
with it by realizing that everyday I'm getting better and better at what I do.
Being an embedded developer, having access to tools that I otherwise could not
afford is a great perk at my job. Knowledge of how to use them could only come
from a university, a company or falling into a large sum of money. Granted the
bureaucratic office politics exists, but I feel it's not as bad as it could
be. I have the freedom to solve problems using the tools I desire. We use
Linux for our micro operating system, so I'm gaining valuable command line
skills and script-fu. My only complaint is my current salary. But the freedom
and encouragement to continue learning is worth more to me than the money
anyway.

------
nhangen
How about redirecting the argument to state:

"You are giving your life away"

If you change it that way, then I agree 100%.

This line:

 _"Do you expect us to be forever passive while you get rich stealing our
lives?"_

Really bothered me. There's nothing wrong with getting rich, and there's
nothing wrong with paying people what they're willing to work for. Instead of
placing the blame on someone else, perhaps people like this should look
inward.

~~~
grammaton
" there's nothing wrong with paying people what they're willing to work for"

This is where people miss something important, in my opinion. On the surface
there's nothing wrong with paying people what they're willing to work for. But
when you dig a little deeper, "what they're willing to work for" is really
just a proxy for market forces and labor supply and demand. Just because
someone _accepts_ working for a certain price doesn't mean it's what they
wanted. If they enjoy putting food on the table, they have surprisingly little
choice.

~~~
nhangen
Sure, that's true, but if the market doesn't pay you what you feel you are
worth, then you have the option to build something that does pay you what you
are worth. It's not up to me, as a boss, to take care of someone.

~~~
grammaton
" then you have the option to build something that does pay you what you are
worth."

It's just that simple then? Starting a business is a risky and difficult
proposition, and few people are cut out for it - and of those, even fewer
realistically have the option to do so. Not everyone can build their way out
of a problem, and it has little to do with their free will. If that's the case
you can't argue that it's their "choice."

There seems to be this ever present assumption on the Hacker News forums that
if you don't like your job, why, it's just as easy as putting together a CRUD
app and iterating until you get customers.

It's not. Plenty of people try the "build something" option and never get
anywhere close to being paid what they're worth. You just don't hear about
them because no one wants to hear about someone who tried and didn't make it.

"It's not up to me, as a boss, to take care of someone."

No one is implying that it is - but they are implying that that's part of the
problem right there - a system where no one has to care about anyone else,
only exploit them.

~~~
nhangen
It's not easy, and that's the point. You can take the easy road, which is to
get a job and work for someone, hoping that you haven't wasted your life away,
or you can take the hard road and build something.

Both have benefits, and both have risks. There's no easy ticket, at least in
this life, so employer and employee have to meet in the middle. The market
helps that happen.

You had me until your last point, which was when you used the term _exploit_.
I think that tells the tale right there.

~~~
grammaton
As an employee, you have to do what your employer tells you. If you do not,
you will not have the means to continue feeding yourself and putting a roof
over your head. As an employee, the vast bulk of the wealth you create will
never end up in your hands - it will end up in the hands of people who did not
do your work.

How exactly is that not exploitation? What would you call it?

"The market helps that happen."

The market helps whoever has the most money, or the most of a scarce resource.

~~~
nhangen
Are you a socialist?

~~~
grammaton
No. Why do you suspect that I am?

~~~
Muzza
The slightest suggestion that there are problems with capitalism => poster is
socialist.

------
jacoblyles
It sucks to have nothing to offer an employer except fungible labor that they
could get from a million other people. The author should work on that. There
are 6 billion people in this world and not enough wealth to let everyone live
like a king just for breathing (yet).

~~~
s_jambo
Are you sure on that last point? There have been some kings with pretty low
standards of living historically... :)

I think a big part of the issue is our economy isn't aimed at letting everyone
live like a king for just breathing, it's aimed at maximizing how fast we can
transform raw resources into things people want and maximizing how much stuff
we can get people with money to want to want.

~~~
doyoulikeworms
Considering "living like a king" typically means that you get what you want,
I'd say that the two are the same.

The slog from subsistence to utopia is, and will be, accomplished one step at
a time. Improved productivity (often achieved through the transformation of
raw materials), increases output relative to effort and time spent working.
The dividends paid by this improved productivity is almost always reinvested,
typically by reducing effort, but maintaining (or increasing) time.

tl;dr the economy is very much aimed at letting everyone live like a king just
for breathing, but breathing alone is not yet productive enough to satisfy
anyone's needs.

------
tscrib
The article properly points out that a company cannot do its business without
employees. Certainly: employees have the skill to actually perform the tasks
the company was founded upon to provide. What the article fails to recognize
the power in that relationship. As much as employees rely on companies for
employment, the company relies on skilled workers and low turn-around for
continuity and to keep costs low. Re-training and the administration of
recruiting/hiring new employees are huge expenses. In my experience, you (as
an employee) weild immense power. By having options on the table (other
employment choices, or even offers), one can easily negotiate for higher
wage/more vacation/etc.

------
ajju
" And to compete in the business community, you'll find yourself having to
treat others - your employees - as much like slaves as you can get away with.
Pay them as little as they'll tolerate and give them no say in anything,
because that's what's most efficient and profitable. Money is the absolute
standard. Freedom, and the dignity and well-being of one's fellow creatures,
simply don't figure in the basic formula."

This is patently untrue based on my own personal experience but forget me, to
just cite two of the many famous examples that immediately come to mind:

1) Zappos gives their employees complete freedom in how to do their job and
has succeeded wildly.

2) Google pays their employees quite a bit in salary and perks and is one of
the most successful companies in the world.

The whole piece is full of claims that are provably false and claims about how
it is impossible to fix it. Sure, many companies treat their employees like
cogs in a machine. I worked for one. Then I started my own company to do
things differently and I was able to. It wasn't easy but compared to anywhere
else in the space-time continuum I feel like we, in 2011 in the United States,
are in one of the best environments for entrepreneurship.

~~~
rbarooah
Are you seriously arguing that Google and Zappos are representative of many
companies?

~~~
ajju
They are examples that it can be done. The entire tone of the article is
defeatist with the author arguing that it cannot be done.

For example: "you'll find yourself having to treat others - your employees -
as much like slaves as you can get away with"

 _No_. You won't _find yourself_ having to do anything like that. There are
well known companies that don't do that and make tonnes of money. _That_ is
what I am arguing.

Just noticed (1990) in the title. I am not sure it was there before. Either
the title was updated or I missed it. In any case, the article makes more
sense if you take that into account.

~~~
rbarooah
That's a fair point. It might take a while before many people have a chance to
work for companies like that though.

------
EvanK
It all depends on how you view your life. You _will_ spend the majority of
your life trying to simply survive the coming day/week/month/year. How you do
so is what determines what kind of life you lead.

Work has never been my purpose in life so much as a means to an end. I've
never been a "drone" so much as a wanderer that has stopped to warm his hands
by the fire of a camp. If/when I don't like what I do anymore, I will simply
cease to do it and wander on to the next thing. There is always a way to
survive, though it may not always be obvious (and sometimes may not even be
legal.)

At some point, many people find a person or group of people that they decide
to center their life around, and put down lasting ties, and there is
_absolutely_ nothing wrong with that. But that kind of life does require more
planning and forethought, and often a lot more concessions to their own
personal wants and needs. If you're fine with that and what you get in return
(family and friends), then you never become a drone. If you're not fine with
that, then you have to decide what it is that you DO want, and go after it.

------
seamlessvision
This sounds like the whiny rant of a child. It's not just about money, it's
about drive and vision. If you have drive and vision, then your employer will
notice and you'll move up, learn more, maybe even make enough to start your
own business with your own ideas. If not, if you don't choose to better
yourself and fight for what you want, then you fit the position you allow
yourself to fit. You wouldn't ask a janitor to make business decisions, why
would you ask an accountant, or a programmer, or a designer?

Life is about taking pride in what you do and going after what you want, not
about whining, me me me.

~~~
swift
Sure, you wouldn't necessarily ask a janitor or a programmer to make business
decisions; the constraints of mortality force us to specialize in life.
Nevertheless, do you really believe that one speciality - business - is so
much more important than all the rest that it deserves to extract a
disproportionate share of the profit from almost every enterprise? That
doesn't seem self-evident to me.

------
zooey
I think you have some problem connecting with his view of the society how-it-
should-be. You move in a given universe and you accept the rules: you by the
way want to use that rules and accept the consequences on society and mankind
of those rules. He think differently. He, among many others, think rules are
wrong and the outcome is a wrong society.

Dismissing what he says is dismissing philosophy or sociology, disciplines
that for their very nature do not accept the status quo and want to test the
rules our world is based on.

By the way, after reading some of his writing, I can say that he writes really
damn well.

------
tomrod
As with other comments, I agree the tone is self-defeating.

When did we forget the difference between problems and conditions? Problems
are things with solutions within our power. Conditions are things without
solutions within our power.

I feel the author could benefit greatly by learning how to determine what
could be solved with one's own effort--and an employer stealing life away is
solvable, IMHO, in numerous ways.

~~~
tomrod
Also, this piece could be an argument for automation. If the employer is
stealing your life, would you not be happier having a machine do your job,
giving you the freedom to live your life?

~~~
rbarooah
How can that be arranged?

------
watchandwait
The real theft is that the federal, state, and local governments take about 40
percent of your earnings in an array of taxes.

~~~
mortehu
In my opinion, taxing some fraction of people's income is the best solution to
the problem he's mentioning. Although I am under the impression that USA is
rather reluctant to tax high earners.

~~~
rick888
well, your impression is wrong. High earners get federal, state, and locally
taxed.

------
dstein
I wonder what this fellow would have thought about work 100 years ago or more.
The amount of "slavery" that a person has to do today to sustain himself has
never, in the history of mankind, ever been lower than it is today. We should
be so lucky.

------
bobbin
> I came to a conclusion that for me was fundamental: My employwers are
> stealing my life.

There is no theft, just voluntary trade. He exchanges his time and effort for
a pay check and then blames his employer for the deal he accepted.

------
duck
This is from 1990, and from my viewpoint I think a lot has changed in the past
20+ years. Of course there are still factory jobs, but if you want freedom you
can find it as long as you look to the future with open eyes.

------
onan_barbarian
It's too bad that no-one thought of all these sentiments before 1990, forcing
this guy to break so much bold new ground in the critique of capitalism.

Some people are ragging on him here for being lazy in his career; I'm going to
call him on being unbelievably lazy in running this whole spiel as if he just
thought of all these ideas himself.

There isn't the slightest acknowledgement that there's huge branches of modern
thought that deal with this very problem using countless different approaches
and reaching countless different conclusions. This isn't to say that all that
thought is useful or contains a helpful path to reform, but ignoring it
completely is just dumb.

He's either atrociously undereducated or extremely disingenuous, take your
pick.

-10 more points for talking about everything as if it's specific to America and the particular timeframe.

~~~
steveklabnik
It is possible for people to invent ideas independently. Also, maybe he just
hasn't read Marx.

Furthermore, maybe he does, but I wouldn't call him 'lazy' for not providing
some sort of citation: there's enough cultural baggage associated with Marx
that as soon as you say that word, a certain portion of your audience's brains
turn off.

Better to be 'lazy' and possibly reach some of those people than not.

~~~
onan_barbarian
Right. He hasn't read Marx. Or any other critique of capitalism, European or
homegrown, for the past 100 years. Or any fiction that is informed, in whole
or in part, by this critique. No, he didn't invent this 'independently'.

What's the point of 'reaching' people if you've got so little new to say? Its
not a matter of 'citation', it's a matter of acknowledging that there are a
host of proposed solutions (and critiques of critiques, and so on) out there.
By pretending that none of it exists, you wind up with a tl;dr column that
says what's been said before.

His contribution is in fact a subtraction from the sum total of human
knowledge, in that the only thing original about it is wrong - the notion that
the phenomenon that he talks about has something specifically to do with
America between 1950-1990.

~~~
steveklabnik
Do you think that everyone should be required to read everything about a topic
before posting their thoughts on it?

~~~
onan_barbarian
He was not 'failing to read everything'.

He was either 'failing to read anything', or, more likely, reading a fair bit
and intentionally stripping all reference to this existing knowledge out of
his column for whatever reason. The result was unsurprisingly sophomoric,
which I suppose is why it has 150 points on HN.

~~~
grammaton
Or, possibly, he was offering anecdotal observations, and he's not as dumb and
lazy and unmotivated as people here are making him out to be. I know it's
surprising, but people _do_ come up with these things on their own sometimes.

------
meric
You might be interested in this book.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maverick_(book)>

------
kbutler
tl;dr I'm a victim, so you are too.

------
alexblack
I think the title of that article should be "I'm giving my life to my
employer"

~~~
alexblack
The article starts off well, but ends with the wrong conclusion :)

A better conclusion would be: "I'm giving my life to my employer, I don't like
that, I better change something in my life."

------
exit
why was foljs comment killed at 2 points? looks like how he characterizes hn
is true:

2 points by foljs 52 minutes ago | link [dead]

HN is not really a good place to post this.

Here the audience is mostly aspiring "entrepreneurs" dreaming of making it
big, so they are tied to the rat race and take all the "american dream" BS to
heart.

Apart from a statistical insignificant minority that will "make it", the
majority can always come back to it in 10-20 years, when they are bitter and
wised enough. \-----

~~~
tomrod
A few points:

 _HN is not amero-centric

_ "The American Dream BS" is not correctly stated in the original piece, thus
cannot be the "BS" cannot be what HN folks want to follow

* Anyone can make it if they choose to. Not everyone succeeds on the first try, but the odds are with the person who chooses to learn from mistakes and try better the next time.

* Success is ill-defined when one makes money and prestige the only inputs. As an example of what one small subset of the world thinks, view the third quotation here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_O._McKay#Quotations>

------
Zeuf
Smell likes communism for me.

------
mcantor
This was a work of _art_ , man. Dig it. Yeah, mannnn. The MAN is stealing our
MOJO, mannnn. Oppressing our SOULS. You gotta fight the _man_ , man. The
_establishment_. Big Daddy Warbucks and Uncle Sam, they're in cahoots. Fucking
vampires is what they are, man. Gonna suck out our _spirits_ through our
_paychecks_. You dig?

