This is written from the perspective of someone who doesn't have dependents.
I'm all about changing the world, but I also have an obligation to take care of my family, so my way of changing the world is working a traditional job, donating to charity from my earnings, and using my time/talent/treasure outside of work hours to make a difference.
analog31 · 4d ago
The most efficient charity might be the expenditure of your taxes. I know this evokes a natural visceral reaction among many people, but my data point is that liberal democracies with bureaucratic governments seem to be better off in terms of overall human welfare, than countries that depend on private charity.
PaulRobinson · 4d ago
You're taking care of your family right now, and that's great, but ask yourself: could you take care of them better by building something that makes the World a better place for them to grow up into, and for their children? Or are you OK with the status quo?
So I'll ask you straight out: why is the choice you've made salary man or nothing? Why can't you get started with a side hustle, and then if it gets traction, you can quit your job and it becomes your main living?
One of the big barriers to this is a lot of investors seem to expect founders to work for nothing in the early years, which is a pretty privileged place to be: most people with dependents just can't do that, so I hear you.
But you don't need VCs. You don't need to live on noodles. You can build something that replaces your day job, you just need to figure it out.
Wickedflickr · 4d ago
I think a better solution than a side hustle, is to gather your friends or coworkers to propose to create, collectively, a worker owned co-op (of whatever idea seems profitable).
As it's being done collectively, there's more of a chance of it getting off the ground, as people could take turns working on it in their spare time instead of a side-hustle dominating your time.
Once it's established, those people could then quit their job and work at the coop.
There are credit unions that could help with startup costs, as well as guides on how to structure it based on other successful coops.
PaulRobinson · 4d ago
I am a big fan of alternative ownership/governance structures in businesses, and this approach might work.
Potential issues: employers don't tend to like it if they get wind that a group of employees are doing something on the side, and may find reason to take ownership of said effort (which your contract might allow them to do).
theglenn88_ · 4d ago
Gotta jump in here.
Working full time for someone and doing a side hustle is hard, from experience.
What I’ve found is that trying to do the side hustle takes away from a lot time spent with your dependants, which you will never get back, unless you are lucky enough to “make the break”
Not impossible, and you’ve got to try and find a balance. But it just may never happen.
PaulRobinson · 4d ago
Agree, it has to be time-boxed - burn out risk is real.
I'm fortunate that I don't mind getting up early and I hate morning TV/radio/news, so I can find an extra hour for myself each day.
benhurmarcel · 4d ago
> could you take care of them better by building something that makes the World a better place for them to grow up into
If all you optimize for is the well-being of your family, your efforts should go into amassing wealth, not changing the world.
1vuio0pswjnm7 · 4d ago
"This is written from the perspective of someone who doesn't have dependents."
According to Wikipedia, the author has dependents.
"Bregman is married to Maartje ter Horst, a photographer.^[43]^[44] They reside in Brooklyn as of 2025 and have a child together.^[45]"
(Attention Wikipedia editors: Unless I missed something, reference #45 appears to make no mention of Bregman's family.)
paddw · 4d ago
> Now, you might be thinking: that’s all well and good, but I’ve got a full-time job, two kids and a mortgage. I’m happy to recycle and eat some tofu now and then, but a “fundamental transformation”? No thanks.
In that case, moral ambition may not be for you. I mean, once you have a labradoodle, a set of cheese knives or a robot mower, there’s generally no going back
dreghgh · 4d ago
Did you have parents who looked after you when you were a child? Did they try to provide a reasonable standard of living for you? If so, do you wish that they hadn't done so?
bradly · 4d ago
Oof. Okay. I've done a lot of what is talked about in this article and I have three children. Is the implication that I'm doing something wrong?
ptero · 4d ago
No. The implication is that not everyone who chose a different path is a useless labradoodle and cheese knives owner.
toomuchtodo · 4d ago
The ambitious, higher risk path for some, necessary, understandable obligation lower risk path for others. Life changes, and so too can these paths and risk tolerance for action.
dingnuts · 4d ago
I'm not immune to this kind of comment myself, but what is it about the comment section on this website that brings out these kinds of toxic comments? Like, this is just a cynical attack on anyone who succeeds in having a modestly comfortable life. What's the point? People don't like it when this website is compared to Reddit but honestly it's worse. You people are just mean.
frostiness · 4d ago
The entire comment is a direct quote from the article. I don't think it was meant as an insult, just a note that the author of the article already was exempting the top level poster from any of the suggestions the article was making.
swat535 · 4d ago
I don't think these are mutually exclusive.
In fact, I'd argue that taking care of your family _is_ a morally right and meaningful way of contributing to the world.
There's a reason traditional Christian ethical frameworks often prioritize responsibilities in layers: first to God (or core principles), then to family, then to the neighbor (broader community).
candiddevmike · 4d ago
Your dependents will inherit this world
buzzerbetrayed · 4d ago
Which is precisely whey GP should be spending time with their kids, providing for them, and raising them to be good humans.
philipov · 4d ago
It's the children of the billionaires that will inherit the world. Your children will only get to rent it from them. Any inheritance you hope to leave them will be spent paying for your retirement and end-of-life care.
kadushka · 4d ago
Let’s forcibly take all the billionaires’ wealth, and distribute it equally among the working class people.
Oh wait…
-__---____-ZXyw · 4d ago
I'm guessing from the ellipsis masquerading as an argument that you're implying that doing something about wealth inequality is dangerous, because of... history, or something.
This isn't totally false. Social change can be uncertain and rocky. If you want to be serious though you've to look at the risks of inaction, namely, allowing the funnelling of resources to the top percentile to continue.
I'm not sure how many people realise how out of hand that funnelling has gotten, or how concentrated at the very very top it's gotten.
As an example I saw recently, here's a graph[0] of French society from 2014 to 2021. Along the x-axis it's the poorest percentiles on the left, richest on the right. Y-axis is the percentage annual increase in revenue.
I think the reality is that inaction is arguably at least as likely to lead to the kind of "..." that you may well be hinting at.
Wow, I didn’t realize people might be so ignorant of history. What I stated in my comment is how Soviet Union got started in 1917. Do I need to explain how that experiment ended?
-__---____-ZXyw · 4d ago
Assuming that your reading comprehension skills aren't letting you down here, I can only read this as a highly disingenuous comment. I made a serious argument, politely, and you've ignored the entire thrust of it, and instead you pick five words to quote back at me and willfully misinterpret.
You know very well that when I said "because of... history, or something" I was alluding to the fact that you had not in fact specified your historical reference at all. You did not state anything about the Soviet Union in 1917, you alluded vaguely and noncommitally to the redistribution of wealth being bad, maybe - it's unsure because, as I've said, there's no specifics.
If you don't make your point, we can't assume what it is. Or do you think that the Soviet Union in 1917 is the only moment in history where wealth/poperty was redistributed? If so, that would be a display of a pretty serious level of historical ignorance on your part.
In any case, now that you've deigned to share your point with us - the choice isn't one between a. what we have now, unchanged, and b. the Soviet Union in 1917. This false dichotomy is a common favourite of people heavily invested in maintaining the status quo, often people who are monetarily invested.
On the off-chance that you're not one of those types and are simply ignorant of the richness and complexity of human social organisation, I warmly invite you to read some anthropology to discover the myriad of ways human societies function and have functioned throughout history. You could be in for a very eye-opening experience.
drewcoo · 4d ago
> how that experiment ended
(not as taught from Texas-approved history books)
The Soviets lifted an unprecedented number of people out of poverty. This was unequalled until China in the following century. They would likely have achieved more and lasted longer without the constant harassment of capitalist countries. (Remember when the US even invaded Soviet soil? Most Americans do not.)
The US and some European powers managed to convince Soviets to switch to an American-style economy, run by oligarchs. Those countries proceeded to loot the Soviet Union for anything they could find. And so we have today.
breppp · 3d ago
How would you describe the millions the Soviets lifted to death by starvation and millions used as slave labor, or is that only in the Texas approved history books?
philipov · 3d ago
The problem with revolutions is that when the prevailing power structure is turned upside down, it allows the most ruthless people to rise to the top, from where they unleash waves of terror to eliminate opposition, consolidating control in their bid to forge a new power structure.
This is what happened in France, what happened in Russia, and what has happened in many other cases. It is not an ideological phenomenon, has nothing to do with communism, and it happens because a society refuses to reform for so long that the system collapses under its own corruption. We are heading down that same path by refusing to institute moderate reforms while we still have the option to do so.
And of course, the chaos of revolution is not the only way for a vicious tyrant to gain power and institute a reign of terror...
breppp · 3d ago
The mass starvation was linked to communist policies of state planning and collectivization. In reality the lower classes were mass starved in order to bring some utopia that never came.
This was not only driven by vicious men, this was there from the very start, this was inherent in the revolution and its ideology, and mainly caused by real shortages stemming from economic issues
You can see it with Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot and i'm probably only missing more examples due to ignorance. You have an economic system which is "scientific", but is actually just a mass experiment resulting in deaths of millions. And an ideology that is so sure of itself as it is "proven" it never stops or self-questions
-__---____-ZXyw · 2d ago
I think this is a reasonable description of what happened, and a real danger. Dogmatically gettng stuck on one set of economic and social possibilities just because they fit into the grand benevolent -ism is the issue is always fraught.
It goes both ways, of course.
When people say: "Oh, we can't do socialism, or anything that looks or feels even a tiny bit like socialism, because look what happened with Lenin et al!", I think they are ironically engaging in the very essence of what lead to these attempted revolutions going so poorly.
Social and economic rigidity and dogmatism is the issue.
Socialism has some good ideas, and can be hellishly bad. Capitalism has some good ideas, and can be hellishly bad. Same for anarchism, veganism, hedonism, and so on. This isn't to say that all ideologies are equal, but that dogmatism is generally very dangerous.
breppp · 5h ago
That's largely an american thing, most of europe is social democrat without resorting to killing millions.
However, defending the revolutions that resulted in catastrophe and complete failure is in my opinion dangerous. We don't need another trial at an extreme ideology that knows everything to guess the end result
-__---____-ZXyw · 4d ago
Any good suggestions for trustworthy and non-propagandistic books that go into this?
I've only read one excellent (French, translated) collection of the writing of Alexandra Kollontai, and otherwise nothing much of length on the topic. Kollontai was already enough to suspect that the usual simplistic narrative as whispered by our interlocuteur here might not be the whole story whatsoever.
int_19h · 4d ago
I lived in USSR.
No, thank you. I'm not a fan of capitalism, either, but that society was hardly a stellar example of an alternative.
TOGoS · 4d ago
Don't even need to 'distribute' the wealth[1]. Just burn it. It's the inequality itself that causes problems--out-of-touch billionaires having the power to make the rest of us do their bidding, whether it makes any dang sense or not--not the lack of giant wads of dollar bills in everybody's pockets.
[1] If by 'wealth' we mean numbers in computers. Actual wealth, like healthy land and clean water and manufacturing capacity should be shared by everyone, but currently money is what controls it.
kadushka · 4d ago
Who are “us”? Anybody who has less than a billion? What about those who have half a billion? How about 100M? 50M? 20M?
adverbly · 4d ago
Did you read the article?
The author speaks to this directly:
> Now, you might be thinking: that’s all well and good, but I’ve got a full-time job, two kids and a mortgage. I’m happy to recycle and eat some tofu now and then, but a “fundamental transformation”? No thanks.
In that case, moral ambition may not be for you. I mean, once you have a labradoodle, a set of cheese knives or a robot mower, there’s generally no going back. But if that’s irritating to hear – and I imagine it might be – then by all means, prove me wrong. I have learned that there are always exceptions, and I want to show that you can be that exception. It’s never too late to step up.
pfisherman · 4d ago
So what is the difference between moral ambition and hubris?
To me limiting oneself to “idealistic but not ambitious” with a focus on fulfilling relationships and positive impact on family, friends, and local community seems like a good way to go.
“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions...
Ideology—that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
ffsm8 · 4d ago
Fwiw: the author of the article is 37 years old, is married and has a kid
evjan · 4d ago
But more importantly, he is not one of those people he writes about. He sets up an ideal that he doesn’t live up to.
He’s an author and journalist, not a doer of any kind as far as I can tell from his bio.
spicyusername · 4d ago
It's discussions like these that make romanticizing our non-agrarian ancestors so easy.
Before the agricultural and industrial revolutions and our correct system of highly specialized labor, it feels as though everyone just hung out together, having a good time, and doing what was needed to feed the tribe. Minus the disease and war, of course.
There wasn't this need for an existential discussion about this job or that job, or whether you're lifestyle was morally justified.
There weren't power structures that existed on a scale larger than a single community, invisibly guiding everyone's lives in ways they couldn't control.
dreghgh · 4d ago
People also ran out of food a lot.
One theory about the Jacob and Esau story is that it's about a hunter gatherer (Esau) surrendering political power to a farmer (Jacob) because the farmer has much more reliable access to protein than the hunter, meaning that sooner or later, he can gain the upper hand in a negotiation with someone who's otherwise starving.
You might not ascribe value to this type of biblical 'economic history'. But the theory has explanatory power - if it wasn't for food shortages, why would our ancestors have given up 'hanging out together and having a good time' to embrace the toil of hoeing and herding?
AstralStorm · 4d ago
> People also ran out of food a lot.
This statement is subject to inverse survivor bias, gatherers and pastoral societies tended to not run out, they tended to move instead.
Agriculture based early societies tended to run out or get decimated by plagues, thus leaving concentrated evidence of their passing.
However due to the one way early ones are tracked by looking at stable settlements, the evidence is stacked against the nomadic ones. While what they often had is meeting places rather than residences. What we find is megaliths, but not the settled cities to support their building.
If you move and properly do not leave much behind, there will be no evidence left.m, especially after centuries, sometimes even years.
AstralStorm · 4d ago
> There weren't power structures that existed on a scale larger than a single community, invisibly guiding everyone's lives in ways they couldn't control.
Eurocentric and thus wrong.
There were multiple societies that has structures of federation and collective government. It's just Europe that did not at the time.
spicyusername · 3d ago
Go farther back.
Eventually you're going to find nothing but lots of loose collections of a hundred to a few thousand people.
Eurocentric and thus wrong.
I'm not sure why you're saying this. It's a similar story in most prehistoric societies, from Polynesia, to North America, to Europe.
lenkite · 4d ago
In the romantic, non-agrarian era, People very regularly bonked each other with clubs over the head - esp those of a different community.
kadushka · 4d ago
People do this today - all over the world, only with missiles and automatic rifles.
int_19h · 4d ago
When you look at the percentage of people involved in it and people who die to it, we're actually better off than pretty much ever before, even accounting for our vastly improved and devastating weaponry, and even when you look at massive conflicts like WW1 and WW2.
Thing is, a pre-agrarian society means hunters/gatherers, and for that to work out, you need quite a lot of land to provide for a single person (hence why those societies have such low population density). Thus, warfare in that era is all about directly reducing the number of people competing with you for those precious resources, either by killing them or by driving them off the land. And so pretty much all males are involved in it and regular mortality rates from constantly ongoing warfare can reach as high as 20%. Furthermore, warfare itself is explicitly genocidal in nature, e.g. raids of enemy villages, ideally while defenders are away so that you can slaughter as many as possible.
buzzerbetrayed · 4d ago
> Minus the disease and war, of course.
lenkite · 4d ago
I doubt they even considered it war - merely the price of living.
Artgor · 5d ago
> How you spend that time is one of the most important moral decisions of your life.
What if the work itself isn't "the most important" thing in the person's life?
zdragnar · 4d ago
Then you get to join the 99% of the rest of humanity that views work as something necessary to enable the things they enjoy and find purpose in when they're not working.
Finding purpose, fulfillment or joy in your work is nice, but as you grow as a human, or as the field you're in changes, or as the work dries up... well, you're left thoroughly adrift.
Loughla · 4d ago
I work in education, a field famous for attracting people based on their own willingness to do good work for good reasons.
And at the end of the day, a job is a job. I do it because it allows me to live a lifestyle close to what I want, while not being soul crushingly boring most of the time.
I came to terms with the fact that I'm not going to change the world. The best I can do is not fuck it up anymore than when I got here. That's about as good as most of us can expect, since most of us are average in many aspects. Without stunning amounts of genius or resources, I think that hoping just to fade into obscurity is the best you can do, really.
quicheshore · 4d ago
I feel this. I do think though, he mentions that this is the exact trap that is laid down for you when you enter society. You’re led to believe resources/genius is what separates do’ers, but I think he wants us to believe in the blind faith doing = progress. The other is option is doing nothing at all and succumbing to obscurity like you’re saying.
quicheshore · 4d ago
Great read! I didn’t know about Clarkson at all. I know the article talks about all the evils in the world to choose to battle, I will say though as 21 year old it’s easier to be outraged rather than do something. The third category he mentions is what most of the world has become. One thing I did take away is belief in the power to change things is the basic requirement behind moral ambition. Something I intend to work on myself.
adverbly · 4d ago
Incredibly well written.
Do yourself a favour and actually read the article this time.
It is very convincing for me personally, and it's got me considering making some big changes.
iamsanteri · 5d ago
Amazing how we keep searching for meaning and purpose, a direction in our lives. I guess this is something eternal and universal.
easeout · 4d ago
It goes to show that the common system of employment, in which we spend our time toward the purposes and meanings of others, tends to provide no purpose or meaning for ourselves.
Clubber · 4d ago
>It goes to show that the common system of employment, in which we spend our time toward the purposes and meanings of others, tends to provide no purpose or meaning for ourselves.
Work certainly provides meaning, you'll notice this when you can't find work for a while, ie. involuntarily unemployed. Also, you have to find deeper meaning outside of work: church, social clubs, raising kids, taking care of elderly parents, volunteering, etc. Getting paid to do moral work is rarely a thing and somewhat defeats the purpose.
everdrive · 4d ago
I think the author is confused about just how few jobs provide value to society. Individuals can pivot and take more meaningful positions, but this isn't possible en masse. Even if everyone were will to make bigger sacrifices, there just are not actually that many available jobs that are beneficial.
PaulRobinson · 4d ago
Yes, there aren't many jobs where you get to change the World. Go make your own, where you actually do.
Why are we all here, on this specific site, if we're not interested in building something ambitious and shaped on our own ideals of what we think the World needs? We might not be right, but it's each of ours, individually.
The people playing this game and winning at the moment are ambitious, but morally... I think we're starting to have some questions about their big ideas, more recently... and so you have the option: go do something to change the game and take the attention away from them.
Big changes come from small ones. If you don't like the status quo, figure out how to change it by building something better. And yes, it's hard, but you don't need to solve the whole thing, particularly when getting started, just a small corner of it.
dreghgh · 4d ago
Agreed. I don't exclude the possibility of large scale changes in society, but until that day, maybe 20% of people who need to work to eat and pay bills can do genuinely valuable work.
I'm sure many of the other 80% would like to do something more positive. Should we really be trying to start a culture war between the two groups, rather than acknowledge that the system isn't great for anyone?
disambiguation · 4d ago
Yes the tech industry is really lacking people who want to "change the world."
But its an interesting thought exercise. Slavery seems like a cut and dry issue in terms of harm and human rights, yet overtime the "easy" moral problems are solved and you're left with the gray ones. What's today's moral equivalent of slavery that we need crusaders against?
usefulcat · 4d ago
I don’t know the answer but I like the question.
etcet · 4d ago
Factory farming.
TFYS · 4d ago
Capitalism. Instead of outright owning people, we just rent them now. The core idea is still the same though. One set of people do the work, another set of people own the results.
almosthere · 4d ago
If all non profits went back to doing the mission instead of selling the mission then we'd all be happier at minimum.
DavidPiper · 3d ago
For Category IV people out there, I think the key takeaway from the whole article is actually in an almost throwaway phrase down the bottom:
> One evening, at a dinner with a few other abolitionists, ...
Category IV success is only achievable in groups or teams. And our education and capital systems, as well as our social and media systems, are increasingly pushing us towards more isolation:
- University graduates get earn more money with lower risk in consulting or finance than entrepreneurship (highlighted in the article)
- High level academia is basically an independent game from my understanding, with some exceptions like some security labs where the same people consistently work together
- Business structures tend to be designed for maximum specialisation and work extraction of the individual, not teams
- Third spaces are disappearing outside of work and home
- In-person relationships are being replaced with social media relationships and parasocial fandoms
- Politics is being replaced with drama
> But if that’s irritating to hear – and I imagine it might be – then by all means, prove me wrong. I have learned that there are always exceptions, and I want to show that you can be that exception. It’s never too late to step up.
It seems the author may not be aware of this though, and ultimately just ends up selling a different brand of individualist grindset.
webdoodle · 4d ago
I worked IT for over 25 years, and thanks to anti-social media, I now hate most internet technology because of the shitty rich people who use it to abuse the rest of us. I now only work when I have too, and devote the rest of my time to sharing what I've learned about Operation Mockingbird 2.0 and how it's being used to subjugate us all.
If you really want to change the world, come protest with me at the Sun Valley Conference, AKA the Billionaires SummerCamp on July 6th. This event is where the parasitic rich coordinate the years propaganda, further consolidate there stranglehold on the industry, and train the new round of corporate newspapermen on what information needs to be throttled, distorted, derailed or deleted so that those same rich parasites can stay in power.
almosthere · 4d ago
Candace Owens follower? It doesn't matter if not - I heard that from her.
ptero · 4d ago
Many of such "do the right thing and change the world" pieces assume that most people mostly agree on what "the right thing" is. They do not.
Pick people from different countries, different cultures, different backgrounds and they will have very different views on what would make things better. Not in the end state of "people should be healthy, happy and free to pursue their passions; and we should explore the stars, too", but in "what would be a worthy goal for me to work on, today and for the next few years". And acceptance of such differences is, to me, a good thing: anytime countries are remoralized into pursuing a common moral goal, gulags for those who did not drink the kool-aid are not far away.
In my book people should not work on things they find immoral. But I am totally fine if my neighbors or my friends are competing against me at work, in technological or in moral space. If they do not consider their work immoral, it is all good. I like hearing their arguments, too, either to steelman my views or to find cracks in them. This likely puts me into the "spineless amoebas, useless species" bucket of the author's classification.
Going on a moral crusade to change the world? No, thank you. They do not end well; not for the world, which likely will not even notice, but for the crusader who will likely become disillusioned, radicalized or bitter when the world does not budge. My 2c.
bigbadfeline · 3d ago
> "that most people mostly agree on what "the right thing" is. They do not."
Do people agree on basic math, physics, chemistry, etc or it depends on different countries/cultures/backgrounds?
> "Going on a moral crusade to change the world? No, thank you. They do not end well; not for the world, which likely will not even notice, but for the crusader who will likely become disillusioned, radicalized or bitter when the world does not budge. My 2c."
Your choices are yours, as are your 2c, but the rest neither follows nor computes. What follows from your logic is that serfdom and slavery are perfectly fine, you wouldn't bother to find a better way if they were imposed on you or others... but you would ride on the efforts of others while criticizing their actions as "moral crusade to change the world".
ptero · 1d ago
>> "Going on a moral crusade to change the world? No, thank you. They do not end well; not for the world, which likely will not even notice, but for the crusader who will likely become disillusioned, radicalized or bitter when the world does not budge. My 2c."
> Your choices are yours, as are your 2c, but the rest neither follows nor computes. What follows from your logic is that serfdom and slavery are perfectly fine, you wouldn't bother to find a better way if they were imposed on you
Please explain how does "serfdom and slavery are perfectly fine" follow from what I wrote.
DavidPiper · 3d ago
> Do people agree on basic math, physics, chemistry, etc or it depends on different countries/cultures/backgrounds
There are many people in the world who cannot practice basic maths, physics, or chemistry, etc. [1] is one source for the USA, which puts the number at 39% for Grade 8 students in maths, which would suggest higher for physics and maybe chemistry.
So the answer is probably "no" for the USA at least.
Rutger Bregman is so witty, even if sometimes annoying too.
ninetyninenine · 4d ago
The greatest force in human endeavor is self preservation. The next greatest force is self interest. The final force is altruism and moral ambition it is by far the weakest force.
All three forces have different magnitudes and exist in all of us.
Capitalism is a system that exploits the second force to the greatest extent and is responsible for economic changes in society that have far exceeded anything produced by altruism alone. Have there been societies and economies that exploit moral ambition? I don’t think here have been examples.
To truly do good in this world we have to face our own nature. I’d rather be alive and rich before I do any favors for the world. So if you want me to change the world… first tell me what that gives me.
arrosenberg · 4d ago
> Have there been societies and economies that exploit moral ambition?
The Crusades seem like a good example.
ninetyninenine · 4d ago
Morality is the cover story. Personal glory is the reality.
But in the end soldiers are also getting paid and that’s the primary driver behind it.
Treegarden · 5d ago
Who decides what is moral? For which moral causes are our contributions beyond a drop in the ocean? I can go work in a soup kitchen, but thats not gonna help thousands or millions of people in need. There is a structural reason why a certain fraction of society becomes in need of a soup kitchen. Can this not be applied to anything? War, famine, natural disasters, poor people that need a lawyer. All these are the result of structural reasons. Can these structural reasons be solved or are they part of the human condition, even part of nature? Manually helping 1+n people in this would not address the root cause. Try to do a scalable solution, but those are hard and I guess most that would wok have been tried. In my childhood I would have needed a tutor, my teachers where terrible. Yet it was not the tutors that would help me now, it was chatGPT. Should I now become a tutor, should I build a openAI competitor, or should I build tutuorAI? If I do marketing at tutorAI will this be a bullshit job? When I build an app, sooner or later I have to solve abstract array puzzles, solving these will make the app work. Work often becomes abstract. Does it mean its now bullshit? If everyone worked at the soup kitchen, would homelessness be solved?
almosthere · 4d ago
Just you! It's not that complicated.
dreghgh · 5d ago
> A full-time career consists of 80,000 hours, or 10,000 workdays, or 2,000 workweeks. How you spend that time is one of the most important moral decisions of your life.
This just seems like a confusion to me. My job is the time I spend getting money to pay for the things I need to live. By definition, the work I do then is of value to someone paying me, but not to me. The rest of my time I spend doing things which I can choose, including things I think are a positive contribution to the world.
I could make sense of arguments such as:
1. You should consume vastly less, so that you spend less time earning money and more time contributing to improving the world.
2. Society should be organised differently so that people have to work less and can contribute as they see best in their increased non-paid-work time.
3. You should spend a lower proportion of your free time doing things that benefit yourself and more doing things which benefit the world.
But "you should spend the time you dedicate to getting food, clothes, energy and shelter to contributing to good causes?" Doesn't really make sense.
gizmo · 4d ago
That so misses the point. Not all work that pays contributes equally to society. Some jobs that pay well (because they are of value to the employer) are harmful to society as a whole. If you harm society for 40 or 50 hours every week you're not going to make up for that with an hour or two of volunteer work.
dreghgh · 4d ago
You're talking about avoiding harmful work, whereas the article is discussing finding work mainly based on it being beneficial to the things you care about. These are two quite different things.
If you both have to cover a cost of living, and care about improving the world, there is some most efficient strategy which allows you maximise the latter, given the former as a constraint. (This obviously varies by individual, depending on your abilities, available work, etc.) How can one be sure that working at an 'altruistic' job is optimal, as opposed to for example working at a very highly paid job in some pointless but not harmful field, and contributing either some of your money, or some of your increased spare time?
The example of someone who doesn't care at all about altruism and who has maximised wealth while causing significant harm does not establish the right strategy for people who do care somewhat about both things.
spicyusername · 4d ago
In many, most(?), cases, it can be very difficult for the average person to understand what harms society or otherwise decide if what they are doing is harming society.
It is not hard to decide if you're hungry or if more money is better than less money.
fallingknife · 4d ago
Difficult only for the average person? I know nobody who is such a genius as to be able to decide what is best for society.
xnickb · 4d ago
Not disagreeing, but if not me, someone else would probably do an even better job at that harmful position. Everyone is replaceable. When does this become about changing the society?
dvdkon · 4d ago
I suppose making yourself more than an immediately replaceable cog in the machine is part of what the author is advocating, ideally in a societally beneficial position.
Moreover, many businesses operate under the "everyone is replaceable" model, implicitly adding "without much effort", but that's not really true. There are plenty of examples of political movements that never recovered from their leader or figurehead leaving. You can't just take any other politician and swap them, their positions are too personal. That's an extreme example, but I think it applies to most job positions that aren't just about following checklists, in varying degrees.
ldjkfkdsjnv · 5d ago
Working an office job is such a profound waste of life. Making 10k a month on your own is really not that hard, and with 6-9 months of work, can be achieved. Office jobs will be looked back on as slavery 2.0
grugagag · 5d ago
> Making 10k a month on your own is really not that hard
Does that require to have rich parents? Or rich friends that want to do business with you?
ldjkfkdsjnv · 4d ago
what you think 10k a month is appealing to rich people?
grugagag · 4d ago
Odd jobs for the rich, easy work, no competition and such. I actually know some people who do that..
readthenotes1 · 4d ago
Making 10k/mn of lira may not be that hard, but 10k of USD, gbp, or Eur is definitely beyond the grasp of most people.
Think about it. If everyone made $10k/month, the net value of that labor would have to increase about 10x over what it is now(1). I don't think that's an easy thing to do overnight.
And then there would still be variety in the outcome because a lot of us are too slothful or too unconscientious to actually go out and do the necessary. And that's ignoring how hard it would be for those with no network or access (refugee living in a favela in Bogotá, dlavevin Mauretania) regardless of their ambition.
if youre someone in an office job that makes 150-300k, you can probably make money online
readthenotes1 · 4d ago
That's 10% of people in the USA (at the low end of incomes), less in most other countries.
What's the answer for the other 90%?
politelemon · 5d ago
> Making 10k a month on your own is really not that hard,
Do share.
dreghgh · 5d ago
Can't wait for the society where everyone sits at home and lives off of online scams, rather than having to work.
ldjkfkdsjnv · 4d ago
its already more in this camp than people realize. also, established businesses are often a wrapper around a low value scam, where some minuscule aspect of the services they provide is actually essential
esafak · 4d ago
Only certain types of jobs can be done alone. Can you cure cancer on your own? And if you start a company and hire people, you're back to an office job :)
Not all office jobs suck.
drewcoo · 4d ago
> Can you cure cancer on your own?
Cancer is many, many things. It may not even be a thing we can "cure" together, whatever that means.
We may as well ask if we can cure Mondays.
esafak · 4d ago
If ML solves all disease then it won't matter if it is many things. But that's beside the point.
ldjkfkdsjnv · 4d ago
even if your office job doesnt suck, its still a waste of life
vaidhy · 5d ago
For a very small set of people, it is true. For the rest of 99.99% of the world, it is impossible.
throaway1989 · 5d ago
All you need to do is have 5k worth of stuff you can sell every month?
Ancalagon · 5d ago
Do tell??
rvz · 4d ago
> Making 10k a month on your own is really not that hard, and with 6-9 months of work, can be achieved. Office jobs will be looked back on as slavery 2.0
This. Don't want to hear anymore excuses. It can be done.
Now with AI, there will be even less jobs over time and likely a 10% increase in global unemployment in the next few decades or so.
Have some ambition and make 10k a month on your own without sending CVs to AI recruiters.
throaway1989 · 4d ago
How? I asked Copilot if it could code my game ideas (which would sell millions, obviously) and it said it could, but it was lying.
martindbp · 4d ago
The problem is "Greatness Cannot Be Planned". There are not many cases where someone ambitious sets out to make the world a better place in a very direct way, who actually accomplished that, because of deceptive objectives. Nobody would have predicted that something as frivolous as PC gaming would lead to the AI boom we're having now, but it did. In many ways, John Carmack did more good by kickstarting the PC graphics race than any morally ambitious do-gooder has ever done. There is one notable exception, and that is Elon Musk. He attacked two extremely difficult industries head on armed only with $100m and grandiose plans, yet somehow made it work by shear force of will. Difficult to replicate, and of course we all hate him now.
Better probably to do what you find interesting, and maybe it will lead to greatness. If it didn't at least you did something interesting.
I'm all about changing the world, but I also have an obligation to take care of my family, so my way of changing the world is working a traditional job, donating to charity from my earnings, and using my time/talent/treasure outside of work hours to make a difference.
So I'll ask you straight out: why is the choice you've made salary man or nothing? Why can't you get started with a side hustle, and then if it gets traction, you can quit your job and it becomes your main living?
One of the big barriers to this is a lot of investors seem to expect founders to work for nothing in the early years, which is a pretty privileged place to be: most people with dependents just can't do that, so I hear you.
But you don't need VCs. You don't need to live on noodles. You can build something that replaces your day job, you just need to figure it out.
As it's being done collectively, there's more of a chance of it getting off the ground, as people could take turns working on it in their spare time instead of a side-hustle dominating your time.
Once it's established, those people could then quit their job and work at the coop.
There are credit unions that could help with startup costs, as well as guides on how to structure it based on other successful coops.
Potential issues: employers don't tend to like it if they get wind that a group of employees are doing something on the side, and may find reason to take ownership of said effort (which your contract might allow them to do).
Working full time for someone and doing a side hustle is hard, from experience.
What I’ve found is that trying to do the side hustle takes away from a lot time spent with your dependants, which you will never get back, unless you are lucky enough to “make the break”
Not impossible, and you’ve got to try and find a balance. But it just may never happen.
I'm fortunate that I don't mind getting up early and I hate morning TV/radio/news, so I can find an extra hour for myself each day.
If all you optimize for is the well-being of your family, your efforts should go into amassing wealth, not changing the world.
According to Wikipedia, the author has dependents.
"Bregman is married to Maartje ter Horst, a photographer.^[43]^[44] They reside in Brooklyn as of 2025 and have a child together.^[45]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutger_Bregman
(Attention Wikipedia editors: Unless I missed something, reference #45 appears to make no mention of Bregman's family.)
In that case, moral ambition may not be for you. I mean, once you have a labradoodle, a set of cheese knives or a robot mower, there’s generally no going back
In fact, I'd argue that taking care of your family _is_ a morally right and meaningful way of contributing to the world.
There's a reason traditional Christian ethical frameworks often prioritize responsibilities in layers: first to God (or core principles), then to family, then to the neighbor (broader community).
Oh wait…
This isn't totally false. Social change can be uncertain and rocky. If you want to be serious though you've to look at the risks of inaction, namely, allowing the funnelling of resources to the top percentile to continue.
I'm not sure how many people realise how out of hand that funnelling has gotten, or how concentrated at the very very top it's gotten.
As an example I saw recently, here's a graph[0] of French society from 2014 to 2021. Along the x-axis it's the poorest percentiles on the left, richest on the right. Y-axis is the percentage annual increase in revenue.
I think the reality is that inaction is arguably at least as likely to lead to the kind of "..." that you may well be hinting at.
[0] the graph itself -- https://elucid.media/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/170-croissan...
Taken from here (French article) -- https://elucid.media/analyse-graphique/inegalites-revenus-fr...
Wow, I didn’t realize people might be so ignorant of history. What I stated in my comment is how Soviet Union got started in 1917. Do I need to explain how that experiment ended?
You know very well that when I said "because of... history, or something" I was alluding to the fact that you had not in fact specified your historical reference at all. You did not state anything about the Soviet Union in 1917, you alluded vaguely and noncommitally to the redistribution of wealth being bad, maybe - it's unsure because, as I've said, there's no specifics.
If you don't make your point, we can't assume what it is. Or do you think that the Soviet Union in 1917 is the only moment in history where wealth/poperty was redistributed? If so, that would be a display of a pretty serious level of historical ignorance on your part.
In any case, now that you've deigned to share your point with us - the choice isn't one between a. what we have now, unchanged, and b. the Soviet Union in 1917. This false dichotomy is a common favourite of people heavily invested in maintaining the status quo, often people who are monetarily invested.
On the off-chance that you're not one of those types and are simply ignorant of the richness and complexity of human social organisation, I warmly invite you to read some anthropology to discover the myriad of ways human societies function and have functioned throughout history. You could be in for a very eye-opening experience.
(not as taught from Texas-approved history books)
The Soviets lifted an unprecedented number of people out of poverty. This was unequalled until China in the following century. They would likely have achieved more and lasted longer without the constant harassment of capitalist countries. (Remember when the US even invaded Soviet soil? Most Americans do not.)
The US and some European powers managed to convince Soviets to switch to an American-style economy, run by oligarchs. Those countries proceeded to loot the Soviet Union for anything they could find. And so we have today.
This is what happened in France, what happened in Russia, and what has happened in many other cases. It is not an ideological phenomenon, has nothing to do with communism, and it happens because a society refuses to reform for so long that the system collapses under its own corruption. We are heading down that same path by refusing to institute moderate reforms while we still have the option to do so.
And of course, the chaos of revolution is not the only way for a vicious tyrant to gain power and institute a reign of terror...
This was not only driven by vicious men, this was there from the very start, this was inherent in the revolution and its ideology, and mainly caused by real shortages stemming from economic issues
You can see it with Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot and i'm probably only missing more examples due to ignorance. You have an economic system which is "scientific", but is actually just a mass experiment resulting in deaths of millions. And an ideology that is so sure of itself as it is "proven" it never stops or self-questions
It goes both ways, of course.
When people say: "Oh, we can't do socialism, or anything that looks or feels even a tiny bit like socialism, because look what happened with Lenin et al!", I think they are ironically engaging in the very essence of what lead to these attempted revolutions going so poorly.
Social and economic rigidity and dogmatism is the issue.
Socialism has some good ideas, and can be hellishly bad. Capitalism has some good ideas, and can be hellishly bad. Same for anarchism, veganism, hedonism, and so on. This isn't to say that all ideologies are equal, but that dogmatism is generally very dangerous.
However, defending the revolutions that resulted in catastrophe and complete failure is in my opinion dangerous. We don't need another trial at an extreme ideology that knows everything to guess the end result
I've only read one excellent (French, translated) collection of the writing of Alexandra Kollontai, and otherwise nothing much of length on the topic. Kollontai was already enough to suspect that the usual simplistic narrative as whispered by our interlocuteur here might not be the whole story whatsoever.
No, thank you. I'm not a fan of capitalism, either, but that society was hardly a stellar example of an alternative.
[1] If by 'wealth' we mean numbers in computers. Actual wealth, like healthy land and clean water and manufacturing capacity should be shared by everyone, but currently money is what controls it.
The author speaks to this directly:
> Now, you might be thinking: that’s all well and good, but I’ve got a full-time job, two kids and a mortgage. I’m happy to recycle and eat some tofu now and then, but a “fundamental transformation”? No thanks.
In that case, moral ambition may not be for you. I mean, once you have a labradoodle, a set of cheese knives or a robot mower, there’s generally no going back. But if that’s irritating to hear – and I imagine it might be – then by all means, prove me wrong. I have learned that there are always exceptions, and I want to show that you can be that exception. It’s never too late to step up.
To me limiting oneself to “idealistic but not ambitious” with a focus on fulfilling relationships and positive impact on family, friends, and local community seems like a good way to go.
“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions... Ideology—that is what gives the evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
He’s an author and journalist, not a doer of any kind as far as I can tell from his bio.
Before the agricultural and industrial revolutions and our correct system of highly specialized labor, it feels as though everyone just hung out together, having a good time, and doing what was needed to feed the tribe. Minus the disease and war, of course.
There wasn't this need for an existential discussion about this job or that job, or whether you're lifestyle was morally justified.
There weren't power structures that existed on a scale larger than a single community, invisibly guiding everyone's lives in ways they couldn't control.
One theory about the Jacob and Esau story is that it's about a hunter gatherer (Esau) surrendering political power to a farmer (Jacob) because the farmer has much more reliable access to protein than the hunter, meaning that sooner or later, he can gain the upper hand in a negotiation with someone who's otherwise starving.
You might not ascribe value to this type of biblical 'economic history'. But the theory has explanatory power - if it wasn't for food shortages, why would our ancestors have given up 'hanging out together and having a good time' to embrace the toil of hoeing and herding?
This statement is subject to inverse survivor bias, gatherers and pastoral societies tended to not run out, they tended to move instead. Agriculture based early societies tended to run out or get decimated by plagues, thus leaving concentrated evidence of their passing.
However due to the one way early ones are tracked by looking at stable settlements, the evidence is stacked against the nomadic ones. While what they often had is meeting places rather than residences. What we find is megaliths, but not the settled cities to support their building.
If you move and properly do not leave much behind, there will be no evidence left.m, especially after centuries, sometimes even years.
Eurocentric and thus wrong.
There were multiple societies that has structures of federation and collective government. It's just Europe that did not at the time.
Eventually you're going to find nothing but lots of loose collections of a hundred to a few thousand people.
I'm not sure why you're saying this. It's a similar story in most prehistoric societies, from Polynesia, to North America, to Europe.Thing is, a pre-agrarian society means hunters/gatherers, and for that to work out, you need quite a lot of land to provide for a single person (hence why those societies have such low population density). Thus, warfare in that era is all about directly reducing the number of people competing with you for those precious resources, either by killing them or by driving them off the land. And so pretty much all males are involved in it and regular mortality rates from constantly ongoing warfare can reach as high as 20%. Furthermore, warfare itself is explicitly genocidal in nature, e.g. raids of enemy villages, ideally while defenders are away so that you can slaughter as many as possible.
What if the work itself isn't "the most important" thing in the person's life?
Finding purpose, fulfillment or joy in your work is nice, but as you grow as a human, or as the field you're in changes, or as the work dries up... well, you're left thoroughly adrift.
And at the end of the day, a job is a job. I do it because it allows me to live a lifestyle close to what I want, while not being soul crushingly boring most of the time.
I came to terms with the fact that I'm not going to change the world. The best I can do is not fuck it up anymore than when I got here. That's about as good as most of us can expect, since most of us are average in many aspects. Without stunning amounts of genius or resources, I think that hoping just to fade into obscurity is the best you can do, really.
Do yourself a favour and actually read the article this time.
It is very convincing for me personally, and it's got me considering making some big changes.
Work certainly provides meaning, you'll notice this when you can't find work for a while, ie. involuntarily unemployed. Also, you have to find deeper meaning outside of work: church, social clubs, raising kids, taking care of elderly parents, volunteering, etc. Getting paid to do moral work is rarely a thing and somewhat defeats the purpose.
Why are we all here, on this specific site, if we're not interested in building something ambitious and shaped on our own ideals of what we think the World needs? We might not be right, but it's each of ours, individually.
The people playing this game and winning at the moment are ambitious, but morally... I think we're starting to have some questions about their big ideas, more recently... and so you have the option: go do something to change the game and take the attention away from them.
Big changes come from small ones. If you don't like the status quo, figure out how to change it by building something better. And yes, it's hard, but you don't need to solve the whole thing, particularly when getting started, just a small corner of it.
I'm sure many of the other 80% would like to do something more positive. Should we really be trying to start a culture war between the two groups, rather than acknowledge that the system isn't great for anyone?
But its an interesting thought exercise. Slavery seems like a cut and dry issue in terms of harm and human rights, yet overtime the "easy" moral problems are solved and you're left with the gray ones. What's today's moral equivalent of slavery that we need crusaders against?
> One evening, at a dinner with a few other abolitionists, ...
Category IV success is only achievable in groups or teams. And our education and capital systems, as well as our social and media systems, are increasingly pushing us towards more isolation:
- University graduates get earn more money with lower risk in consulting or finance than entrepreneurship (highlighted in the article)
- High level academia is basically an independent game from my understanding, with some exceptions like some security labs where the same people consistently work together
- Business structures tend to be designed for maximum specialisation and work extraction of the individual, not teams
- Third spaces are disappearing outside of work and home
- In-person relationships are being replaced with social media relationships and parasocial fandoms
- Politics is being replaced with drama
> But if that’s irritating to hear – and I imagine it might be – then by all means, prove me wrong. I have learned that there are always exceptions, and I want to show that you can be that exception. It’s never too late to step up.
It seems the author may not be aware of this though, and ultimately just ends up selling a different brand of individualist grindset.
If you really want to change the world, come protest with me at the Sun Valley Conference, AKA the Billionaires SummerCamp on July 6th. This event is where the parasitic rich coordinate the years propaganda, further consolidate there stranglehold on the industry, and train the new round of corporate newspapermen on what information needs to be throttled, distorted, derailed or deleted so that those same rich parasites can stay in power.
Pick people from different countries, different cultures, different backgrounds and they will have very different views on what would make things better. Not in the end state of "people should be healthy, happy and free to pursue their passions; and we should explore the stars, too", but in "what would be a worthy goal for me to work on, today and for the next few years". And acceptance of such differences is, to me, a good thing: anytime countries are remoralized into pursuing a common moral goal, gulags for those who did not drink the kool-aid are not far away.
In my book people should not work on things they find immoral. But I am totally fine if my neighbors or my friends are competing against me at work, in technological or in moral space. If they do not consider their work immoral, it is all good. I like hearing their arguments, too, either to steelman my views or to find cracks in them. This likely puts me into the "spineless amoebas, useless species" bucket of the author's classification.
Going on a moral crusade to change the world? No, thank you. They do not end well; not for the world, which likely will not even notice, but for the crusader who will likely become disillusioned, radicalized or bitter when the world does not budge. My 2c.
Do people agree on basic math, physics, chemistry, etc or it depends on different countries/cultures/backgrounds?
> "Going on a moral crusade to change the world? No, thank you. They do not end well; not for the world, which likely will not even notice, but for the crusader who will likely become disillusioned, radicalized or bitter when the world does not budge. My 2c."
Your choices are yours, as are your 2c, but the rest neither follows nor computes. What follows from your logic is that serfdom and slavery are perfectly fine, you wouldn't bother to find a better way if they were imposed on you or others... but you would ride on the efforts of others while criticizing their actions as "moral crusade to change the world".
> Your choices are yours, as are your 2c, but the rest neither follows nor computes. What follows from your logic is that serfdom and slavery are perfectly fine, you wouldn't bother to find a better way if they were imposed on you
Please explain how does "serfdom and slavery are perfectly fine" follow from what I wrote.
There are many people in the world who cannot practice basic maths, physics, or chemistry, etc. [1] is one source for the USA, which puts the number at 39% for Grade 8 students in maths, which would suggest higher for physics and maybe chemistry.
So the answer is probably "no" for the USA at least.
[1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-u-s-students-perform-at...
All three forces have different magnitudes and exist in all of us.
Capitalism is a system that exploits the second force to the greatest extent and is responsible for economic changes in society that have far exceeded anything produced by altruism alone. Have there been societies and economies that exploit moral ambition? I don’t think here have been examples.
To truly do good in this world we have to face our own nature. I’d rather be alive and rich before I do any favors for the world. So if you want me to change the world… first tell me what that gives me.
The Crusades seem like a good example.
But in the end soldiers are also getting paid and that’s the primary driver behind it.
This just seems like a confusion to me. My job is the time I spend getting money to pay for the things I need to live. By definition, the work I do then is of value to someone paying me, but not to me. The rest of my time I spend doing things which I can choose, including things I think are a positive contribution to the world.
I could make sense of arguments such as:
1. You should consume vastly less, so that you spend less time earning money and more time contributing to improving the world.
2. Society should be organised differently so that people have to work less and can contribute as they see best in their increased non-paid-work time.
3. You should spend a lower proportion of your free time doing things that benefit yourself and more doing things which benefit the world.
But "you should spend the time you dedicate to getting food, clothes, energy and shelter to contributing to good causes?" Doesn't really make sense.
If you both have to cover a cost of living, and care about improving the world, there is some most efficient strategy which allows you maximise the latter, given the former as a constraint. (This obviously varies by individual, depending on your abilities, available work, etc.) How can one be sure that working at an 'altruistic' job is optimal, as opposed to for example working at a very highly paid job in some pointless but not harmful field, and contributing either some of your money, or some of your increased spare time?
The example of someone who doesn't care at all about altruism and who has maximised wealth while causing significant harm does not establish the right strategy for people who do care somewhat about both things.
It is not hard to decide if you're hungry or if more money is better than less money.
Moreover, many businesses operate under the "everyone is replaceable" model, implicitly adding "without much effort", but that's not really true. There are plenty of examples of political movements that never recovered from their leader or figurehead leaving. You can't just take any other politician and swap them, their positions are too personal. That's an extreme example, but I think it applies to most job positions that aren't just about following checklists, in varying degrees.
Does that require to have rich parents? Or rich friends that want to do business with you?
Think about it. If everyone made $10k/month, the net value of that labor would have to increase about 10x over what it is now(1). I don't think that's an easy thing to do overnight.
And then there would still be variety in the outcome because a lot of us are too slothful or too unconscientious to actually go out and do the necessary. And that's ignoring how hard it would be for those with no network or access (refugee living in a favela in Bogotá, dlavevin Mauretania) regardless of their ambition.
(1)Https://www.zippia.com/advice/average-income-worldwide/
What's the answer for the other 90%?
Do share.
Not all office jobs suck.
Cancer is many, many things. It may not even be a thing we can "cure" together, whatever that means.
We may as well ask if we can cure Mondays.
This. Don't want to hear anymore excuses. It can be done.
Now with AI, there will be even less jobs over time and likely a 10% increase in global unemployment in the next few decades or so.
Have some ambition and make 10k a month on your own without sending CVs to AI recruiters.
Better probably to do what you find interesting, and maybe it will lead to greatness. If it didn't at least you did something interesting.