Week 9: Tang Ping and Its Critics

Lying flat, quiet quitting, and FIRE as exit strategies from zero-sum competition — and the critiques of each as private fixes to public problems

3 May 2027

Outline#

• 躺平 (tang ping), as a response to weeks 4 and 5’s escalation
• quiet quitting and FIRE as parallel exits, and where they part ways from tang ping’s politics
• the standard critique: opting out doesn’t change the structure, and can even relieve the pressure that would otherwise force change
• what an exit would need to do to count as an actual intervention — the question week 11 picks up