Erik Baker

I talk in the book about how the concept of burnout, experts kept discovering it in broader and broader circles of workers.

Everyone was suddenly experiencing burnout.

I think that this is a big part of it, that sense of you can never rest content with what you have.

You have to constantly be expecting

disaster to strike and to be prepared to stay one step ahead.

And then I think there's the general sort of political downsides, the sense that the gig worker making their own job, that this person is essentially doing the same thing that Elon Musk is doing just in a miniature form.

I think that that's ultimately really, really politically toxic and helps prevent people from confronting structures of inequality in our society.

It's tough to find alternatives.

At the end of the day, if you need healthcare, you need to pay the bills.

Maybe making my own job and getting rich by grinding, maybe there are long odds there.

But is Medicare for all, is that more likely in the short term?

A lot of people would say no.

There's a

real sense of pessimism, I think, about alternative and especially more kind of political or collective approaches for economic security right now.

It's hard to blame them for feeling that way.

So, you know, they may say, okay, yeah, sure, you know, I recognize that this is a scam or this isn't necessarily pleasant.

It would be nice if there was another approach, but, you know, I don't see it.

So I'm going to have to see what I can do because I have bills to pay.

It's a really good question.

I mean, I think that that Maslow quote is interesting because he's not just saying entrepreneurs