[throwaway9143]

People have gotten the message that capitalism is a cancer that will exploit workers of every bit of value for a pittance. People are fighting back by quiet quitting and doing the absolute bare minimum to collect a paycheck. There's literally no point in working hard for your higher ups to make bank off of you while you get an "attaboy." They're going to learn the hard way now.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> People have gotten the message

The generation of young people in the 1960s thought this. Then the generation of young people in the 1970s thought this. Then the generation of young people in the 1980s thought this, and so on. I'll be 50 this year, I've gotten to see it twice myself. I've started reading about it historically (Days of Rage by Burrough is informative and neutral tone).

Capitalism isn't a cancer. It's just a framework that gives you enough liberty to succeed or fail. Many fail. Many who fail spend years pouting about it, waste what little time they might have for any second attempts.

> They're going to learn the hard way now.

"They" won't learn anything. They don't have to learn anything, but if they did, you don't have any leverage anyway to be able to force the issue. They're out there busy creating a world, right now, right this very minute, in which they don't need you or other malcontents at all. They're satisfied that they can create this world and soon. And they're not penciling in a place for you or those like you to exist within it. And you have no leverage. What leverage you might have managed to squirrel away before, you rejected it. You reject it now, even in this comment. There's that nagging little thought in the back of your mind, that if you were to try to fix the system from within the system, you might discover you no longer worry so much about fixing it, right?

[shrimp_emoji]

> There's that nagging little thought in the back of your mind, that if you were to try to fix the system from within the system, you might discover you no longer worry so much about fixing it, right?

I got to less worry by concluding that there's no fixing it at all. It's all an entropic reaction, like milk mixing in coffee. You can't freeze the mixture in time or reverse it. It's all deterministically headed toward its lowest energy state, whether that's some utopia or dystopia. And, in a roundabout way, that translates into it not needing fixing! The only thing that needs fixing is my approach/relationship to it. The fix to which is turning out to seem like taking everything (the system, people, life) less seriously and becoming a lolbertarian. Don't worry and just have a good time, man. :D (Luckily for me, that includes -- actually, is mostly -- coding.) Anyways, what was that about the '60s?

[dogman144]

Good take I think. The root of the Grand USA bargain in my view is just what you said - it gives you social space and a civil society framework to try and achieve your own outcomes via capitalism.

Everyone has a different starting hand on how easy this is to do. In my experience, some starting points are crushingly unfair.

However, there is nothing stopping me from trying with the hand I have. The terrain to pick is pretty large as well. I can do these even if my parents aren’t landed nobility or the right caste. The knowledge needed is freely provided somewhere. The professional networks needed can be built out freely. I can move anywhere, and pick any market within at least the US’s domain - every state, every trading partner, and now via the internet every regulated western-ized market. The ways I fail in an unrecoverable way are also somewhat owned by me - don’t bet the farm, don’t take on financial obligations greater than what would lock me out of free choice due to realities of paying a mortgage and so on, if you want kids at 30 start thinking about how to set it up around 20.

These system rules aren’t understood by everyone, but imo doesn’t mean it doesn’t work more or less as designed. And to your last point, people who check into this path tend to check out of the old path and the old path’s complaints.