[stonethrowaway]

I was waiting for the punch line where the author gives all that sweet money back to the terrible system they despise, and finally washes their hands clean of it.

Unfortunately, such a line never came. I guess the money was just too good.

Give it 2-3 weeks we’ll see another article like this. Might be FAANG, might be not. But it seems like nobody is willing to truly sin against the capitalist god with proper repentance. Take a wheelbarrow, put the money in, hand it back and say “no thank you.” Until a person does this, their words are meaningless.

[ath3nd]

> Until a person does this, their words are meaningless.

Heavily disagree! The author actually did a lot of meaningful work for less than meaningful money, so they did put their money where their mouth was. They made a lot of effort of disentangling as much as possible from a system they, like many others, see as amoral and corrupt. Sure, realizing capitalism is rotten is often accompanied by having the financial means to shun it, but it's an achievement nonetheless.

> But it seems like nobody is willing to truly sin against the capitalist god with proper repentance

The proper repentance against the capitalist god is to get as much money you can out of the system, and then use it in various anti-capitalism measures: like establishing communes, unions, doing pro-bono work, etc etc. Which the author thought about, did, and discussed at length.

[tivert]

> I was waiting for the punch line where the author gives all that sweet money back to the terrible system they despise, and finally washes their hands clean of it.

What good is done by dismissing the positive efforts people are actually willing to take, and demanding sacrifices so extreme they'll be very rare?

No one can actually escape capitalism, even through dramatic personal action.

[stonethrowaway]

It’s hypocrisy. Give the money back if you don’t like the way it tastes.

[ath3nd]

> It’s hypocrisy. Give the money back if you don’t like the way it tastes.

That's a very misguided take. The author actually took the money, and spent it in non capitalist pursuits: doing lower paid but meaningful work, helping organizations unionize, in a way using capitalism's money against itself. Nothing hypocritical without that. By the way, the whole post is about the author struggling with seeing the hypocrisy of realizing how rotten capitalism is and participating in it at the same time.

[tivert]

> It’s hypocrisy. Give the money back if you don’t like the way it tastes.

To whom?

And, like I said before, no one can actually escape capitalism (except, I suppose, through suicide), so there's no "finally wash[ing] their hands clean of it" which you are demanding.

Edit: there is a kind of defense of capitalism that exploits its inescapably: a demand to either 1) support it (usually unstated), 2) neutralize yourself totally to show your commitment (e.g. smash all your things and somehow live without capitalism), or 3) have your critique rejected as hypocritical and therefore invalid. It's a blanket rejection of critique that's obscured, so its unreasonableness isn't so obvious.