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Who Will Watch the Watchers?

I manage a team of people. The most competent person on my team is also, unfortunately, the most annoying. Everything he does that isn’t directly related to his job or to making my job easier absolutely drives me crazy. I have a hard time putting on a fake face about it. I just want to scream.

He’s one of those people that watch you do things and then comments as you’re doing them: “Having a snack?” as I am having a snack. “Heading out?” as I am putting my coat on at 5 p.m. “Oh no, are you sick?” as I grab a tissue. Sometimes he’ll just stare at me until I cannot handle the feeling of his eyes drilling into my skull and am forced to look up to acknowledge him. I feel bad because he’s capable, but I am having a hard time hiding my true feelings.

— M. C., New York

The trick of capitalism is that we simultaneously live for the immediate, destructive moment (These trees, people, minerals, oceans only matter today, let’s burn them, drink them, use them up!) and for the long view (My grandchildren will be world-ruling plutocrats and my name will adorn a fleet of mansions). These two notions are in conflict, impossible to reconcile. This is why the young people today have such wrinkled brows and so many angry tweets. They know that the math of this reconciliation will be calculated in their lifetimes. They know that the last hundred years have been a trash bargain. We sold their safety and health and freedom so that we could all have bigger houses, more billionaires and more ads on Instagram celebrating teas that allegedly trigger human emaciation or erection.