Do what you Love? [Updated]

Thanks, ass hole...

[Updated from original post 6/6/18]
Recently I heard a tech startup founder during a speech, who said: "I've been taught, that if you just do what you love, the money will come."  It was mentioned in passing, very casually, probably didn't even think twice about it.  But my immediate response was: "well that's easy to say if your last name is [insert wealthy family], but most people have mouths to feed."

I'd love to see research on how enterpreneurship, especially in tech, drives wider inequality.  The 99% don't have the luxury of quitting their day jobs in pursuit of their lifelong dreams of fishing, climbing Mt Kilimanjaro, or doing Brazilian jiujitsu for a living.  Risk-taking is only remotely an option to the privileged.  Even in a rich country, almost half of all Americans can't fund a $400 emergency without taking on credit card debt or borrowing money in some other way - - so people are basically living paycheck-to-paycheck, with no savings, and no ability to take risks of any sort.

With billions of dollars sloshing around in the venture capital space, naturally the moneys flow into the hands of the elite few.  This is how 82% (US$762 billion) of all wealth creation in 2017 went to the top 1%, while the bottom 50% saw no increase at all.  Or how the 42 richest people control the same wealth as the bottom 3.7 billion.  Sure 90% of all startups fail in less than five years.  Perhaps they die in a fiery inferno like Webvan or Pets-dot-Com, but most likely they just can't get funding to continue, the principals lose interest, everybody understands and moves on.

Source: Bloomberg

Moreover, "Do What You Love" is just a terrible mantra.  Popularized by the late world-renowned weed afficionado/asshole-who-parks-in-handicapped-spots Steve Jobs, DWYL is basically a propaganda tool for capitalism.  From Miya Tokumitsu:

"By portraying Apple as a labor of his individual love, Jobs elided the labor of untold thousands in Apple’s factories, conveniently hidden from sight on the other side of the planet — the very labor that allowed Jobs to actualize his love.  [...] 

Think of the great variety of work that allowed Jobs to spend even one day as CEO: his food harvested from fields, then transported across great distances. His company’s goods assembled, packaged, shipped. Apple advertisements scripted, cast, filmed. Lawsuits processed. Office wastebaskets emptied and ink cartridges filled. Job creation goes both ways. Yet with the vast majority of workers effectively invisible to elites busy in their lovable occupations, how can it be surprising that the heavy strains faced by today’s workers (abysmal wages, massive child care costs, et cetera) barely register as political issues even among the liberal faction of the ruling class?"

Let's not limit ourselves to just Apple, check out the retail/commerce space.  Could Wal-Mart succeed without the prison laborers of Yingshan?  Or could you really separate Amazon's behemoth from the Somali immigrant warehouse workers in Minnesota?  In both cases, the companies say the workers are well-compensated, but these people are under pressure to clock inhumane hours or risk punishment or termination.

Now nobody is arguing that the work environment shouldn't be enjoyable.  But DWYL degrades our effort, making it less serious, valuable and worthwhile.  By masking our labor as "love", do employers expect us not to demand fair compensation & benefits, or ask for reasonable leisure and family time?

When we (employers) succeed, we earn all the credit to ourselves -- forget about all of the support workers who are "doing it for the money", not for love.  When we fail -- and as mentioned above, most likely we *will* fail -- sure everybody loses their livelihoods, but at least we're doing something we love. 

I stand corrected