How to Escape the Modern Rat Race

I really like this point of view, but it is important to point out that the bar for happiness in life and relationships (as a proxy for &quot;reproduction) is way below our aspirations. You aren&#x27;t really trying to be like Instagram influenceres because of your &quot;selfish gene&quot;. Your &quot;selfish gene&quot; would do better directing you toward fundamentalist communities where reproductive rates are higher.<p>No, you are being influenced by media, which convinces you that things are a proxy for happiness and good relationships. It&#x27;s the materialism that fuels our economic progress so I am not against it. But if you think you are in a rat race for money and success, it&#x27;s because of human nature, not genetic survival.

Two universal things that I discovered for me personally that give my life deeper meaning are friendship and art. I feel like no matter what societal status I have, how much money I have or in what state my body is I can always get satisfaction in life through those two means. Sucks that art galleries are closed during covid but movies and tv shows also work well (currently watching some trippy animes from the 90s to scratch my itch).

It&#x27;s ironic that the image of a rat race that came into my head after reading the title was exactly what the author proposes as an alternative at the end of the article - comparing yourself to others and constantly trying to upgrade your skills and yourself.

I’m so happy I made the mistake of buying a BMW with the money from my first software engineering job. I learned in my 20s that money buys very little short term happiness. And then you’re stuck with a loan and a “cool” car that you’ve normalized into “just another car”. So happy I made that mistake early and now I can puerilely laugh with a bit of schadenfreude whenever I see an expensive car knowing the owner loved it for all of 2 weeks and now likely laments dumping a wad of cash into a hunk of depreciating metal.<p>On the flip side, when I see someone driving around in an old BMW they got for $3k and cleaned up themselves, I look on in awe. That’s the person to look up to. Not the person working themselves to death in a job they hate to drive a car that’s only the best for 6 months till the next year’s model comes out.

For anyone who has not heard of the word ikigai, I highly recommend googling it.<p>While not possible for everyone, and not easy for everyone to achieve, ikigai is the ultimate goal. If you can achieve that, you&#x27;re outside of the rat race.

This article is not about escaping the rat race but about winning it. Reinvesting and having long-term goals is just the best strategy to make the most. It&#x27;s kind of doubling down on the rat race.<p>The status game is actually a valid strategy since, unlike developers, most people don&#x27;t live in a merit-based society. Strong people associate with strong people. So whoever needs resources also has to appear strong. For non-developers, it&#x27;s pitch day every day.<p>The easiest way to escape the rat race is to keep racing. Not to win, but to race.

I like the article overall, but the status signaling he bemoans that everyone is doing is in fact limited to a percentage of people, most strikingly the Instagram influencer types.<p>Yes it’s true in any circle you want to be well regarded - such as astrophysicist PhDs trying to write the next great paper - but broadly I don’t see the posturing he’s talking about being a universal or even majority thing.<p>I do like the article overall and I’ve saved it, but to me it doesn’t seem to be the epidemic it’s laid out to be. Lots of people are different.

I don&#x27;t see this article as eye opening or valuable.<p>For me it looks like bait for people who would summarize themselves as &quot;I watched Fightclub and I am better than sheepeople&quot;.<p>Buying Porsche is not an issue for most of the people, so maybe audience for this article is &quot;childless young professionals, who just sold a startup&quot;. Let alone most of the people I see that own a Porsche are 50+, that probably already have a big house and bunch of kids. Those people live on different planet and still they are nowhere near to 1% of the richest.<p>I see most of people are already committed to long term goals like rising children, buying a house. It takes for them a lot of time to achieve those goals. It is the silent majority that wakes up goes to work and just live their lives. All those people that realized, they will never buy a Porsche an what is even more important they don&#x27;t need one.<p>I would say more eye opening would be: Presenting how much of that fake lifestyle is promoted and presented by media, social or otherwise, compared to how many people don&#x27;t care and live normal life of paying off mortgage, being happy about an ice cream they were able to afford.

This reminds me of &quot;The Darwin Economy&quot; by Robert S. Frank (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;12035503-the-darwin-economy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;12035503-the-darwin-econ...</a>) where he proposes a tax on super expensive luxury consumption precisely because its main utility is social signalling. For example, spending $6 million on a sweet 16 party would have exactly the same utility as spending $3 million and paying $3 million in taxes on it, if everyone had to do the same. Probably more useful as a thought experiment than workable policy, but interesting to consider.

&gt;The extra you’re paying for a Porche, for example, has more to do with the message you want to convey to others, not with the usefulness of the product itself.<p>One of my best friends, who does better dating wise than anyone I know, drove a 98 Volvo. He was making well over 150k, but had so much quiet confidence he had no need to project anything.<p>I make a similar amount, still wear clothes from Old Navy and when I do own a car it&#x27;s the cheapest newish one I can find.<p>Both me and my friend are essentially social media &#x2F; online dating free. If your obsessed with trying to impress people you&#x27;ll only attract those seeking to take advantage of you. The insecurity of needing to be someone makes you an easy target.

Being from Europe and having spent the last 6 years in the US I feel this is way more accentuated here.<p>I always thought the fact of putting your life in true risk because of your financial situation could be one of the reasons (lack of public health). And this extends to public education, retirement plans, ... which forces people to the competition.<p>Just an opinion based on my personal experience though

Excuse me, but what about prolonged periods of depression? I am hoarding an appropriate amount of resources specifically to not suffer when things go south. This also implies a different than usual choice of assets (at most a very small allocation to the S&amp;P500 for me; I am not looking to get rich, but to survive).

The irony is that this article is in itself a form of competitive signaling since thats essentially the purpose of hacker news. People would say that its to get information out there, but I doubt most people that post on hacker news wouldn&#x27;t do it if it didn&#x27;t help their &quot;brand&quot;.

The headline sounds like an old-school direct response advertisement --- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;swiped.co&#x2F;file&#x2F;american-rat-race-ad-by-ben-suarez&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;swiped.co&#x2F;file&#x2F;american-rat-race-ad-by-ben-suarez&#x2F;</a>

&gt; automobile that will help you go from point A to point B, faster<p>There is also the thrill factor of high acceleration - something not at all addressed by the article.