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This article (in the tradition of Keynes) makes the implicit assumption that more leisure is good/brings happiness. (Hence the seeming paradox that rich people

• adamnemecek 10y ago
  > There's a reason that retiring early is literally bad for your brain. I think that keeping yourself mentally occupied is much easier these days though. Like, you can get pretty serious about just about any hobby with the internet. And like it's crazy what you can sink your time into if you really care about it.
  • toomuchtodo 10y ago
    To reinforce your point, here is the Youtube channel of a database admin (by day) in Tulsa, OK who spends his free time learning how to (and building) a ~70 foot steel cutter vessel in his front yard. https://www.youtube.com/user/submarineboat https://www.youtube.com/user/submarineboat
    • adamnemecek 10y ago
      Or this http://makezine.com/2015/04/20/understand-1700-mechanical-linkages-helpful-animations/ http://makezine.com/2015/04/20/understand-1700-mechanical-li... A retired mechanical engineer spends his time making videos of mechanical linkages in CAD. He's was at 1700 a year ago, hard to say how many he's at now, he's still releasing them. This is what technological progress looks like I think, in a couple of years this will be shown in just about any intro class into the subject and it will reduce the learning time by like, i don't even know, 100x? 1000x? Idk how these were described before but boy do they seem hard to describe in anything but animation. I'm also having a hard time imagining his brain isn't getting exercised just fine. I'm not a mechanical engineer and I spent like good 15-20 minutes watching them and getting quite a bit out of it.
    • tuna-piano 10y ago
      Wow, thanks so much for the link. Amazing watching people build that together.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    • 205guy 10y ago
      S/V Seeker! I love it when two different interests of my own find a match somewhere. I've spent way too much time catching up on his videos, but he's phase inspired me in some of my own projects.
  • analog31 10y ago
    In my view staying physically healthy is vital. From what I've seen of folks who are in their 70s and 80s, mental and physical activity are each necessary for the other, and have to be habits long before retirement is even on the horizon.
• lukewink 10y ago
  I don't think the article made an implicit assumption that more leisure is good. The article appears to be using self-reported satisfaction statistics: "And these young men are happy—or, at least, they self-report higher satisfaction than this age group used to"
• taurath 10y ago
  Big difference between working a fulfilling job and spending 10-12 hours a day working and commuting to pay the bills.
• Raphmedia 10y ago
  Who ever said that having a slower / less sharp brain decrease happiness?
  • forrestbrazeal 10y ago
    I can't speak for others, but I'd certainly feel less happy if I knew I was making life choices that were likely to impair my mental function.
    • tome 10y ago
      Whilst here on this other thread you get existential depression if you're clever: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12524448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12524448 It's hard work being a human being.
    • gohrt 10y ago
      But if you didn't know, what you feel less happy?
      • lfowles 10y ago
        This offshoot reeks strongly of Flowers for Algernon
    • Raphmedia 10y ago
      I wouldn't mind being slower at mathematics if it meant I could relax on a beach somewhere down south or live in a nice cabin up north. The brain is good at what you practice it doing. I very much hope that I wouldn't need to be as mentally active as I am right now when I retire.
• city41 10y ago
  Why does leisure need to equate to consumption? There are plenty of things that are fun to do and productive.
  • hsitz 10y ago
    Where did you get that "leisure" equates to "consumption"? Being productive certainly doesn't imply not consuming. I don't think I'm disagreeing with you saying that leisure time can be productive, but I think the issue of "consumption" is irrelevant here. There is a sense in which being "productive" implies creating value, i.e., producing more value than you consume. If you restrict yourself to the realm of money, then being productive generally involves profit (e.g., producing something that gives net increase in monetary value over consumption costs). But if some person with leisure values things that other people generally don't want to pay money for (e.g., writing poetry), their leisure time can be productive (producing poetry) while they're purely an economic consumer (making no money, but spending money to live).
    • city41 10y ago
      Did you read the comment I'm replying to? That comment specifically associated leisure with consumption: > There's a reason that retiring early is literally bad for your brain [0] - healthy adults are supposed to be engaged in productive activity. Whether productive activity means punching a clock, volunteering at a $nonprofit or striking out on your own, the point is that our minds and bodies need to be actively living, not just passively consuming
      • hsitz 10y ago
        Ah, I see. I don't think the guy was equating leisure with consumption at all. You could say he was equating leisure with "just passively consuming", which is where his mistake is (along with his unrelated error of thinking Keynes implicitly thought leisure would automatically bring happiness). I would also agree that a person having some leisure that is "just passively consuming" is fine, maybe even good. But I'm pretty sure it's bad if _all_ of a person's leisure is "just passively consuming", at least if they have a decent amount of leisure (if you're working 80 hour weeks then it's probably not bad at all to have your leisure time all be passive consumption).
• azernik 10y ago
  Keynes didn't make the implicit assumption that it was good - he thought the potential pitfalls (a la the British idle rich) were an interesting problem that the world would just have to learn to deal with. He just assumed it would happen. On the health issue - most of the studies I've seen cap the health benefits of working at a few hours a week. Volunteering for an hour a day seems to be just as beneficial as spending most of your waking hours on an office job.
  • forrestbrazeal 10y ago
    Re: Keynes, I think we're both right. He seemed to view increased leisure (discretionary time) as an objective good and idleness (the wasting of leisure) as a worrying problem. This becomes clear in the context of his full essay [0], which is definitely worth a read. [0] http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf
  • erroneousfunk 10y ago
    I was recently unemployed for the second time in my career (one of the pitfalls of working at unstable startups). The first time was an absolutely awful depressive hell. The second time, I ramped up my volunteer hours at a local Museum, going 2-3 times a week instead of just once a week. I happened to be working on a part-time master's degree program as well, and finished that up while I was unemployed. I spent just as much unemployed time between jobs both times (about 6 weeks), but the second time around was worlds better. I wasn't working full time, I had plenty of leisure time, but instead of using that time sitting around watching TV and wallowing, I had lunch with friends, I studied in cafes, after volunteering I took walks around the city, I went to bookstores -- it was awesome! I actually miss being unemployed. Having a "thing" you have to do during the day, instead of a vast blank schedule is an amazing psychological boost.
• adrusi 10y ago
  That's a misunderstanding of what free time is. Free time isn't unproductive time, its unrestricted time. Free time, if fully exploited, can't be worse than the alternative because you're free to do the alternative if its the best use of your time! The problem is that people don't know how to use their free time, and so it ends up spent getting high and watching TV. Maybe people would be better at exploiting the time they have if they were allowed free time earlier in life. Kids are pretty good at taking advantage of the time they have, maybe if they were allowed to keep more freedom through to adulthood they'd keep the skill. Maybe if our non-free time weren't so stressful we wouldn't feel the need to use our free time just to unwind. Or maybe its that entertainment has gotten too compelling. I'd rather not believe that people have an innate need to be forced to do whatever they do.
  • 323454 10y ago
    You're right about kids: they spend much of their free time exploring and playing like they're hard wired to do it. I think our 19th-century-style schools are the problem: we drum information and behaviours into kids until they forget how to be independent. All this time wasted sitting at a desk in a classroom means they might miss out on the chance to develop a passion for something, something that they would fill their free time with later in life. And then we're surprised that people just want to watch netflix.
    • kjhughes 10y ago
      Ken Robinson expounds upon this thesis in a classic TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_cre...
    • rimantas 10y ago
      Yeah, just think what a nice ornate roof we could build if we skipped foundations and spent all the time saved on the roof…
      • xenophonf 10y ago
• pystack 10y ago
  In hunter-gatherer times, I would hunt so my family could eat. If I hunt from 9 to 5 and didn't catch anything, I would have to keep hunting, or my family would go hungry. Nature is not a fair employer, it does not give meat to me because I worked 8 hours. I only get the meat if I catch it. Today, society built many layers on top of nature. Big business bureaucracy guarantees food if you work for 8 hours. But at the edges of society, it is still very rough. My business isn't going to grow just because I worked 8 hours. It only grows if I solve my customers' problems, regardless of how many hours it takes. I think this applies to the common "rich people" positions as well.
  • lighttower 10y ago
    Very good comment. Those that choose the regular slice of meat at each 8 hour interval are making a trade for smaller yet (more) predictable rewards. They give up their freedom to sell their time to the highest bidder. It's well explained in the hypothetical universe where pilots are all freelancers [0]. [0] http://romansnitko.com/blog/freelance-pilots.html http://romansnitko.com/blog/freelance-pilots.html
    • tamana 10y ago
      I work 9-5 and I do it for the highest bidder.
      • lighttower 10y ago
        but you chose the highest bidder on a year-to-year basis. Not an day-to-day basis. You're guaranteed a monthly (bi-weekly) salary, but, you can't quit today to do a more lucrative offer and then get your job back the day after.
  • bloat 10y ago
    It's been postulated that hunter-gatherers did not have to work very hard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
• ArkyBeagle 10y ago
  Doesn't it seem that the rising "unemployable" cohort having all that free time, and the wealthy having none is not somehow related? "Unemployable" seems perjorative, so let's use Arnold Kling's ( Tyler Cowan's?) ZMP ( Zero Marginal Product ) workers. You get the feeling that in years past, the ZMP would have been given some measure of slack, and allowed to work their way into a more productive status. But that's what's changed. I think there's been a cultural shift - look at the relatively unpleasant reports on how peoples jobs are now. Plus, unemployment ( especially if you're of an age to live with parents in their McMansion or even your old bedroom in a more modest home ) is a lot more comfortable than it used to be. There's been a long-term trend towards advancing the age at which people join the workforce. People had moral reservations about the abolition of child labor - after all, it had worked out okay for them. It's only when unemployment began to be a more palpable problem that the mores concerning child labor shifted. Even then, my own father was pressed into service as farm labor as recently as the 1940s. This was standard. As production has become less and less labor intensive, the workplace becomes more and more about social signalling. And as the population of firms becomes increasingly about maintaining old guard products and services and less about actually advancing the footprint of the firm from within ( with low cost financing enabling M&A activity instead ) firms are rapidly shedding workers. You don't even need offshoring or Chinese production to explain this. All you need is the Jack Welch "neutron bomb" effect. We see increasingly ambitious tech efforts, not the sort of thing a half dozen people can do in a year or two, to sell for a few million. But mainly, as the workplace becomes overtly inhospitable and the cost of slacking goes down, the equilibrium shifts.
• lawpoop 10y ago
  I get this, but it seems to me that the simple converse is that we just happen to presently have the optimal amount of free time, which I don't think is true.
• aluhut 10y ago
  Well sure. If your whole life consisted of work, you simply have no idea what to do with your free time. I would study philosophy if I could afford it. Travel a lot. Go swimming more so my back would not be such a mess and so on. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be bad for my brain.
• arximboldi 10y ago
  Not working is not the same as inaction. It is more of the opposite. Unleashing ones creative potential once relieved from the alienating burden of salaried work.
• metaphorm 10y ago
  > healthy adults are supposed to be engaged in productive activity. and this is your explicit assumption and also needs justification. a better source than a fluff piece in a daily newspaper would be helpful too. "productive" is a really loaded and problematic word to use here. why is "production" the moral underpinnings of the good life? surely a healthy person might find fulfillment in any number of different activities regardless of their impact on GDP.