<i>There are only so many young people willing to sacrifice everything for fanatic dreams of afterlife fulfillment as payment for promises of improving the here-now. Most youth, in other words, aren&#x27;t that stupid.</i><p>Startups seem to be pretty good at convincing a never-ending stream of youth to surrender 500% productivity now in exchange for (usually lies about) riches in the future.<p>&quot;Yeah, it&#x27;s linkedfacebox, you know, a super cool startup and everybody there just works through the night because we&#x27;re all so dedicated to the cause.  Gotta keep crushing it so the founders can get a few billion dollars richer otherwise they won&#x27;t let me cash out my 0.0001% for $3 million.&quot;<p>humans have limited psychological reactions to things.  The &quot;believe in a cause&quot; bucket uses the same manipulation tools no matter if you&#x27;re a startup, a cult, a thousand year old religion, or a radicalized intentional hate group with a persecution complex.  You set up an enemy (&quot;the others&quot; &#x2F; &quot;the adversary&quot;, &quot;disruption&quot;), you rally your troops to beat the enemy at all costs (sacrifice yourself&#x2F;your time&#x2F;your health for the greater good and you will be rewarded), then perpetuate cycles of wins&#x2F;losses to reinforce belief and dedication to externalized, and personally abdicated, leadership.