Nostr

At this point in history, I think we can all agree that retirement was a 20th-century anomaly that lasted exactly one generation.

Your parents are the only human beings in history who got to stop working at 65.

You will work until you die or until you own assets that work for you.

There’s no middle ground anymore.

The pension was a historical accident between feudalism and whatever we’re building now. Every thirty-year-old knows they’ll never retire, yet they keep contributing to their retirement fund as a result of a collective brainwashing that made them believe in a system that no longer exists.

- adapted from nostr:nprofile1qyt8wue69uhh2mtzwfjkctnvda3kzmp6xsurgwqpp3mhxue69uhkyunz9e5k7qpqryljd6vy466t3ztghqk0ts8dqzfswz3934a8v0ar53xfmq4kxm8qpzul7r twitter

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Discussion

William ₿ Travis 3mo ago

Thanks to bitcoin I work because I want to.

Globe99 3mo ago

That's an interesting idea... Retirement, like the bonkers US health insurance system, seems to be tied to the assumption that you will be employed by a single entity for most of your working life.

Even as late as the 1980's science fiction writers like William Gibson still envisioned a future with relatively permanent megacorporations, in the Japanese context of the "Zaibatsu," that employed people basically from "cradle to grave."

Still today I get the impression that the security of working for a large corporation is an aspirational, if increasingly unattainable goal for many young people in East Asian countries. In America, that desire for job security seems to now be focused more on Academia or Government jobs.

Globe99 3mo ago

Incidentally this is a background context to a lot of the DOGE cuts; the interviews with shellshocked laid off government workers where there's this implicit notion of "this was supposed to be a job for life!"