United States of America

The American hypocrisy is funny. We work so hard as a species to make life easier, to create comfort and progress, and then when we finally get there, it is never enough. Or worse, the system treats the progress like it was never the point. Take remote work. Humankind has literally figured out how to work from anywhere in the world. Anywhere. That should be one of the greatest achievements of modern civilization. I remember being a kid thinking, “Imagine if you could see someone on a screen and talk to them face to face. Wouldn’t that be insane?” That sounded like science fiction. Like something that would not happen in my lifetime. But now we are here. We have laptops with eight plus hours of battery. Video meetings. Cloud tools. WiFi in places that barely have running water. We can go to sleep and wake up on the other side of the planet and still show up to work. We can build careers from islands, coffee shops, buses, balconies, anywhere. No one truly understands what a feat that is. The world is smaller. Connection is instant. Cultures are more accessible than ever. Progress is happening everywhere, all at once. And corporate leaders are still arguing about whether people need to sit in cubicles in windowless offices for “team building.” What makes it even more absurd is the contradiction. You are told being in person is about culture and relationships. But then if you hang out with your coworkers outside of work too much, it becomes unprofessional. So what is the point? Why are we spending forty hours a week in environments no one wants to be in, with people we are not really allowed to connect with on a personal level, all in the name of culture? It is forced proximity disguised as leadership. Then comes the definition of success we are all supposed to accept without questioning. More money. The salary number is bigger, but usually it barely covers inflation. You get a raise, but rent goes up faster. Food costs more. Travel costs more. Debt increases. Insurance costs more. Everything costs more. So you are told you are crushing it, but in reality you are just treading water with more responsibility. That is the scam. You are not building freedom. You are maintaining survival. So people overspend on a nice dinner to get out of the house and out of the office. They buy small escapes to make the lifestyle tolerable. They purchase a new car on an 8 year loan because they can "afford" the monthly payment with their raise. Then they break even again and repeat the cycle. That is success? More money, more debt, and less freedom? And the job you built your life around could disappear tomorrow. Restructuring. Layoffs. Leadership changes. Budget cuts. Performance reviews. Suddenly you are stuck with more debt, fewer options, and the same freedom you had before, if not less. The bigger point is the one no one wants to say out loud. Advancing technology was supposed to mean building toward more freedom. That was the goal. Not just productivity. Not just efficiency. Not just squeezing more output from people. Freedom. Technology should have been the thing that gave us our lives back. Instead, it feels like we built a machine that made the world more efficient, but we did not reward the people who built it. We did not shorten the workweek.
We did not increase vacation time.
We did not cut hours while keeping salaries the same. Instead, we automated parts of jobs, laid people off in the name of efficiency, and asked the remaining workers to do more so companies could chase endless profit. And we called that progress. Working hard until you are sixty five, just to retire exhausted, sick, and too tired to enjoy what is left, is no longer an attractive dream. Not when the possibilities are endless. If that is not the goal, then what truly is?