Pretty much! I’ve been sales prospecting since November but it’s just a baad time to be doing that in terms of time of year and the pinch on a lot of company budgets out there. Uncertainty everywhere makes people nervous and not want to spend money on new contractors offering advanced 3D visuals etc.
This was the worst Q4 I’ve had in 18 years of b2b sales. It’s not you. I think when people get back in the saddle, they’ll start buying late this month. Hang tight. We’re all struggling to survive. You’re so not alone. 2/3 of the US are a couple paychecks and an emergency away from a collapse from middle class to homelessness. It’s fucked up.
| Find a hobby besides reading bad news on the internet, it’s not that hard
Actually it can be, when the same world that generates that news has commoditified every aspect of your existence to a transaction. Transactions you can’t afford.
You’re conflating debbie-downers with a generation of humans living a worse life than their parents. When a damn is cracked, overflowing with water, drowning people, the solution is not, “Hey just like, don’t pay attention, man! Life is good!”
That type of advice doesn’t go very far with starving, unhealthy (unable to afford health) people.
Some of us in the United States (me for example) can give you a list of people we know who have died because they were unable to afford insulin (first died in high school twenty years ago, most recent died last year), we know what our country has become because we cannot escape the damage it is inflicting on a generation, a generation poorer than the ones before.
You’re overcomplicating it and making this far more harder than it needs to be. You hobby can be going out on walks, drawing, playing very cheap sports, etc. No more no less. There is barely an economical factor for finding a cheap enjoyable hobby.
And I’m not advocating toxic positivity or being blissfully ignorant. All I’m saying is finding something enjoyable to do in the fleeting life you have is better than being miserable all day by going out of your way to read bad news on the internet.
Anyone got any advice for coping with this late stage capitalist hellscape?
Learn skills.
Money is worthless when you have to spend 4 hours to work to hire somebody to do in 1h what you yourself can do in 2. At this point the prizes of skilled labour rise as there is a huge shortage of skilled personel. Somehow society decided ther theoretical knowledge is more valuable then practical knowledge, but to me managers and the likes are overhead.
As example, in '10, when I was 38, my house needed painting for the 1st time. I got a quote of €4k (more then a month’s wage) and it would be done in 2-3 days. I decided to paint the house myself and it took me a week, cost me €400, gave me the chance to repair the windows and I learned some skills.
Same goes for car repairs, plumbing and I (male) even made our curtains with a sewing machine I bought. The only tasks I’m forced to hire people for now is medical, for me, my wife and our pets. When I hire somebody for other tasks, it’s because I don’t want to do the work. It’s a choice.
As it always has been, knowledge is power, which includes the knowledge/skills to be self supporting. Refuse to run the rat race, although in the US that’s a lot harder then over here in Europe.
Sorry that was 14 years ago. A penny saved isn’t earned, when it’s already owed elsewhere or you’re just not making enough pennies. If you don’t want to sound tone deaf, you’ll need to internalize that your 15 years on us, was enough to get ahead of this stage of collapse.
When I don’t have the cash for a paintjob, I shouldn’t have bought the house (Yep, home owner here). I make way enough cash to have somebody paint my house. However, when I hire somebody to paint the house, I can’t spend the cash on hobbies I like to do or improve the house the way I want to.
At the moment however, finding somebody that is willing to paint a house is a huge challenge. You just can’t find the personel anymore to paint. Everybody want to be overhead and manage, nobody want to work. There is a hude shortage of skilled labour at the moment, so I’m very glad I can do it myself, inclouing the needed wood repair. (buying new window sills will cost about 25% of the current value of the house and they are ugly as all you can get is plastic)
You just stated what we should internalize more than ever: we can do something, even if if takes longer.
I’m in Europe too and dealing with shady/unwilling professionals forced me to wake up and start learning.
And never forget the skills we acquire for ourselves may one day prove of value to others. But just the sense of personal worth from getting something done or fixed is precious.
Take stock of what is and what is not in your control. There are a lot of things in life that are unfair that are outside of our control.
If the thing is in your control, take stock of what actions you can take to change the thing to better suit your desired outcomes.
This advice may seem trite, but it’s been repeated for generations because it is always like this in some capacity. Life will throw shit at you. Your job as a person seeking a happy healthy life is to learn how to react and respond. If it’s out of your control, you have to make the best of it. Even if it sucks.
There are people happily fighting cancer. There are happy paraplegics. There are happy people in Gaza (not many, but I guarantee there is someone finding the silver lining in a real hell scape).
Learn to accept the things you cannot control. Learn to act in the things that are within your control.
For those hesitant to click through this, it’s an interesting looking site trying to teach about cybersecurity stuff! Wouldn’t have guessed that based on the name!
Child 2. If you eliminate the children who have what you described as legal or ethical concerns, child 2 is the only one who consistently pursues their passions and is contributing back to society in some way. The other remaining ones might have lofty and noble goals, but no demonstrable ambition to prove their worthiness.
#s2,6,7 are finalists. In my opinion they all contribute to society.
#2 seems to have low ambition.
#6 is framed as being unethical by lowering the value of scenery business. I interpret this as the AI art problem. My opinion is people do what they are passionate about. If their job puts people out of work they were just doing the job for the money. Handcrafted bespoke furniture is no less valuable due to cheap flat packed IKEA furniture’s existence.
#7 provided value to society but seems to have a zero sum mindset.
So, not knowing what the inheritance is makes deciding between them difficult.
Blindly choosing I’d say #2.
If it were a one of a kind piece of art, say van gogh’s “starry night” I’d say #6. As it might provide some perspective to them.
If it were something truly priceless… I might choose #7. The zero sum perspective is hard to hold when you can’t calculate what it would take to get back to zero.
If my only measure of worth was someone’s job and the circumstances they acquired it, I would say that it is entirely irresponsible to make any fair judgement.
One of the reasons that older people have money is because society was sane when they were young. It was even possible for only one parent to work and the other to stay at home and take care of kids and the house.
Every decade since then, things get worse because capitalism wants everyone to work, everyone to buy things, and as few people as possible having enough money to not work. Because money is power and if you are living thanks to a monthly check, you have no power.
The main strategy from the top has always been to divide people as much as possible and distract them from the fact that they can’t get out of the hamster wheel. So there are public discussions about gender politics, environmental issues and other things that divide people into groups, so they argue with eachother and stay distracted from the big picture.
Big picture, we are kind of like slaves but much more comfortable. As long as we can’t stop working, we are slaves in a way, because we don’t have freedom to spend our lives doing what we want in most cases. So we waste our days trying to care about company problems that are all about increasing their profits while paying everyone as little as they can.
Yeah this is not a encouraging post, sorry. I just say what I think here.
The question is a bit misleading but I understand the desired output is an ordering of the children based on the information provided and our own personal values.
I will start with some thoughts on each child:
If they are not doing anything while waiting to be accepted, then they got to work on themselves. They could be starting personal projects, learning new things, exploring new hobbies, volunteering… whatever being frozen like that feels sad.
They are true to themselves, and I applaud them for that.
No problem with working for the mob, there are far worse things they could be doing.
I would need to know their intent behind what they are doing, ethics are not black and white, maybe they see some merit to their endeavours and maybe they are right in the end. The specific example would send them to the very bottom of my list (ACAB).
I am willing to bet there is a phobia for that, I would try to give them the support they need to find their calling.
I am not against progress, it’s not their fault that people will lose their jobs. In the first place it wouldn’t have been an issue if people weren’t so dependent on our capitalistic overlords.
They are taking a break, it makes sense to me, keep it up pall, in no time you would be finding new ways to create a better world for all of us.
Overall, I feel the descriptions are too judgy, people are doing the best they can, and you got to give them that.
If I had to choose a single child I would go with #7.
First, I get that you note “Child” 1 thru 7 to indicate offspring. Really, they’re adults though and I start my framing as such.
Adults are responsible for their decisions. Working gig jobs instead of a more traditional job, ethical issues, accepting jobs they aren’t suitable for or which have low/no compensation are all factors adults would have to consider.
The only person who seems to be obviously struggling despite decent planning and actioning (based on minimal descriptions provided) is child 1. Even that logic is tenuous depending on how long they’ve been attempting and failing in one industry while another is potentially a better fit for them that for some reason, ego or other, that they won’t consider. The rest are employed, with situation and compensation consciously accepted by each.
And I would also consider a human relationship element. If I have strong reason to believe giving all to one person would turn the other six against them in the form of lawsuits or violence, I might consider skipping inheritance altogether and give it to some charity. I suppose the amount of money and reason it can’t be split into multiple portions would also play a part in that decision.
Second from final thought, I do have a lot of siblings. Not quite seven but close. If our parents were to say, “hey, we only have enough money to give one person a meaningful inheritance, what should we do?”, I am confident nearly all of us would ask that they give it to the youngest who is still working through college and drowning in student debt. The rest of us have made our decisions on education and careers pursued, jobs accepted, lifestyle balanced with ability to support it. Not the spirit of your rigid scenario, but just pointing out another way of approaching the issue that was bricked out in the setup.
And final thought. Toss the rigid scenario aside and jobs/salary are not how I would hope to decide to divide assets among inheritors. I hope I have relationships with all my future offspring that go beyond simple sum of dollars.
Thank you for the kind words of support! Some very helpful advice in most of these and actionable.
And to those questioning my lived experience, perhaps a bit of victim blaming too, while I open up and ask strangers for help… what the fuck is wrong with you lmao
People never want to confront how close they are to hardship, so if they hear about someone struggling they want it to be the result of that person’s actions, not just that the world is unfair. Just ignore them; they aren’t dealing with their own shit as healthily as you are.
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