Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by CBarkleyU 1311 days ago
"The lion never says "It took me 15 minutes to hunt the antelope, if I keep at it, I might hunt 4 more down -- wait I could actually take tomorrow off!" -- The lion isnt stupid, he didn't go to business school. Au contraire, lion is much smarter than the MBA, he knows that even if he hunted down 5 antelopes today, he still can't take tomorrow off: He has to build a fridge on his day off. On the day following his day off he has to somehow work to get the electricity working, then he has to build a house to protect the fridge and at the end of the day the lion will never have the time to lie in the sun and say "Man, that tasted so good, how lucky am I?".

Only a human can be tricked into thinking like that"

Volker Pispers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IysGB9yXE_g)
1 comments
chii 1310 days ago
That's civilization, and it is the thing that allowed humans to survive better than lions, despite being physically weaker and less hardy.
link
davesque 1310 days ago
Agree completely. My point was that I feel like it doesn't actually take so much effort to maintain that we have to feel strung out all the time. I imagine we could continue to survive and thrive quite effectively with far less effort directed in the right way.

We seem to continue to hustle to survive but the notion of survival is ingrown and only really has meaning within the context of humanity. The broader notion of survival, against the elements, seems like a solved problem.

link
chii 1310 days ago
> The broader notion of survival, against the elements, seems like a solved

not really. It's easy to survive against the elements, but that's because those who perform the tasks of helping you survive against the elements (and food and necessities) are expecting you to contribute higher-order goods/services back.

> thrive quite effectively with far less effort directed in the right way.

so who's doing the directing? if it's a central authority, we know how that went.

The only real option left is market directed. Which is what we have today. There cannot be, at the current technological level, an easy life. Until the day humanity move to post-scarcity, this will remain the case.

link