Corporate America has programmed people to HUSTLE! BE THE BEST! ACHIEVE! MAKE MORE MONEY!!! for so long that they now need to pay someone to come and teach us how to relax, enjoy the moment and be happy again.

  • satanmat@lemmy.world
    65·
    6 months ago

    The fallacy of infinite growth (money) is such a CF

    Infinite growth is a strategy that works for a virus not humans

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      20·
      6 months ago

      The real problem is that our concept of Infinite growth fails to describe the growth of use value. We only measure the growth of exchange value.

      Strictly speaking, both are possible. But only one is good.

      You could do the SMBC web comic joke about two computers that just trade bits of data as a form of economic activity and achieve growth capped only by the maximum processor speed of the transactions. Viola! Infinite growth! But its all exchange growth, no utility.

      You could also describe the Cambrian Explosion as an “Infinite Growth” strategy. Rapid proliferation of species, new ecological niches that are filled by species specifically focused on occupying those niches, revolutionary new means of biologically observing and processing information, etc etc etc. Now we’ve got enormous utilitarian growth, but there’s no real exchange process (unless you consider organisms eating one another a market mechanic).

      From a biological perspective, the real upper limit on growth is efficient use of solar energy to process planetary materials. And we’re still nowhere near that limit. Plants and planktons and insects and crustaceans have been lapping us on that front even into the modern industrial age.

      Our model of economic growth just fixates on the exchange side so heavily that we end up with the Two-Computers-On-An-Island-Trading-Bits proxy for economic success. We’ve abandoned our conceptualization of utility growth in our quest to fully financialize. We don’t recognize volunteer labor as a form of economic growth. We don’t recognize procreation as a form of economic growth or mortality as a form of de-growth. We don’t recognize ecological destruction as a form of economic de-growth or extinction as a massive loss in economic value.

      Until we adjust our measures, the infinite growth we’re aiming for is purely a growth in accounting statistics. We’re sacrificing real prosperity for a financial fairy tale.

    • teft@lemmy.world
      10·
      6 months ago

      If we got off this rock infinite growth wouldn’t be so bad. We’d have space to grow as a species. Until then infinite growth is more harmful than good.

  • slazer2au@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    6 months ago

    you are shocked to realise that an entity that exists purely to gain money is advocating make more money?

    • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.worldOP
      7·
      6 months ago

      Not shocked at all. I just think it’s funny that they have to hire someone to cancel out the brainwashing they’ve done and teach us how to be happy again.

    • gsfraley@lemmy.world
      4·
      6 months ago

      For me, it’s more that our species of primate’s general wellbeing and health was hijacked by a cancer-like abstract concept.

  • Boozilla@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    6 months ago

    Depressing and true.

    I have been in the corporate desk jockey world for too long. So much of what people do every day in the white collar world is just performative bullshit. David Graeber wrote about it better than I can describe it.

  • whynotzoidberg@lemmy.world
    5·
    6 months ago

    I was an efficiency whore while working management at a big software company.

    It sucked in some very specific ways. I didn’t even realize the impact until after I left that environment.

    There were some good things from corporate America, too, but they didn’t bring real ultimate power happiness.

  • thesohoriots@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    6 months ago

    Related: Connor O’Malley has a great (nsfw) stand up special on YouTube called “Stand Up Solutions” satirizing start-up VC hustle culture.

  • Amanduh@lemm.ee
    2·
    6 months ago

    I was at a work event recently and the keynote speaker was talking about ai and stuff but she brought up Finland and started calling the people finlindians instead of Finnish, I was very confuse.

  • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.worldOP
    2·
    6 months ago

    As a generally chill guy that doesn’t give a fuck about being a cog in the grind machine, I feel like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.

    “You merely adopted the chill. I was born in it, molded by it!”