| I get your point here, but here's mine. When push comes to shove, a bit more pay won't motivate someone as much as having a feeling about the work will. I feel guilty because I have a passion for software development but once pushed it away because I felt it was causing me social ostracization I couldn't afford (this was long before the Web exploded and "legitimized" the software developer). While doing things that were not-software, I kept getting dropped "hints" that I was on the wrong path (there is no rational way to explain this unfortunately), so I decided to hop back in (conveniently, right when the Web was starting to take off). I've been there ever since. My S.O. is artistic but found no way to monetize that so she now does what amounts to "admin and logistical planning work for highly-paid traders", and she hates it. She complains about it all the time, especially after every business day, and she brings much stress into our relationship as a result. I spent a while trying to encourage her to push back into creative work but it just wasn't sticking- turns out that she had an evil woman manager once who kept completely shooting down her work and I think she resolved then to never let her feelings get near work ever again. My attitude towards that situation, was I in those shoes (having grown up ostracized for what I believed in and cared about, and then later vindicated) would have been to tell that woman to EABOD and I would have tried creative work elsewhere. I have to wonder how many people out there are just going through the motions at their jobs because of something like this. And you're absolutely right- I AM privileged... but if it was possible for this to be more common, I wouldn't be. I really wish that something like my experience would happen to everyone. Would something like UBI enable more people to find "their life's work" before they get stuck in a rut that just happens to pay the bills, I wonder? How much potential economic growth are we actually missing out on, here? You know how when you shake a bunch of different shapes on a sieve with similarly-shaped holes, you get more falling through the sieve (i.e. finding their happier job)? And when you stop shaking, whatever shape happens to be over whatever hole is the one they rest in? What do we need to do to add more "shakeability" to the market so that more people can try more things relatively safely (financially)? My life DOES have a lot of other drawbacks that I won't get into (which probably serve to level the overall privilege I'm experiencing), but this is not one of them. I really do wish it on everyone. |