Side Hustle, Second Jobs, Moonlighting: Toxic Capitalist Culture

America has grown into a toxic capitalist culture admiring and celebrating the side hustle. We should ditch the fluff word and call it what it is for most people, a second job or, as generations before coined it, moonlighting. Working two jobs or moonlighting is a failure in prosperity and tragedy for an advanced wealthy nation. It adds stress and responsibility for little return and at the cost of your mental wellbeing and relationships. It won’t fix your money issues, and eventually, it will affect your full-time job.

I worked two side hustles for years while being employed full-time. One, doing graphic design for a capitalist firm to make extra cash. Two, writing scripts to pursue my dream of being a writer. I burnt out quickly and began to suck at all of them rather than getting stronger at one. My full-time job didn’t pay well, so I felt the need to make more money to save, buy things my family desired, and do activities without dwelling on the cost. I am fortunate that my salary was enough to pay rent and bills, though not much else, not including my student loans, but let’s not open that poop bag. Like many millennials, I subscribe to self-help gurus, who bombard followers with side hustle celebration content that makes you admire working 8–9 hours a day, then an additional 4–10 when you get home. Working this much isn’t a parade for entrepreneurship but a path to burnout and losing the things that matter the most, like family, friends, and yourself.

There are countless articles about financial freedom, and they all have a bullet about starting a side hustle. No one should have to work a second job to reach financial security or even financial “freedom.” Financial freedom isn’t owning two homes and a yacht; it’s paying for your life without consequential anxiety. Employers should pay workers enough to live in their city or town and afford having a family in that geographic area.

Often a side hustle is birthed from the passion for doing something else, and that’s fine. Pursuing arts or starting a business is tough, and you may need to work full time while doing so, but you shouldn’t feel like you have to. We live in an extraordinarily rich country in a prosperous time, and it isn’t a privilege to think we all deserve jobs that pay well enough to afford life. The American dream isn’t owning a business or being rich, it’s enjoying your time with the ones you love or doing the things you love before you’re gone.