From 15 Hours to 996: The Dream That Clocked Out

ChatGPT:

🧠 

From Keynes to 996: How We Fumbled the Future and What to Do About It

An essay in bullets, because paragraphs are for people who aren’t already burned out.

📜 I. Keynes: The Grandfather of Unrealistic Hope

• In 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes wrote an essay with the painfully optimistic title:
  “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.”
  Spoiler: we are the grandchildren.
• His central thesis?
  Thanks to technological progress and compound interest (sexy stuff), humans would eventually solve the economic problem.
  Translation: we’d produce so much wealth that people wouldn’t need to work much.
• He predicted:
  
  • We’d work 15 hours a week
  • The economy would grow 4 to 8 times larger
  • Humans would finally be free to pursue beauty, truth, love, and probably interpretive dance
• He did not predict:
  
  • Burnout
  • Slack
  • Hustle culture influencers named “Blayze”

💼 II. What We Got Instead: 996 and the Myth of the Hustle

• 996: A soul-grinding work schedule where people labor from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.
  It sounds like a factory setting, because it is. Only now the factory is your MacBook.
• Born in China’s hypercompetitive tech sector, 996 became the ultimate flex in Silicon Valley:
  “If you’re not bleeding out of your eyeballs for your startup, do you even believe in innovation?”
• Why did we embrace this instead of Keynes’ 15-hour brunch-and-meditation fantasy?
  
  Reasons We Work Like Caffeinated Hamsters:
  
  
  • Relative needs > Absolute needs
    Once you’ve got food and a roof, you start wanting a standing desk, a Peloton, and a house plant that’s also a tax write-off.
  • Capitalism doesn’t stop when you’re full.
    It invents new hungers. Suddenly, you need an app that delivers pre-peeled oranges.
  • Technology didn’t free us—it tagged us like wildlife.
    You can now work from anywhere… which just means you work everywhere.
  • Fear. Just raw, unfiltered economic anxiety.
    Job security is a myth, benefits are a dream, and AI is always one bad performance review away from replacing you with a spreadsheet.

🤯 III. Congratulations, You’re in Late-Stage Capitalism

• Keynes thought the “economic problem” would eventually be solved.
  He didn’t account for:
  
  • Billionaires hoarding GDP like Pokémon cards
  • Housing prices ascending like they’re trying to reach heaven
  • Productivity gains being funneled into CEO bonuses and surveillance software
• Instead of liberation, we got:
  
  • Productivity trackers that count your keystrokes
  • Bosses who say “we’re a family” right before laying off 200 people via Zoom
  • Self-care guides that recommend waking up earlier to “carve out time for joy”
• We didn’t get post-scarcity.
  We got post-dignity, but hey—at least we have mobile banking.

🛟 IV. Realistic, Not-Too-Painful Ways to Survive the Mess

🔧 Recalibrate Success

• You don’t have to win capitalism.
• Success = enough money, tolerable job, ability to nap without guilt.
• Celebrate mediocrity in a world obsessed with hustle.

💻 Extract Resources from the System, Then Nap

• Learn a high-leverage skill that lets you work less, not more.
• Use capitalism like it uses you. (Poorly, but with confidence.)
• Automate your savings. Pay yourself first. Pretend you’re a benevolent CEO of your own life.

🧠 Mental Health is Resistance

• Say “no” more often.
  Practice in the mirror if you must:
  “No, I will not attend a brainstorming session at 7pm.”
• Quit the Cult of Productivity.
  You are not a machine. You are a tired squirrel with a calendar app.

🤝 Build a Micro-Community

• Find 3–5 people who:
  
  • Make you laugh
  • Don’t try to sell you NFTs
  • Will split a Costco membership with you
• Community makes crisis survivable.
  Also, Costco churros.

🧪 Embrace Weird Joy

• Take up hobbies that don’t scale.
• Bake bread badly. Paint frogs. Sing off-key.
• Joy doesn’t have to be monetizable. In fact, it shouldn’t be.

🚨 Adjust Expectations

• Keynes was wrong, but not useless. He was imagining what could be.
• Take the dream. Modify it.
• Maybe not 15-hour work weeks. But how about a job that doesn’t ruin your back and soul? That’s… something.

🎤 Conclusion: We Are the Grandchildren, and We Are Tired

Keynes dreamed of a world where we’d be free to sing, stroll, and contemplate life.

Instead, we got team-building Zoom calls and a $6 oat milk latte we can’t afford.

But there’s still hope. Not in utopia. Not in Elon Musk. But in the tiny, defiant act of living like a human in a world designed for machines.

You’re not doomed. You’re just deeply scheduled.

So breathe. Opt out (where you can). And don’t forget—

Sometimes surviving is the revolution.