There is nothing wrong with work, when work must be done. And there is no question that an elite obsession with meaningful work will produce a handful of winners who hit the workist lottery: busy, rich, and deeply fulfilled. But a culture that funnels its dreams of self-actualization into salaried jobs is setting itself up for collective anxiety, mass disappointment, and inevitable burnout.

Corporations do what corporations do; they survive. That’s it. Only individuals within corporations can make sacrifices for the greater good.

Which leads me to the other part. If corporations are bad, then employees are bad. Top to bottom. If no one would work for Google, then Google would no longer exist. But, we like big paychecks and security, so we don’t work for startups or work for ourselves.

Corporations are not an us vs. them. Corporations are us vs. us.