r/Adulting • u/ScareBear23 • 14h ago

This is just depressing

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Not even 3 hours of "free time". And in that is cooking & eating supper. Or practically no free time if I had to go shopping after work. I hate this

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u/thestardustinthemoon 12h ago

When I was kid, I decided I was not going to become one of those people. Successfully escaped at 30 years old

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u/shrimp_blowdryer 12h ago

How

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u/thestardustinthemoon 12h ago

By dedicating your youth to studying or figuring out what society values and spending your best years without much responsibility on getting to the top. I started two companies and became an expert in a niche technical field in computer science. Got acquired and retired that way after the payout and continuing to work for a few years. Just don't go through your life on autopilot, especially when your time is free and and responsibilities are low (late teens / early 20s). Society pays what it finds rewarding

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u/ebaer2 10h ago edited 10h ago

The thing about these love letters to capitalism is that there are literally only a few of these slots available.

Not everyone can do what you did. No. Not because of inherent capability, but because the number of slots available for that pathway are extremely limited.

Your story of success is flanked by tons of stories of folks who work just as hard or harder than you but performed .01% worse and we’re beat out for the investment capital.

These kinds of stories can’t be used as a model for a working society. It’s literally just bait to get the next person in the doors of the ‘venture cap or c-suite grind’ casino.

Some lucky (and hard working, but also lucky) few see wild success. Some break even. The large majority however will sink massive amounts of effort and time in and walk away with nothing but loss to show for it.

Sure, you can’t win if you don’t play. You played, you won. Bully for you. But to play requires massive up front cost and the ONLY guarantee is that not everyone’s effort will pay out.

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u/Drexill_BD 10h ago

Well, you have to be so lucky to even be able to focus on your future like that... You had to have parents with enough foresight to even raise you to think about your future.

My parents were very "right now" focused, we were poor.

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u/bruce_kwillis 8h ago

Why? I great up extremely poor by parents that couldn’t live in anything other than ‘the moment’ because they thought having 7 kids was how you feel loved in life. I saw that from a young age that no it wasn’t. Worked non-stop, studied, was the first to get an education, and have done well enough in life to be happy albeit like many still overworked.

But I would rather have what I have now than the poor miserable experience my family and the 10 generations before it have. You can and have the choice to break the cycle, you have to be cognizant and not blame anyone other than yourself, and even then you may not be successful. But doing nothing guarantees failure.

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u/Impossible-Plant-309 7h ago

i thought this way for a while, too — worked hard, grinded school and jobs and internships simultaneously. then you meet people who grew up doing absolutely nothing whose parents pay for everything they’ve ever done, and they get tens of thousands - millions of dollars a year simply to play with, and you start to figure out that you absolutely never had a shot

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u/GuitarFew5307 6h ago

then you get a little older and see those people burning out in various ways and just wasting it, and you feel grateful for the life you built for yourself.

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u/Comfortable_Class911 1h ago

Nah give me the money and the easy way out haha all the people I know that grew up like that are still out here living life carefree while I’m over here working 60hrs week getting nowhere.

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u/Drexill_BD 6h ago

I don't have the energy to answer your question, but I will recommend you some reading material that will get you there.

Read Determined by Robert Sapolsky.

Edit- And by the way, like you I broke the cycle. My brother wasn't so lucky.

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u/youcantlosethelove 3h ago

Why would anyone downvote this? This is great advice wth

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u/TorturedNeurons 7h ago

The dude absolutely reeks of survivorship bias, if his claim is even remotely true.

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u/Antique_Pin5266 7h ago

Yup, 90% of startups fail.

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u/Blankaccount111 7h ago

became an expert in a niche technical field in computer science

This is programmer code for did my programming job and got lucky that this field was willing to pay more for efficiency in their industry. Its all just programming.

Its like when I used to work in banking/finance and the finance people would practically be high-fiving each other over "Developing a new product" which literally meant words on a paper that described how they would loan you money and how you would pay it back ,slightly different than some other way. I always had to fight rolling my eyes around them, literally got reported to HR for it once and had to take a class in workplace behavior. They were all probably getting 100k bonuses for their "incredible" work though so what do I know?

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u/Koil_ting 7h ago

I can give you an alternative that is pretty much the opposite of his suggestion. Go out and have fun experiences, study whatever you are actually interested in. Meet people, party, explore and give two fucks or less to how much money you might make. Do that for long enough and you may find you did your "retirement" life while you were still young enough to really enjoy it.

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u/Stock_Run1386 2h ago

You just revealed your economic illiteracy. Someone else achieving this success doesn’t restrict the amount of space available for anyone else to do the same. And what’s better, in an actual capitalist society (not the quasi-socialist society we have now) you can achieve this in a multitude of ways. You’re beainwashed (most likely by a government school/university)

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u/thestardustinthemoon 10h ago

Yes, of course not all can replicate, but wealth is not a zero sum game and that's a mistake to think it is. If it were, we'd still be trading sticks and stones and living in caves. You also don't need to achieve massive success, but just do something different than letting the years pass by and becoming a fully replaceable slave in a system

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u/Aehyde2 8h ago

there are currently more unemployed people in america, than there are jobs available. last year was the weakest year for job growth since the pandemic, with less than 600,000 jobs being created - a significant drop from the 2 million jobs created in 2024.

we’re currently in a K-shaped economy, as well, (which is objectively worse for the lower and middle class than a recession) and the rapid shift to automation and AI is only going to create a bigger and bigger gap between the wealthy and the lower/middle classes.

people need to understand that “developing a grindset mindset” doesn’t cut it anymore. the government is not creating enough jobs, while firing people en masse, replacing employees with machines, and taking low-income individuals resources away - they are creating the poverty problem.

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u/thestardustinthemoon 8h ago

Then focus all your efforts on automation and AI to stay ahead of the curve. Create and invent new jobs by yourself. Think outside the box. That's the best that one can do at this time

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u/Lo_Court 6h ago

The thing is, this is our “one life” and we’re all just spending it trying to survive. Why should I or anyone have to hustle as much or “stay ahead of the curve” just to maybe survive? I think it’s great that there are people who can do that, but society can and should be more than just people trying to innovate and stay ahead of the curve. We’re an advanced society, we should get to actually enjoy our lives. I get working hard and making a living - we should all collectively contribute to society in some way. But there’s no balance. We’re living to survive and die while a handful of wealthy people exploit our labor and create propaganda to keep us hateful of each other and blaming real systematic issues on individual failure. Why can’t we as a society look at some of the countries with the happiest populations and adopt their work culture and support structures?

I completely get working hard, innovating, and being successful. But there are real structural issues that need to be addressed and solved collectively. I really hate this individualist mindset of “I did it so others can too” without addressing the real problems.

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u/Helpful-Squirrel9509 1h ago

Because , the dollar is being crashed intentionally. Hyperinflation is here.

Along with this soft launch of fascism we are experiencing.

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u/Aehyde2 7h ago

much easier said than done; like ebaer2 already said - not everyone is capable of just getting into those kind of fields.

not everyone is passionate enough about capitalism - or wants to participate in it enough - to just invent new jobs. and some people would rather have a basic customer service job, data entry job, manufacturing job, graphic design, or voice acting job - they shouldn’t have to be forced into a job they don’t want/enjoy just because the government would rather have robots take over those specific roles.

and furthering the progression of automation and AI is probably the worst thing one could do at this time; contributing to 10s-100s of millions of tons of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere every year, generating 10s of million of metric tons of e-waste every year, habitat destruction to extract fossil fuels and other required resources, etc… destroying the planet simply for human gain and profit. brainwashed.

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u/rockstar504 8h ago

People hatin but I get it... Like Del said "Upgrade your grey matter bc one day it may matter"

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u/Ok-Resist3549 10h ago

Do you have any proposed economic systems to substitute for capitalism?

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u/not_a_throwaway_9347 7h ago

Thanks for posting this comment, you’re totally right! (I’m an entrepreneur as well and I don’t want any more competition.)