But what follows IS a statement of fact, and the characterization of being "forced" to work a 60 hour work week as "dystopian" is merely an invite to expand on that. I am approaching my retirement, so these things, what I see, weighs heavily on my thoughts. I don't know you well enough to attack you (and I am trying to avoid that kind of thing anyway) so I don't mean this as an attack on you. It is an attack on the reality, and the impending reality. But to your comment about a dystopian condition that engendered insecurity. And one more key thing to keep in mind:
This has nothing to do with people who have lost their means through the corruption, misbehavior, greed, or malice of others. It has nothing to do with those who have suffered a catastrophe or trauma which has robbed them of everything they have.
The terrible and awful truth of this is, that these things below which I decry as being represented as "RIGHTS" were never supposed to be what they are. They were SUPPOSED to be in place to help people whose jobs had been robbed or who had gone thorough a terrible catastrophe or trauma.
The Left, beginning with the fabled Franklin D. Roosevelt, and put on steroids by LBJ, and encouraged by the likes of Cloward and Piven under Clinton (and embraced by all Democrats and many Republicans) endeavored to make this compassionate Social Security Disability largesse (approved by most Americans as the right thing to do, because we were and possibly still are a fundamentally good people) a tool of change as I describe below. When one realizes that Social Security Disability, meant for people who due to a disability could not care for themselves is one of the largest, most corrupt, and most deliberately and fraudulently misused government programs in this country, one realizes how it has been weaponized as an agent of change by many Washington politicians on both sides of the aisle.
In that light, let me proceed on the concept of conducting myself as I did due to insecurity, and that it constitutes a form of dystopia:
I never felt that way, ever. Not in the least dystopian, and never felt insecure.
I was not driven by insecurity. I was driven to strive for excellence and to earn my way honestly and to be judged on my contributions. My goal was never financial gain. If it followed by hard work, I viewed it as fully earned, not coerced.
You know what is dystopian, though:
Not having money to have shelter, or shelter that can keep me warm in the cold of winter, and having to depend on the largesse of an uncaring government to force some landlord against their will to supply it to me. Or having to beg for it.
THAT is what I see as "dystopian".
We live in such a prosperous country, that people of all walks of life take these things for granted. A house. Food. Transportation. Clothes. Healthcare.
I have been around the world and lived in a few other countries, and I see how lucky we are, and I won't take those things for granted.
I have been to places like New Delhi and parts of Egypt where the poverty is appalling. People dressed in nothing more than a filthy loincloth, squatting on a sidewalk, hand out.
If I have to work 60 hours a week instead of 40 hours, or 30 hours, I am going to do it, and do it cheerfully because none of those things above are RIGHTS. Our history, in this prosperous country, is FULL of people who would have freely chopped off one of their legs if it meant they could work a 60 hour week.
So, I view ANY person who views those things as "rights" with a severely jaundiced eye.
What is dystopian is not living in a country where people, of their own free will, work hard enough to avoid it, and in doing so, drive an economic engine that makes it possible. Living with the fear, the hunger, the hopelessness, the pain, the uncertainty, the depressing reality that you do not control your own life and your own path.
Because when you suffer those things that lack of means, you are in constant turmoil and pain.
You CANNOT strive for excellence.
You can't even strive for substance.
And to hear this woman, or other people whine about not having enough time to spend at nights or on weekends partying with friends, or spend a week in Tuscany, Tahiti, or even with friends in Florida sounds so insanely stupid and selfish that there is no emotion, other than utter contempt for someone who does that.
And that is exactly where we are. We live in a country so prosperous, that as Dinesh D'Souza's uncle said when he lived in India, that he wanted to go to a place where the poor people are fat.
This is an obscene place where a supermarket will display a sign like this:
In this environment, people here illegally or too lazy to work and are content to get a check given to them by the government , can take that money to buy steak and lobster, but people like me, who work hard and pay taxes, trying to manage for our future and live within our means, eat hamburger, and never fish or lobster, because it is so expensive.
THAT is what I see as "dystopian".
And what makes me so angry is that we live in a country where more and more people look at these things as RIGHTS, which means forcing someone ELSE to pay for them, because as Milton Freidman often said: "All Debts are Paid." Those people who get EBT cards see it as "free money" and their "right". But it is ME who pays for it.
THAT is what I see as "dystopian".
We live in a country increasing portions of the population are demanding that those "with" pay to deliver those "rights" to those "without". And we are importing them, by the millions now, exemplified by the rotten scumbags in New York City from a shithole African country who came here illegally (WITH THE ACTIVE ASSISTANCE of our "fellow citizens" and politicians who want all those things to be "RIGHTS" without people having to lift a finger to get them...and those people who are here illegally, have their hands out, cursing us for not giving them halal meals, cell phones, and comfortable shelter.
THAT is what I see as "dystopian".
And on top of that, the people we elect are deliberately fostering homelessness, tent cities, drug use, and crime, to use those things as agents of change so they can rebuild from the rubble a society in THEIR mold. They have striven for, and nearly achieved the state where the people who vote those corrupt people into office outnumber those of us who pay for their ill-gotten largesse, and those politicians can deliver "free money" like candy to those who voted them in.
And the rest of us become slaves to supply the money to those corrupt politicians in the form of taxes and wealth, so said politicians can freely dispense it to their friends and supporters.
THAT is what I see as "DYSTOPIAN".