Is wage slavery always bad?

[cistanche_enjoyer]

I work for a state-owned financial institution in the EU and the conditions are pretty good: 30 days of paid leave, paid health insurance, great salary (for being entry level), flexible working time (I’m only expected to be available from 10:00 to 16:00, the rest of the 8 hours I can work whenever I want), job feels exciting and meaningful (cybersecurity).

However, I’m still not so sure how to feel about the fact that I’m in the end a slave to my boss (she is an amazing and compassionate person btw) and don’t have full freedom. Also I have to interact with some colleagues I don’t really like, but nothing too bad or abusive. Would it be really bad to compromise on this for all the above?

Spirituality is one of my top values and I don’t feel it clashes with my job, as I can do spiritual work on the weekends and holidays (which I have a lot).

[Eskilon]

Don't conform to Leo's values and worldview.

The reason the term "wage slavery" even exist is because he despise not having independence and control; for him, not having this things is slavery and horrible, but it might not be for you. So contemplate that for yourself.

Nothing wrong working a 9-5 and being happy, you need to discover if it is the case for you. 

Edited Saturday at 12:57 PM by Eskilon

[Miguel1]

Of course not, we are all different. Some people can be completely happy with a simple 9-5 life.

For me tho, one of my highest priorities is to break free from wage slavery in the next 5-10 years.

Having complete freedom and autonomy to work on my purpose is one of the most important things for me.

 

[JosephKnecht]

Imagine fighting all your life to free slaves, so that when you free them, they go back to becoming slaves again. 

Some people are happy being slaves and don't want freedom. 

Quote

 

With the end of slavery, newly freed people needed jobs.

A majority of freedmen and women drew up contracts with the plantation owners and became employees.

 

 

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

There's nothing wrong with working a job, however if you think you have the opportunity to make a lot of money in a short period of time, even tho the method of making that money is kinda BS (but not necessarilly unethical), then you should take it imo. With the advent of social media and our collective transition to post modernism, the whole sense of "realness" of ones work had basically dissipated. It's all clownery nowadays. This is the position I'm holding now, if I'm gonna see an easy opportunity I'm going to take it, and I think there are some out there. Just have to move fast to capitalize. I think people on this forum definitely deserve to get money ngl

Edited Saturday at 07:44 PM by NewKidOnTheBlock

[Hojo]

Its only slavery if you dont like it/dont like the people you work with.

Edited Sunday at 03:34 AM by Hojo

[Xonas Pitfall]

Sounds awesome, to be honest! I see nothing wrong with this. If you're happy and don't feel like it hinders you in any significant way, this sounds like an amazing life setup. Great job!

1 hour ago, Hojo said:

Its only slavery if you dont like it/dont like the people you work with.

Exactly!

[EdgeGod900]

At the end of that video, he said something along the lines of: its only especially bad if you are still not ready to pursue spirituality, and still crave success.

I rewatched that vid like 10x alrdy, and still notice key ideas that I missed.

And ultimately, only you know the answer, because we don't know who you are, and haven't spent 20 years(or however old you are) learning about you.

 

[Wilhelm44]

In Bangladesh, children work 12hours a day to make some of the sneakers we wear. They only rest on Sundays. And they get paid one dollar a day. 

[Elliott]

35 minutes ago, Wilhelm44 said:

In Bangladesh, children work 12hours a day to make some of the sneakers we wear. They only rest on Sundays. And they get paid one dollar a day. 

A McDonalds fry cook is essentially a CEO in comparison.

People will never be satisfied, it's not just Bezos with how big a yacht he needs.

 

[Leo Gura]

It much depends on your personality and level of ambition. Most people are not very ambitious nor creative so for them working a simple steady job is fine.

But for someone like me it is torture.

I cannot do it because I demand way more from my life than obeying a boss to do medicore work to make him rich while the world gets dumber and dumber.

It all depends on your values. Creative people require lots of autonomy and freedom to do their work. For non-creative people this is a non-issue. Some personality types can be happy working at the post office licking stamps. If I had to do that I would kill myself.

Edited Monday at 04:54 PM by Leo Gura

[Terell Kirby]

Going thru a similar situation.

I consider myself an ambitious person, not to the level of a Steve Jobs or Walt Disney- but I noticed I feel quite unhappy when my work feels meaningless and doesn’t contribute to my growth- professionally, creatively and spiritually.

As I become more interested in living by spiritual principles like Truth and Love mentioned in Actualized teachings, I see that there is still much more work to do in developing financial independence-and plan to spend the next 5-10 years setting up my life to be more autonomous and independent from living paycheck to paycheck. Much of it involves keeping expenses low, making sound investments and spending time developing skills and creative projects I find meaningful.

Edited Monday at 04:25 PM by Terell Kirby

[gettoefl]

Everyone's a slave. Your parents make you that way that you stay that way. Don't dare be irresponsible! I need you here. Not to mention your priests politicians professors. Have a countdown is key to cutting the umbilical cord. Most won't. Most don't.

[LastThursday]

"Wage Slavery" is the wrong viewpoint. Think instead of "Level of Freedom". Whether you work for a corporation, work for yourself or don't work at all, you're exchanging one set of freedoms for another set of freedoms in each situation. 

A wage slave is exchanging time and autonomy (one set of freedoms) for money. Since money is so versatile, it gives you a lot of freedoms as a balance for "slavery". A few of those freedoms of money are the availability of shelter, food, and keeping in good health. For most people this is a no-brainer.

If you work for yourself you're exchaning time, mental/physical effort and certainty for money, but also other intangible things such as autonomy.

[PenguinPablo]

On 11/24/2025 at 9:27 AM, Leo Gura said:

 

What if you had like 90% freedom and autonomy. 

The condition being that you had to be physically present. 

But your mind was allowed to go wherever you wanted pretty much all the time.

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, PenguinPablo said:

What if you had like 90% freedom and autonomy. 

The condition being that you had to be physically present. 

But your mind was allowed to go wherever you wanted pretty much all the time.

Mind is not the issue, need the freedom to work on my own projects and vision, not someone else's.

[PenguinPablo]

15 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Mind is not the issue, need the freedom to work on my own projects and vision, not someone else's.

Yeah I guess I haven't fully figured myself out yet.

What I described is a midpoint between the two extremes. For myself anyway. Who knows. Maybe it is a sustainable approach for my personality.

Nevertheless, having your entire mind and body co-opted full time for company is arguably worse. It is essentially physical and mental prostitution.

[Daniel Balan]

Guys, Y'all are outrageously disconnected from how brutal and hard survival is! The only reason why you use words such as "ambition" and "wage slavery" is because you all are starting on the shoulders of giants! Your food, your shelter, your heating in the winter, your clothes etc are provided to you basically for free. Litteraly for free. Do you realize how hard you would have to work only to be able to produce the ammount of food for just one meal? Do you realize how much labour and toil would be necessary to create your own clothes, to create the constitution material such as wood, bricks, iron rods etc? You would need like ten lifetimes to build just the construction materials for your house, let alone to assemble it all together into creating the house. Do you realize how hard it is in the forest, cutting down beech trees, bucking them into smaller fragments, manhandling them into your horse drawn cart, and carrying the wood for like 50 miles from the forest to your house so that you can keep warm during the winter? 

Guys, seriously, you all need some brutal contact with reality, because as far as I can see, you lost all touch with how brutal survival is!

Millions of people in China and in other 3rd world countries have to endure actual slavery, to build your Iphones, to manufacture your steel that you use building your skyscrapers, to work in grueling conditions in factories manufacturing your clothes and many other goods you take for granted, while being paid 100$ a month, so you guys can bitch and moan about "wage slavery". Guys, your notions of "wage slavery" are off the charts deluded, ignorant, arrogant and disgusting! You need to be dropped in a war zone to realize how fucking lucky y'all are! You need to see and experience litteral slavery on your own skin in order to wake up from the utter ignorance y'all live! You guys are living in paradise yet you have the audacity of calling that "wage slavery". 

[VioleGrace]

54 minutes ago, Daniel Balan said:

Millions of people in China and in other 3rd world countries have to endure actual slavery

 

55 minutes ago, Daniel Balan said:

Guys, your notions of "wage slavery" are off the charts deluded, ignorant, arrogant and disgusting!

That is true that we are born in a golden plate in the mouth the we are lucky and should not be complacent cause having our basic survival needs are easy to feel. 

But you can't say that people calling "wage slavery" are deluded : "slavery" is "slavery"

Wage slavery is softned and moraly more easy to accept but that is exactly why this type of slavery is way more sneaky and easy to get in, don't let your bias get in the way of your consciousness !!

Do you even realise how you are being "ignorant arrogant and deluded" calling it "ignorant arrogant and deluded" ? 

But i still agree with the fact that a lot of people don't appreciate how even thinking about "wage slavery" is a great luck in itself, but that is not the point of this thread  

[Bjorn K Holmstrom]

On 11/22/2025 at 11:41 AM, cistanche_enjoyer said:

Is wage slavery always bad?

I work for a state-owned financial institution in the EU and the conditions are pretty good: 30 days of paid leave, paid health insurance, great salary (for being entry level), flexible working time (I’m only expected to be available from 10:00 to 16:00, the rest of the 8 hours I can work whenever I want), job feels exciting and meaningful (cybersecurity).

However, I’m still not so sure how to feel about the fact that I’m in the end a slave to my boss (she is an amazing and compassionate person btw) and don’t have full freedom. Also I have to interact with some colleagues I don’t really like, but nothing too bad or abusive. Would it be really bad to compromise on this for all the above?

Spirituality is one of my top values and I don’t feel it clashes with my job, as I can do spiritual work on the weekends and holidays (which I have a lot).

I appreciate this honest question. I’m reading this from a unique vantage point that might offer a different perspective.

I currently live in Sweden and am on long-term sick leave for depression. In a very real, structural sense, I am living a "prototype" of a Universal Basic Income life. My survival needs are met by the state (through the municipality, which puts me under some stress and panic every now and then because of their severe scrutiny), which means my time is my own.

I mention this first to acknowledge the immense privilege of this position. As others have noted in this thread, this is a rare "golden ticket" in our current world. But because I have this safety net, I’ve learned something crucial about the wage slavery feeling you’re describing.

The slavery feeling isn't about the conditions of the work; it's about the coercion of survival.

You have a great job, a kind boss, and meaningful tasks. But a part of your soul knows that if you stopped showing up, your survival would eventually be threatened. That background hum of "I must do this to live" is what chafes, even when the cage is comfortable.

In my situation, because the survival terror is removed, I don't "do nothing." I actually work harder than ever on projects that deeply call to me (writing, systems design, spiritual inquiry), but the energy is different. It’s the energy of voluntary contribution rather than mandatory survival.

My sense is that you aren't compromising your spirituality by keeping this job, you are using the current system to build your foundation. But the tension you feel is real: it’s the tension of a soul that knows we are meant to contribute from a place of being, not just earning.

We need to build a world where everyone has the "floor" that I currently have (what I like to envision as an Adaptive Universal Basic Income or AUBI), so that work becomes a choice of service, not a requirement for life.

Until then, perhaps you can reframe your job not as slavery, but as a patron. Your job is the "wealthy patron" that funds your weekends and holidays, which you can dedicate to your spiritual work. You are exploiting the system to fund your soul, not the other way around.

Edited 19 hours ago by Bjorn K Holmstrom