[HN Gopher] The Right to Be Lazy
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The Right to Be Lazy
Author : mitchbob
Score : 34 points
Date : 2022-12-07 23:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nyrb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nyrb.com)
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| You're in debt if your liabilities exceed your assets.
|
| Your liabilities include rent, food, and clothing.
|
| In the assets column, include various sources of income or
| capital gains, like dividend stocks.
|
| In a HCOL place like the United States, the columns balance
| around $1 million, which is effectively "zero". That's the point
| where you start being able to afford a frugal lifestyle in that
| built/social environment, without work. And that's not without
| sacrifices.
|
| So in that sense, most people are debt-slaves for most of their
| lives.
| draw_down wrote:
| spacKingChamath wrote:
| Some additional
| info.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Be_Lazy
|
| Definitely an interesting way to look at the world.
| mjfl wrote:
| What an ironically privileged position, considering how much he
| calls out the bourgeoisie.
| tstrimple wrote:
| > Automation, which had already come a long way in Lafargue's
| time, could easily reduce working hours to three or four
| hours a day. This would leave a large part of the day for the
| things we really want to do, such as to spend time with
| friends, relax, enjoy life, and be lazy. Lafargue argues the
| machine is the saviour of humanity but only if the working
| time it frees up becomes leisure time. The time that is freed
| up is usually converted into more hours of work, which he
| compares to more hours of toil and drudgery. Working too many
| hours a day is often degrading, while working very few hours
| can be very refreshing and enriching, leading to general
| advancement, health, joy, and satisfaction.
|
| Doesn't seem like a privileged argument. If the needs of a
| society can be met with 3-4 hours of work a day and
| automation for the rest, fighting to work _only_ 8 hours a
| day does seem to miss the mark. Whether 3-4 hours of work a
| day is actually enough is a separate discussion worth having.
| There is good evidence supporting the idea that with more
| free time employees could get done in 30 hours a week what
| they are currently doing in 40. But he 's been demonstrated
| to be absolutely right with regards to where the spoils of
| increased productivity go. It rarely if ever materializes as
| less work or better pay for the masses and always seem to be
| funneled to the moneyed class instead. I hardly think it's
| privileged to believe that the progress and advancements made
| in a society should benefit everyone instead of a handful of
| already extremely wealthy people.
|
| https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/teams-become-more-
| productive-...
| klipt wrote:
| > If the needs of a society can be met with 3-4 hours of
| work a day
|
| That's a very subjective question. Suppose we could have
| maintained a 19th century standard of living for everyone
| with reduced work, but without the scientific and
| technological advancements that we got by using that time
| to do even more work. Would you prefer a society where
| everyone works 15 hr weeks but the internet was never
| invented?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| > Would you prefer a society where everyone works 15 hr
| weeks but the internet was never invented?
|
| How is that even a question have you seen the internet
| recently. Slamming YES so hard the button breaks.
| mjfl wrote:
| he asserts that it can be met with 3-4 hours of work per
| day, he doesn't prove it or demonstrate it.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It is consistent with the meaning of bourgeoisie then, which
| transposed to modern systems means more like "the owner
| class" than the contemporary social connotation of well-
| compensated professionals. Owners benefit from more/harder
| work, both their own and that of others, and so it
| (reasonably) becomes a class value for them.
|
| A non-owner worker doesn't benefit in the same way, but many
| still value work in the same way the bourgeoisie do. Workers
| don't benefit like owners do and so they shouldn't want to
| work like owners do. That's the point being made.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| >It is consistent with the meaning of bourgeoisie then,
| which transposed to modern systems means more like "the
| owner class" than the contemporary social connotation of
| well-compensated professionals.
|
| That's still the definition used in Marxist circles today.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > According to Lafargue, wage labour is tantamount to slavery
|
| It does seem to be quite useless way to look at the world.
|
| It seems that they are unaware of what slavery actually means
| or deliberately mislead. Or Wikipedia is inaccurate.
| mgrthrow wrote:
| Slavery means lots of things. Chattel slavery, yes, but also
| forced labor like in us prisons. Indentured labor, child
| soldiers, forced marriage, etc etc.
|
| The concept of "wage slavery" is basically, "you are not free
| to not earn a wage because you will starve". It's also easy
| to draw parallels between the commodification of ones labor
| and slavery.
|
| It's a term that is not new, is widely used, and debated
| plenty. The incorrect response is to say, "that's a useless
| way to think". Show some intellectual curiosity - why do
| people believe that, what values do they hold, what are their
| reasons, which arguments do I disagree with, etc.
|
| I'm a socialist, I don't think capitalists have a "useless
| way to think about the world", I have fundamental critiques
| of specific policies and different values on certain social
| behaviors.
| kazinator wrote:
| Struggle slavery; you're not free not to struggle on the
| face of the Earth, otherwise you will not survive. Man, how
| dare the universe spring forth creatures, yet foist that on
| them.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It's meant in the sense of "coerced into working." Eg if you
| don't have a viable alternative to working, did you choose
| work freely? Everyone using this comparison from that time
| period knows it's an extreme metaphor and is using it at
| least partially for the shock value of the comparison, to jar
| people into seeing the everyday pressures in a different way.
|
| They aren't comparing _the conditions_ of slavery to the
| conditions of wage labor, just that the force that compels a
| proletarian worker to work is on the same continuum with the
| force that compels a slave to work.
| tstrimple wrote:
| I suspect calling it slavery is more shocking today than it
| would have been at the time when slavery was still an
| acceptable practice in major countries. Certainly people
| have a more visceral reaction to the term in general today
| than at that time.
| _jal wrote:
| Adding to this, there are employers who do what they can to
| ramp up the coercive aspect. This happens mainly in low-
| wage jobs where there is lots of usually low-quality labor.
| The usual dynamic is to seek out job hunters with family or
| other commitments to employ, and then constantly threaten
| them with all the people who apply. Make them feel trapped
| and precarious by threatening their ability to feed kids,
| and that can go a long way.
|
| Obviously, the legal system no longer supports outright
| slavery outside of prison, and the tactics and conditions
| are consequently less severe than historic chattel slavery
| in the US.
|
| But the opposite conclusion - that all labor is voluntary -
| has to use a specific sense of the word 'voluntary', more
| similar to the IRS definition than the picking-from-a-menu
| sense.
| laurentoget wrote:
| considering lafargue was born in 1842 in cuba on a coffee
| plantation and was of mixed race he probably had a pretty
| good idea of what slavery was.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Love this. I tend to be lazy at least every Thursday+Friday. I
| did a little work during that Argentina WC game just now and am
| now logged off for the day after two hours of distracted work.
|
| Luckily, I'm stretching some work from Wednesday with sawdust ;)
| so no worries
|
| Remote work really has been a game-changer this last decade. I've
| gotten effectively paid to have fun more than to work.
|
| I think I'll go work on an art project I've been putting off
| now..
| laurentoget wrote:
| https://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1883/lazy/ not to
| undermine the NYRB, but this is in the public domain, for anybody
| interested
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(page generated 2022-12-09 23:00 UTC)