Hiring for people who "Work Hard" feels weird, like looking for slaves but self-enslaved so no guilt required. Or a slave hiring a slave dynamic. E.g. VC/status slave looking for Company Man slave

Yet hiring for the opposite also feels untenable. "We want people who don't work hard." or "We want smart-ass opportunistic hackers."

A better way to phrase why "Work Hard" has a lot of hidden risks is with militaristic examples. Soldiers work hard, never say no, take their marching orders, etc... A company *wants* soldiers. Good soldiers. Good company.

That is, the more perfectly run an organization is, the more it's like a military organization. Very legible, very male, very brotherly, very phallic.

With this in mind, as a CEO, the question is "How militaristic do I want my company to be?"

Striving for max efficiency by only valuing people who are willing to work themselves to the bone for *your* personal goals is a kind of dehumanization.

Gather people who are already dehumanized (e.g. those who are lost and looking for a cause to commit themselves wholly to) isn't necessarily "evil" but it passes on the chance to "humanize" someone.

It creates an incentive structure for continuous dehumanization because someone somewhere will be able to make use of the Zealot Without a Cause.

If instead the dehumanization process increased chaos, then the mechanism would self-destruct over time.

This I think is the root of "Toxic Positivity". By creatively and intelligently taking advantage of things, a process that would naturally self-destruct is put on life-support.

The reanimation feels "inhuman" despite it being immortal and even powerful like a vampire.

One reason war can improve an economy is that it militarizes every organization within the state, improving its efficiency.

It takes the internal chaos that it can't metabolize and finds a home for it. This cures the auto-immune disease of the State which was a result of overproduction of Lost Zealots without corresponding ability to make use of them.

There's a spectrum of warlike activities outside literal war and company market share. Exercising is war against the body, sports is a war metaphor, there's also war against the mind.

The issue with trying to deal with chaos by metabolizing it is that chaos then becomes a food source.

If everyone wants to eat corn then the Market will supply corn.

Exercising so that you can reward yourself with food doesn't work. Wanting to beat the other team so you can be a "winner" doesn't work. Meditating for the sake of enlightenment doesn't work. The behavior folds in on itself in a Strange Loop of Perpetual Struggle.

To loop back to the original thought... the "Work Hard" spiel feels like telling the story of Sisyphus but with flowers and roses. Even if the truth of life is Sisyphean, it's like grabbing the fistful of manure used to fertilize the roses and asking you to breathe deeply.