The Exhaustion Of Constantly Placating The Affluent
I will not come out and go full young socialist on you (I’m also not young), but I think we generally know that people feel very busy these days, there are numerous reported increases in burnout, and there’s increased loneliness and isolation, especially in work contexts. All of that is increasingly common and reported out. It obviously varies tremendously by person, job, and family situation. Let’s caveat that up front.
Most jobs, for better or worse, are about doing something for those with more means than you. That could include the owner of the company, your boss’ boss, or some customer at the fried chicken place who wants their order now. Even at dive bars, employment can be tending to the needs of the affluent, because a lot of guys I’ve met in my arc use such locations to avoid their family for 44 minutes at a time.
For better or worse, many affluent people — and this is, yes, a generalization but often true — are extraordinarily fragile. While they might have a strong work ethic or a good ability to form revenue-producing relationships, they’re often constantly worried about their perch, wanting to showcase some aspect of their personal brand (as they see it), down in the weeds on details that are beneath their earning level, and much more. This applies to founders, middle managers, trust fund dudes, and a whole host of others. Again, a generalization, but often true.
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Convenience is what we seek, often, and that pursuit of convenience is often why we can’t get a lot of big stuff done as a society.
If your job was primarily placating someone with assets and means who maybe doesn’t fully understand the work you do or why it’s relevant — and, again, a generalization but true of many jobs — why wouldn’t you be burnt out? In the last 15 years, there’s been an increasing amount of reports whereby companies only, and I mean only, promote people from finance and engineering into top roles. While those silos are tremendously important to any given company, guys from those silos generally should not be leaders of lots of others. Finance guys tend to chase rugged individualism, and engineers tend to be about projects and not people.
Why does the idea of at-scale burnout and stress surprise us, when we’ve designed the economy so that the affluent must consistently be placated by the “others?” Obviously that would be the outcome. Right?
DER BUNTE VOGEL ?? Internationaler Wissenstransfer - Influencerin bei Corporate Influencer Club | Wirtschaftswissenschaften
10 个月Thank you Ted Bauer
Recruiter at ESS, Inc.
10 个月Socialism is the design that gets this result, think it was any different in the USSR? The competition of the market was simply replaced by the competition of brown nosing. This gets worse under socialism, not better. The Scandinavian countries which people routinely point to as an alternative are also routinely rated as MORE capitalist than the US, and by right wing groups that don't exactly have an incentive to point that out. More secure property rights, more secure contracts, less institutional corruption, and no where near as robust 'protection' of workers as many think. What they do have is a fairly robust welfare state that ensures you won't go bankrupt, and generally don't have to sleep on the street if you don't want to. The cure for the US's current issues isn't socialism, it's less fascism. We also have a VERY robust welfare state, but here it's for corporations, not people. That's the difference.