[HN Gopher] Bertrand Russell's argument for idleness is more rel...
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Bertrand Russell's argument for idleness is more relevant than ever
Author : pepys
Score : 150 points
Date : 2020-08-12 03:32 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newstatesman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newstatesman.com)
| jondubois wrote:
| Interesting article. It poses a huge dilemma. As more jobs become
| redundant, how should 'useless people' be compensated relative to
| 'useful people' without whom the economy could not operate?
|
| To complicate matters, many of the 'useless people' could be
| highly skilled and could theoretically launch their own
| businesses and start competing against established businesses and
| take away some market share... But if the market is already
| saturated and consumers are already satisfied beyond their
| perceptual capacity, launching a business in such a saturated
| industry could not be regarded as a 'useful' activity in a broad
| sense (it's a zero-sum game). This means that being able to
| capture economic value (profits) from an industry would not
| necessarily imply that someone is useful; in fact, an increase in
| profits may not bear any correlation with an increase in consumer
| satisfaction in that industry; in a saturated market, the profits
| for a specific company or individual could entirely be the result
| of political lobbying, social scheming, or luck and have nothing
| to do with increased consumer satisfaction.
|
| Given that useless people are still capable of capturing profits
| from an industry by starting their own business, it would be
| highly unethical for the incumbents (those who own the means of
| production in the saturated markets) to try to stop the 'useless
| people' from trying to compete (since that would deny them access
| to the same fair playing field which the incumbents themselves
| had benefited from in the past). Yet at the same time, it may be
| more efficient overall if, instead of trying to compete in a
| saturated market, 'useless people' would accept the reality that
| they are in fact useless and instead of trying to compete, they
| would get paid to be idle.
|
| But if useless people get paid to be idle, then how will useful
| people who still need to work feel about that? Also, even for
| people who have useful skills, there may be more people who have
| those skills than there are positions to fill. How then do we
| choose which people should have a job and which should not? Does
| it make sense to select them based on skill if the skill level of
| the employee does not affect consumer satisfaction?
|
| It seems like this would create an incentive for useless idle
| people to pretend to be or have been useful; they can't just
| accumulate enough money to go idle without having a backstory to
| go with it. Yet at the same time it is in the interest of
| incumbents (owners of the means of production) for these people
| to go idle instead of competing with them. To appease those who
| are still working, every member of the idle class needs an excuse
| (e.g. they sold their company to Google for a few million $). The
| economy then becomes centered around manufacturing backstories
| for new members of the idle class... Until the point where
| everything is automated and everyone can be idle.
|
| I think the biggest problem with this story is that if we remove
| the market selection mechanism? What kind of alternative
| selection mechanism should be used instead?
| fabianhjr wrote:
| > It seems like this would create a perverse incentive for
| useless people to pretend to have been useful; they can't just
| accumulate enough money to go idle without having a backstory
| to justify it. To appease those who are still working, every
| member of the idle class needs an excuse (e.g. they sold their
| company to Google for a few million $).
|
| There is a book on that:
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bullshit_Jobs
| golemotron wrote:
| You get to praise idleness only after you burn out writing
| Principia Mathematica.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Why a partisan article is being discussed here?
|
| Really.
|
| This is material affiliated to the Labour Party in the U.K. which
| is associated to the International Socialist.
|
| Why is it a subject here?
| jkbbwr wrote:
| Why are you so scared of different ideas?
| DenisM wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| _Please don 't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If
| a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious
| comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please
| don't also comment that you did._
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Also see Bob Black's _" The Abolition of Work"_:
|
| https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolit...
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >we also need to challenge the cultural ethic that teaches us to
| value ourselves in proportion to our capacity for "economically
| productive" labour. Human beings are more than just workers. We
| need to learn how to value idleness.
|
| I think much more than valueing idleness it's also a massive
| indictement of the system we live in. The number of people who
| I've talked to who legitimately don't know what to do without
| work during the pandemic is staggering.
|
| It says a lot that as a society there is so little attention paid
| to instilling curiousity in people and fostering people's
| potential that, left without menial work to do, nobody knows what
| to do with themselves.
| baddox wrote:
| > The number of people who I've talked to who legitimately
| don't know what to do without work during the pandemic is
| staggering.
|
| I wouldn't look at that and conclude that these people are just
| domesticated livestock who have no self-worth beyond their job.
| A lot of legitimate hobbies and even just normal socializing
| are completely shut down or heavily restricted in a lot of
| places.
| grecy wrote:
| The day I drove into Mexico it was a huge shock to see so many
| people around just enjoying their time - paying with their
| younger relatives on the beach, playing guitar, singing and
| dancing. My fascination and disbelief at the amount of leisure
| time everyone has continued for two years through all of Latin
| America, and then for another three years when I drove right
| around Africa.
|
| Having come from years grinding at a desk job, it was startling
| to see that many millions (probably billions) of people live
| extremely happy and fulfilled lives without the need for menial
| jobs and "a career". Money is useful, but if you can shortcut
| straight to happiness why bother with the inefficient
| middleman.
|
| We in the West tend to think our way of life is the "best" or
| the "only", but that is very far from the truth, and I urge
| anyone who is curious to spend time in parts of the world where
| work is not the meaning of life. Spend a summer in Spain and
| enjoy siesta.
| allenu wrote:
| I get your point, but because we're in a lockdown, a whole host
| of things that we'd normally have available to us are gone.
| Normally when people have time off, they can still meet up with
| friends, or hang out at the coffee shop, or go to a meetup or a
| conference. Now we're idle at home without much-needed social
| connections to grease the daily wheels.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Meetups and conferences are happening online now and it's
| actually pretty nice. For example, if the Julia Conference
| had not gone online this year, there's really no way I
| could've gone to Baltimore for most of a week to attend. But
| because it was online it was not only free, but also
| accessible. They had discord channels to hangout in as well
| as other ways to socially engage.
| uxp100 wrote:
| Right. Even activities you can do alone are distorted by
| isolation. I usually cycle alone 80% of the time. Now I do
| 100%. I have less motivation for my solo rides, even though I
| would be alone this year, or last year, no difference. Last
| Friday I decided a ride with one other person would be safe
| enough, and I find myself more motivated to ride alone
| afterwards.
| allenu wrote:
| That makes sense. There's an extra benefit to having
| company even if the goal of the activity is not to
| socialize itself. Just their mere presence feels good.
|
| I was thinking the other day that I found it easier to dive
| deep into my side projects when I have the contrast of
| social outlets. If I just have my side projects, the
| balance is out of whack. It doesn't feel as meaningful as
| an outlet if it's the main thing. It's no longer this fun
| thing to do to give myself time away from others. All time
| is time away from others now.
| [deleted]
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| This. People are conditioned to non-productive, consumptive
| leisure. Some have hobbies and can find meaning in productive
| leisure, but for those who don't, after a while binging Netflix
| is just meaningless. Creating things is a very important way
| for humans to find meaning and to be in the Zone.
| heed wrote:
| I'm not sure how I feel about this. On one hand I don't think
| we should be overprescribing any particular path towards
| finding meaning in one's life. On the other hand promoting
| other possible paths is probably a good thing.
|
| Some people genuinely find "work" meaningful and purposeful
| and that should be okay if that's what they value. If other
| things provide them meaning, that's okay too.
| perfunctory wrote:
| > The number of people who I've talked to who legitimately
| don't know what to do without work during the pandemic is
| staggering.
|
| The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive:
| seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening to the
| radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active
| energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more
| leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which they took an
| active part.
|
| -- Bertrand Russell http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
| marcusverus wrote:
| I'm not sure that this little nugget of wisdom has withstood
| the test of time. The average number of hours worked has
| fallen dramatically since the 30s[0] even as interest in
| passive entertainment has skyrocketed.
|
| [0]https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/
| [deleted]
| perfunctory wrote:
| > as interest in passive entertainment has skyrocketed
|
| I would like to see some data on this. It may seem like it
| but I would say it's quite the opposite.
| josho wrote:
| The core of it stands that 'urban populations have become
| mainly passive'. Perhaps I'd consider revising to replace
| passive with consumers. So, we've been taught and
| continually urged to spend our idle hours consuming. So, it
| isn't a surprise to me that most folks don't know any other
| way to spend their time.
| goldenkey wrote:
| Consumption usually costs money and increases money
| velocity, which leads to a better economy. So it's a bit
| different than "idleness."
| baddox wrote:
| Why do you associate those things specifically with urban
| life? Cinemas, televised sports, and listening to music are
| pretty broadly-enjoyed things. I don't think they're
| particularly "passive" either, but they're certainly not
| uniquely urban.
|
| When I think of unique opportunities in urban environments,
| I'm thinking more along the lines of nightlife, live sports,
| music, and theatre, boutique shopping, art galleries, etc.
| which I don't consider to be particularly "passive"
| activities either.
| spanhandler wrote:
| Yeah, I think Russell got this one wrong and Vonnegut got
| it right. Consuming-all, creating-none became normal
| because of mass media. Its availability drove down the
| social value of playing on an unremarkable, very-local
| sports team, or playing the piano unremarkably, or singing,
| or being pretty good at telling a story (but not as good as
| the radio), and so on.
|
| Know what you see references to all the time in previous
| centuries? Reading aloud as entertainment among family and
| friends, sometimes even in public places, and even staging
| little dramas at home. Kids might do the latter still, a
| bit, but one gets the impression it was much more common
| then. People didn't stop doing that because they were
| working more, they stopped because radio was invented.
|
| When there was no radio or gramophone, if you could play
| the piano tolerably well and sing a little you were, to
| your social circle, _hot shit_. Not so much afterward. You
| could play a pick-up game on the green off town square
| against a neighboring town and _people would show up and
| watch with enthusiasm_. When things were expected to be
| repaired and a blanket might cost quite a damn bit to buy,
| being able to sew pretty well or being fairly handy at
| woodworking was _far_ more valuable than it is now. Mass
| production has driven the social (and economic) value of
| both way down.
|
| Direct personal enjoyment wasn't the only thing one could
| hope to get from all those "leisure" activities.
|
| Oh, your sketches and watercolors? Yeah they're nice I
| guess. Have you seen Deviantart? Instagram? I follow 200
| artists better than you, from around the globe, and most of
| them aren't even good enough to make any money at it. And
| so on. Social value approaching zero.
| akiselev wrote:
| That is a quote from Russell from 1932 written before
| desegregation, white flight, and the explosion of the
| suburbs so the differences between urban and rural life was
| far more stark than it is today. The big networks like NBC
| and CBS were born just a few years before and it took them
| until WWII IIRC to really penetrate into all the rural
| areas of the US (in the 1930 census only 40% of households
| owned a radio, mostly as a sign of middle class wealth in
| urban areas). Sports teams could only be supported by
| relatively high densities of people because television
| wasn't yet a major source of revenue.
|
| Today's equivalent would be smartphones, which are
| definitely harder to use the further out you are from
| civilization (I've got no reception 40 minutes from DT San
| Diego!)
| sushshshsh wrote:
| Thanks to technology, the need for employment is at the lowest it
| has ever been, if someone is willing to make a lot of sacrifices
| when it comes to modern luxuries.
|
| However, if one desires to live with luxuries such as, gasp,
| housing and medical care, then life becomes extremely expensive,
| especially in US cities.
|
| So increasingly as I see it, you either need to be making big
| bucks as a developer/executive, or you need to be living in a
| tent on BLM public land with your only expenses being food and a
| phone bill.
| jandrese wrote:
| > your only expenses being food and a phone bill.
|
| Just hope you don't get sick.
|
| Also, food expenses add up. State food assistance programs are
| already overloaded (even before COVID), if you're a single dude
| living as a hermit you go to the back of the line.
| non-entity wrote:
| > or you need to be living in a tent on BLM public land with
| your only expenses being food and a phone bill.
|
| Can you actually [legally] do this?
| jxcl wrote:
| > Dispersed camping is allowed on public land for a period
| not to exceed 14 days within a 28 consecutive day period. The
| 28 day period begins when a camper initially occupies a
| specific location on public lands. The 14 day limit may be
| reached either through a number of separate visits or through
| 14 days of continuous overnight occupation during the 28 day
| period. After the 14th day of occupation, the camper must
| move outside of a 25 mile radius of the previous location
| until the 29th day since the initial occupation. The purpose
| of this special rule is to prevent damage to sensitive
| resources caused by continual use of any particular areas. In
| addition, campers must not leave any personal property
| unattended for more than 10 days (12 months in Alaska).
|
| https://www.blm.gov/programs/recreation/camping
|
| So I guess you would need two or three spots to cycle between
| if you wanted to do it legally, but you could continuously
| occupy public land like this.
| walleeee wrote:
| You just have to move around every 20 something days,
| although I don't know if it's enforced.
| sushshshsh wrote:
| I can confirm it's not enforced, as it is difficult to
| track. I imagine that the worst that would happen is you
| are just asked to move, particularly if you have a giant
| camper or are making quite a bit of impact on the land you
| are occupying.
| natalyarostova wrote:
| Bertrand Russell may or may not have been right, but he was
| definitely an elite who felt he knew what was best for the
| masses, even if he didn't take his own advice.
|
| This is the guy that dedicated portions of his life to proving
| mathematics was derived from logic, who is arguing it's okay if
| people just wanna idle around.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > proving mathematics was derived from logic
|
| A luxury he had because he didn't have to spend all of his time
| in the hamster wheel. That's how I _would_ idle around if I had
| the option to (well, ok, not that, because he already did it,
| but something like that).
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| _but he was definitely an elite who felt he knew what was best
| for the masses_
|
| He is also someone who went to prison for his principles. Was
| hounded out of American Universities for his views.
| Characterising him as one of the out of touch "elite" doesn't
| sound right to me.
| Xophmeister wrote:
| Why did Keynes believe that, say, a doubling of efficiency
| (through technology) would half work time for everyone? Sure it's
| a solution to the equation, but so is what actually happened[1]:
| half the workforce gets laid off. This halves the costs, which
| facilitates price reduction and thus a competitive edge. Did
| Keynes believe that benevolence would win over profit? Don't get
| me wrong, I wish it had, but that seems a little naive.
|
| [1] It occurs to me that another solution is to keep the work
| force, but double the work. This also happened; it seems like
| there are plenty of jobs that are just busy work with no real
| purpose.
| monoclechris wrote:
| Was Keynes right about anything?
| perfunctory wrote:
| > what actually happened[1]: half the workforce gets laid off.
|
| The article says as much:
|
| > In a sane world, Russell thought, the factory would simply
| halve working hours, maintaining the same wages but greatly
| increasing the time that the workers could devote to the joys
| of leisure. But, as Russell observed, this rarely happens.
| Instead, the factory owner will opt to keep half the workers on
| the same hours and lay off the rest. The gains from the
| advances of technology will be realised not as an expansion of
| leisure but rather as drudgery for some and jobless destitution
| for others, with the savings enjoyed only by the winner, the
| factory owner.
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| From above, we can only conclude that capitalism and profit-
| oriented economy are insane. But people are still blindly
| defending them, just like the slavery was defended not so
| long time ago.
| ooobit2 wrote:
| No, _you_ can only conclude that. Because you 're ignorant
| of similar and worse outcomes in alternate economies. China
| starved 25 million people to death just 80 years ago by
| similar philosophy. The Gulags were also the product of
| this philosophy. Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam have never
| recovered from the military use of this philosophy on their
| own citizens. This same approach left Guatemala and
| Honduras worse off after US textile outsourcing fled for
| China. Zimbabwe re-enslaved 13 million of its own citizens
| immediately after the end of colonialism, and Mugabe kept
| them stranded in servitude and punished the workers with
| physical abuse and longer work hours when these exact same
| approaches yielded insurmountable deficits year over year.
|
| There are examples far and beyond the ones I just
| mentioned. So, unless you're trying to argue that 25
| million rural Chinese lives don't matter, that it's OK for
| a newly-liberated African people to turn around and enslave
| the bottom 13 million, or worse, then you should take stock
| of the fact that people aren't defending slavery or
| capitalism, people are actually _calling out_ the far worse
| consequences of your favorite textbook theory.
| perfunctory wrote:
| Why the only alternatives to capitalism that come to mind
| are always China and Gulags? Is there absolutely nothing
| else we can imagine?
|
| (Maybe if we had some more leisure we could become more
| imaginative)
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Burning man. And temples/churches.
|
| But yeah, those are the only places where markets are
| off-limits. If you try to make a totalizing system that
| forbids people the right to buy or sell (say, on your way
| to burning man or after church), you'd need gulags to
| control the social unrest. People like to buy stuff and
| sell stuff.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Why the only alternatives to capitalism that come to
| mind are always China and Gulags? Is there absolutely
| nothing else we can imagine?
|
| The answer is that it's effective propaganda. Starvation
| and gulags are terrible evils. If you can plant the idea
| in someone's mind that they are what you get when a
| society questions capitalism, then you've created a
| zealous foot-soldier for capitalism who feels he's
| fighting for good against evil.
|
| Someone who zealously fights starvation and gulags _is_
| fighting for good against evil, but those were mainly the
| result of _particular_ alternatives to capitalism:
| radical Soviet-style central planning and dictatorship.
| That 's not the only alternative: there are others,
| including many that haven't been thought of yet. Also,
| it's not like capitalism is over and we know how it ends.
| Maybe it too will find its way to starvation and gulags.
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| I believe that both capitalism and communism are broken
| because of broken brains of people who are "implementing"
| them. We need enlightened, self-organized people (no
| "leaders" or "representatives") as a starting point for
| any successful implementation of a Utopia (whatever -ism
| you like to call it). But no current system is going to
| support enlightenment of people because it would mean its
| end.
| throwaway45349 wrote:
| Self organizing doesn't work because everyone wants
| what's best for themselves. Every grassroots activity has
| figureheads and leaders. Hierarchy is literally older
| than civilisation and observed in most animal life.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > From above, we can only conclude that capitalism and
| profit-oriented economy are insane
|
| I don't see the conclusion. I can only see there are many
| specific problems with capitalism.
| [deleted]
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| The quote starts with "In a sane world" and from the rest
| of the quote we can see that we're not living in such
| world. Isn't that enough to conclude that the (most of
| the) world is not sane, ie insane?
| megameter wrote:
| A major function of capitalism is to direct human
| attention towards utilitarian valuation, which produces
| the growth-and-exploitation formula we are familiar with:
| more stuff is made, more land is developed, but it is
| often done by overfitting to market prices.
|
| But increasingly we are turning the valuation process
| over to algorithms, sensors, and other precision
| instruments. If we extrapolate this onwards, the market
| exchange will become vestigial in not that many years:
| the algorithms involved will already know how much can be
| sustainably produced, consumed, transported and trashed,
| and there will be known bounds to personal and societal
| consumption relative to planetary capacity. At that
| point, transition away from capitalism will seem obvious.
| And we might be closer to this point than it looks.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| The reason this didn't happen is two fold.
|
| First, workers gain skill by the hour. It's more efficient to
| have forty hour work weeks for a workforce of half the size
| than twenty hour work weeks with the same size.
|
| Second, many things in the economy are arms races.
| Housing[0], cost of education, status goods, actual arms for
| our militaries, etc. We have enough productivity for things
| like food to be very, very cheap but it just drives up prices
| elsewhere.
|
| [0] Specifically land value, but also housing in the physical
| sense since raw materials and labour are not unlimited.
| tehjoker wrote:
| If workers controlled the workplace, this is precisely what
| would happen. It's only because the people doing the work don't
| control the work that this seems fanciful.
| vslira wrote:
| You know, what's funny is that we'll never be sure if that's
| the case[0]. What guarantee is there that the median
| socialist voter wouldn't vote for more work for everyone
| because they want fancier tvs, or more dazzling musical
| spectacles, or fancier video games, bigger homes, etc? What
| if society doesn't democratically vote for idleness and
| quality of life / tranquility?
|
| [0] I mean unless there's a real and successful socialist
| revolution.
| tehjoker wrote:
| What if the workers actually controlled the factory and not
| a commissar sent by central planning? There are lots of
| different ways to do this.
|
| For central planning, one proposal I saw offered that the
| workers could be organized into sectoral unions that
| participate as a sector in government. This weight and
| common interest allows them to counter the weight of voters
| that ask for too much. It's also large enough of an
| agglomeration that the workers still represent society as a
| whole to a great degree.
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| Fancier TVs are not going to make their ~miserable~ (edit:
| too heavy word) lifes more meaningful. That's what
| capitalism has made you believe in order to keep you in its
| chains voluntarily.
| sm4rk0 wrote:
| Sitting 8+ hours at desk plus few more in a car only to
| get home and continue sitting in front of a fancy TV. And
| you call this advanced society or civilisation?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| "Worker-controlled workplaces" are rather common in some
| industries where capital intensity is especially low, such as
| legal services (with firms being organized as partnerships;
| indeed, capital intensity is the main obstacle to this kind
| of structure in other industries). And yet, top lawyers tend
| to work quite a bit _more_ than the typical worker.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > It occurs to me that another solution is to keep the work
| force, but double the work
|
| I think one other solution is to keep the work force, but
| double the output. I think this _also_ happened (in addition to
| the other two that you identified). The overall productivity
| and output of society has massively increased.
| nomel wrote:
| And, of course, output doesn't have to be number of bars of
| soap.
|
| All of the automation I'm familiar with is making the design
| and manufacturing processes more fluid, giving faster
| iterations at reduced cost. This allows the
| tech/process/whatever to progress faster. You'll finish your
| product sooner, but that means you can start the next sooner.
|
| This whole concept of having more time assumes there's
| nothing else to do. There will always be something to do if
| you're not making something static, like soap.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > half the workforce gets laid off.
|
| Technological progress has made labor productivity itself a lot
| more uneven and sharply unequal than it used to be when Keynes
| was writing. So the currently most marginal workers tend to be
| laid off first, especially given the increasing regulatory
| barriers that have made low-productivity positions
| unsustainable since then.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Because efficiency can lead to leisure or layoffs, what will the
| future bring?
|
| Capitalism suffers if half of workers are unemployed. Because it
| is actually _in the market 's best interest_, we will develop
| social - political structures that enable improved efficiency and
| high employment (because more workers employed means more
| commerce and a bigger economy)
| umvi wrote:
| > ... we have realised that it is worth taking an economic hit in
| order to preserve health.
|
| Have we realized this? I think you'd find a sizable chunk of the
| country that disagrees. And I also think it's still too soon to
| say.
|
| > That, after all, is what money is for.
|
| Money that we don't have. We can keep conjuring money out of thin
| air if we want, but the effects of infinitely deepening debt seem
| negative in every case study I've ever read (to say the least).
| omphalos wrote:
| The money is there, it just mostly resides in the hands of the
| few. The mean net worth of an American household is almost
| $700,000 - that's total net worth of all households, divided by
| number of households.
| erichocean wrote:
| > _Have we realized this?_
|
| It doesn't matter even if people do--techno-capitalist
| industrial society wants ever-growing efficiency and
| production, and if it harms humans (like, say, causing wide-
| spread depression) it will simply invent new mitigations (e.g.
| anti-depressants) that, natch, result in new products to sell
| that improve the GDP.
|
| There are no brakes on this train and humans aren't even
| driving it anyway.
| luckylion wrote:
| Everybody wants nice things, not just "techno-capitalist
| industrial society". Everybody can take an economic hit in
| order to preserve health and enjoy life more. Downsize your
| house, get rid of luxuries, stop going on vacations, you'll
| save so much money that you don't need to work as much
| (healthy!). You'll also have to give up having a larger
| apartment, a TV and 5 sets of sneakers (economic hit).
|
| Yet barely anyone does that. We haven't realized this because
| it's not true.
| seigando wrote:
| Individuals can make personal, effective efforts on this
| front.
| clairity wrote:
| what the pandemic is making more obvious is that money is
| getting stuck in idle and infirm hands. further, money is being
| injected into the wrong hands in the economy. we need money
| being injected closer to productive hands (like essential
| workers) rather than the current centralized system giving it
| to far-removed capital holders, those who prefer rent-seeking
| and other non-productive ways of stalling the velocity of the
| economy for their own benefit.
| musha68k wrote:
| Josef Pieper's "Musse und Kult" comes to mind as well:
|
| https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/10/leisure-the-basis-o...
| brushfoot wrote:
| The article sets up a bit of a false dichotomy. It's partly
| inherent in using _idleness_ as the alternative to economically
| productive work. Did Russell himself use that term (edit: yes
| :-))? I 'm guessing it's supposed to be provocative, to make it
| stick. But I'd imagine that's part of the problem. Many people
| would balk, and I think rightly so, at the connotations. There's
| nothing positive about undirected free time over a long period.
| And the article doesn't help with glosses like "Netflix in
| pyjamas."
|
| The best alternatives to economically productive work are equally
| productive in different domains. For example, take gardening. You
| might be surprised at the quality of aerobic exercise you get
| working a large yard and garden. I recently took a heart rate
| monitor and found I could replace my morning jog. My heart rate
| was actually higher on average, and the sense of purpose was a
| welcome distraction from the work.
|
| Unfortunately few are taught these kinds of healthful
| alternatives. I can only imagine what a difference in health and
| cognition there would be if schools taught hands-on agriculture
| and gave students garden plots.
| wiz21c wrote:
| > There's nothing positive about undirected free time over a
| long period.
|
| I could easily fill that time with dozens of ideas. But you
| see, I'm lucky enough to be a "creative" person. That is, I'm
| in love with the things I invent. The more I invent, the more
| passionnated I am. I can sustain an incredible level of
| activity just to achieve goals I create myself. But these goals
| are mostly non economic. So being able to just do my stuff
| without having to prove an economical value to it would be very
| much welcome.
| aslfksdfl wrote:
| >I'm lucky enough to be a "creative" person
|
| This is the kind of insanity Russel's original essay alludes
| to. If we weren't taught to fill every hour with "productive"
| work, then anyone could foster their creativity with idle
| pursuits that aren't limited by their ability to produce
| value.
|
| People feel like they're not creative because they feel the
| constant need to produce something of value and are afraid to
| experiment with anything else. Creativity requires that type
| of experimentation.
|
| The fact that we claim some people are creative and some are
| not is a complete facade. It's similar to saying "oh I can't
| draw" or "I'm bad at math" -- well no, you've likely just
| spent less time practicing it... maybe you're too afraid to
| fail to even try.
| silveroriole wrote:
| Thank goodness we can get aerobic exercise in while gardening.
| If 'twere not so, gardening might be - horror - unproductive!
| "The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the
| sake of something else, and never for its own sake."
|
| I know "nobody reads the article" is an HN joke, but surely
| asking whether Russell uses the word idleness in his essay
| titled "In Praise of Idleness" is taking the mick...
| hirundo wrote:
| > Bertrand Russell wrote "In Praise of Idleness" in 1932, at the
| height of the Great Depression, idleness was an unavoidable
| reality for the millions who had lost their jobs
|
| What a passive attitude. Unless you're in a straight jacket
| idleness is a thoroughly avoidable reality. Hustle matters most
| when you're broke and unemployed. If you're doing it right being
| unemployed is a full-time job, job hunting. Or building your own.
| bjornsing wrote:
| We could start by not calling it "idleness" when we paint
| pictures, learn physics or read philosophy...
| perfunctory wrote:
| Another important reason that "idleness is more relevant than
| ever" is climate crisis
|
| https://cepr.net/documents/publications/climate-change-works...
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/3UiIz
| jxramos wrote:
| All this thought about the economy and working and idleness
| doesn't take things far enough. What we really need to abolish is
| human metabolism. The fact that we need to eat and hustle to grow
| and acquire calories and nutrients is the real oppressor. We need
| to scientifically find out how to stop metabolism so we all don't
| need to work and will never starve. Attack the root of the
| problem. Next in line is mortality.
| perl4ever wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're serious or presenting what you think is
| an absurdity, but I instantly knew human photosynthesis must be
| an existing science fiction trope, even though I don't actually
| know a title offhand.
|
| Frankly, I expect this sort of thing before fusion power that
| is "too cheap to meter".
|
| See:
|
| https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/151099/story-inclu...
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| FIRE (Financial Independence/Retire Early) is now a popular goal
| among the young. If you retire early, however, you're going to
| have to figure out what to do with all the leisure time. It would
| perhaps be better to have people working fewer hours, but over
| more years - a longterm 3-day workweek would allow for plenty of
| leisure as well as work.
| icelancer wrote:
| I can only speak for myself, but I know a lot of people with
| similar goals to me - I've worked a full-time job since I was
| 17, and upon leaving college, have always worked 2 or more jobs
| (typically one-full time, one entrepreneurial venture or part-
| time internship to gain experience - currently I just work two
| full-time jobs, one of them my own company, and do some
| sporadic consulting as well).
|
| I'm in my late 30's and plan on "retiring" in my early 50's. I
| had kids in my late 20's, so we're good there (it's been tough
| of course). I doubt I'll stop working and will probably switch
| to working 2-3 days a week for a few months at a time, or
| getting on a few boards of directors and being an
| advisor/consultant, or something like that.
|
| I work 70+ hours/week on average and have done so for over a
| decade. I know this pace isn't sustainable; I'm falling behind
| every year that passes me while I watch 23 year olds put in the
| hours I used to. So for people our age, we have to put the work
| in now if we want leisure time later.
|
| America is turning into a winner-takes-most society and I don't
| see that changing anytime soon. It will become harder and
| harder to be a "punch the clock" person and retire at a normal
| age, especially as life expectancy continues to get pushed out.
| odshoifsdhfs wrote:
| I am in a very similar situation (and I think even age/life
| experience)
|
| I don't have any public words to say to you, but I would love
| to chat a bit if you ever want to.
|
| My email is brunomtsousa @ the biggest search company email
| service.com
| gthtjtkt wrote:
| This honestly sounds just like my nightmares.
|
| I'd rather go live in a tent than spend 10+ years putting in
| 70+ hour weeks just to retire when all of my best years are
| behind me.
| icelancer wrote:
| Feel free. Different strokes. I spent 3 years of my life
| professionally gambling as one of my full-time jobs and
| lived more in those 3 years than most do in a lifetime, and
| founded a company with an eight-figure valuation that is a
| lot of fun to run. If I worked some boring desk job that I
| hated, sure.
|
| Besides, my best years are ahead of me. I'll be in great
| shape in my 50s with nothing but time and options. The idea
| that your 20s and 30s are the best years of your life is a
| very antiquated concept.
| silveroriole wrote:
| Yeah, if you get a 4-day week job or a remote job you can work
| a lot fewer hours and it's much easier than FIRE. Other people
| are 'hustling' or scrimping and saving nonstop so they can have
| leisure time later. Why not skip the hustle and go straight for
| the leisure time? Like the old story about the fisherman and
| the businessman. Works great for me.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I agree, but it's difficult to find a part-time technical
| job. Which is why some folks opt for the work-like-mad until
| they've saved up enough to retire early approach.
|
| What I do instead is work for a year or two and then take six
| month or so off between the gigs.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Why are we discussing communist propaganda here?
| throwaway7281 wrote:
| I distinguish at least two kinds of work: one where you earn
| money because you have no other sources of income. And work that
| relates to whatever you are doing on you own behalf - which can
| be very productive as well.
|
| The first kind of work is a productive factor, like capital or
| land. It's just the brains and hands of a piece of flesh that
| does what it is told. A worker is always subordinated to capital,
| you are working for the capital of others. You never get the full
| reward, whereas people you never met will earn a share of every
| piece of value you provide.
|
| It's funny, almost every second product I buy these days comes
| from firms which went to one or even multiple private equity
| hands in the past two decades. It is one of the reasons why I
| reduce my consumption to a minimum.
|
| Neoliberalism hates equality, it hates social progress and it has
| absolutely no idea of how to do something different that would
| benefit society at large. There is no society for capital, there
| is revenue, returns and all human activity you are observing is
| partially there, because there is someone who just wants their
| profit.
|
| Poles are melting, climate changes, species die out, capitalism
| (as it is implemented; the theory is much more progressive) could
| not care less about killing its own foundations.
|
| It reminds me of avant-garde capitalists operation like facebook.
| It could only start on an open web, and its endgame is own all
| you presence online. Walled gardens, armes guards, cash flow.
| perl4ever wrote:
| >You never get the full reward
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_didn%27t_build_that
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