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It's a shame that we have built a society where time is something you have to buy instead of a plentiful resource that everyone shares in. (I suppose you could

It's a shame that we have built a society where time is something you have to buy instead of a plentiful resource that everyone shares in. (I suppose you could say the same for food, shelter, and clean water.)

Udik 10y ago
The price for having time as a plentiful resource is to starve periodically for lack of food, watch helplessly as loved ones die for causes you don't understand, and in general consider impossible anything that can't be achieved with sticks, stones, ropes, animal tendons and leather.
- jahaja 10y ago
  Do you really believe that if a society would prioritize time over "work-is-life" and/or materialism it would lead to some kind of a stone age society, or are you just provokingly dogmatic?
  - Udik 10y ago
    Yes, I do think that somehow we've been screwed starting from agriculture, and that societies where people have lots of free time are basically hunters and gatherers societies. This doesn't mean that we won't get that again in the future thanks to some technological advancement. But that opens a completely different kind of issues.
    - jahaja 10y ago
      Do you have anything to back this theory up? If our working time hasn't changed throughout the productivity gains during the 20th century there are other forces at play, namely political.
      - Udik 10y ago
        No. And I guess the same could be said for the opposite theory. But just look around you: everything that is man made has taken an enormous amount of effort and accumulated knowledge. It's not been made by people who worked three hours per day devoting the rest to socialisation and a painting lessons. The people who invented antibiotics worked their asses off in university and laboratories to find a way for other people to survive infections. All the tools that they were using have been invented by people literally living in their shops and laboratories, and mass produced in factories, keeping their availability high and their price low. If you take any situation or object in your life and follow backwards the chain of work and invention that has been needed to design it, produce it and keep it working, you realise that this chain has required an enormous amount of effort by everybody involved. This might be the relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1741/ http://xkcd.com/1741/
        jahaja 10y ago
        You seem to be confusing free time with unproductive time and at the same time singing the gospel of hard work as a virtue. Reading this I'm surprised that you're not more worried about the thousands of great minds lost having to work hard their whole lives.
      - Udik 10y ago
        Sorry, I hadn't seen the second part of your comment. Our working time hasn't changed throughout the enormous productivity gains of the 20th century. But the amount and quality of available products has. It's hugely superior. Maybe you could work one hour per day in our present time and have the same products available that you had in the year 1900. But would you? Or would you end up asking someone to work just that one more hour when it's for a good cause - some life to save, some impressive machine to build, someone waiting in a queue, having fresh bread on Sundays or bringing you to some holiday destination in August?
        jahaja 10y ago
        My underlying point is that work is not an end in itself. Reducing coerced work, be it political, social or economical coercion, means more time to follow whatever passions one has, even if some of those passions may be things that you consider unproductive. For others, that extra time could mean another Einstein instead of a patent clerk with a less lenient boss than were the case.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    Teenagers generally have plentiful time, what percentage of them spend it working productively (without coercion)?
    - jahaja 10y ago
      Do they really? Most countries have a quite elaborate schooling system in place to keep teenagers busy. Or do you think that one should be "productive" throughout the day otherwise it's a vice?
      - Chris2048 10y ago
        Lots of holidays though, and no overtime.
Chris2048 10y ago
Except in this case, it means a salaried worker who guarantees a certain amount of labor for a certain amount of pay, "buying" back their labor commitment by returning some of that salary. Why is it a shame that food, shelter and clean water have to be bought? They are cheap (well, shelter can differ) isn't that enough?
- adrianratnapala 10y ago
  It can mean that, but I primarily meant other things: you can buy back your time by hiring a house cleaner, or eating out more often, or buying labour saving gadgets, and probably in various other ways.
- valleyer 10y ago
  Because it means that the amount of free time people have (for mental or physical relaxation, spending with loved ones, personal [non-employment-related] study) depends on how easily you can part with some of your money. If you believe, as I do, that the amount of wealth people enjoy is in many cases a result of luck -- luck in who raised you and where, luck in the stock market, luck in genetics -- then it starts to seem wrong to distribute "time" in exchange for money.
mseebach 10y ago
That's a feature of physics, not vague notions around what "we" have built. Time is and can never be "plentiful" nor "shared in". Everybody has a limited amount of time which is theirs and theirs alone, and what you do with it matters - it's called opportunity cost. When you spend a large amount of time on something, it's not unreasonable to consider whether it was worth it (although that worth can reasonably be measured along other axes than money).
mfukar 10y ago
I doubt time has ever been a plentiful resource for humans.
- grecy 10y ago
  Numerous studies have shown that hunter-gatherer societies only had to spend a few hours a day getting food and shelter. The rest was leisure time.
  - gpvos 10y ago
    Also, life was brutal and short.
  - throwawayReply 10y ago
    But under those societies the world only supported a few million people.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      Feature! Under those societies it could. And there was little endogenous reason why that might suddenly change. We've retained all the same exogenous risks, and added considerably more endogenous ones to boot.

Udik 10y ago

The price for having time as a plentiful resource is to starve periodically for lack of food, watch helplessly as loved ones die for causes you don't understand, and in general consider impossible anything that can't be achieved with sticks, stones, ropes, animal tendons and leather.

jahaja 10y ago
Do you really believe that if a society would prioritize time over "work-is-life" and/or materialism it would lead to some kind of a stone age society, or are you just provokingly dogmatic?
- Udik 10y ago
  Yes, I do think that somehow we've been screwed starting from agriculture, and that societies where people have lots of free time are basically hunters and gatherers societies. This doesn't mean that we won't get that again in the future thanks to some technological advancement. But that opens a completely different kind of issues.
  - jahaja 10y ago
    Do you have anything to back this theory up? If our working time hasn't changed throughout the productivity gains during the 20th century there are other forces at play, namely political.
    - Udik 10y ago
      No. And I guess the same could be said for the opposite theory. But just look around you: everything that is man made has taken an enormous amount of effort and accumulated knowledge. It's not been made by people who worked three hours per day devoting the rest to socialisation and a painting lessons. The people who invented antibiotics worked their asses off in university and laboratories to find a way for other people to survive infections. All the tools that they were using have been invented by people literally living in their shops and laboratories, and mass produced in factories, keeping their availability high and their price low. If you take any situation or object in your life and follow backwards the chain of work and invention that has been needed to design it, produce it and keep it working, you realise that this chain has required an enormous amount of effort by everybody involved. This might be the relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1741/ http://xkcd.com/1741/
      - jahaja 10y ago
        You seem to be confusing free time with unproductive time and at the same time singing the gospel of hard work as a virtue. Reading this I'm surprised that you're not more worried about the thousands of great minds lost having to work hard their whole lives.
    - Udik 10y ago
      Sorry, I hadn't seen the second part of your comment. Our working time hasn't changed throughout the enormous productivity gains of the 20th century. But the amount and quality of available products has. It's hugely superior. Maybe you could work one hour per day in our present time and have the same products available that you had in the year 1900. But would you? Or would you end up asking someone to work just that one more hour when it's for a good cause - some life to save, some impressive machine to build, someone waiting in a queue, having fresh bread on Sundays or bringing you to some holiday destination in August?
      - jahaja 10y ago
        My underlying point is that work is not an end in itself. Reducing coerced work, be it political, social or economical coercion, means more time to follow whatever passions one has, even if some of those passions may be things that you consider unproductive. For others, that extra time could mean another Einstein instead of a patent clerk with a less lenient boss than were the case.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  Teenagers generally have plentiful time, what percentage of them spend it working productively (without coercion)?
  - jahaja 10y ago
    Do they really? Most countries have a quite elaborate schooling system in place to keep teenagers busy. Or do you think that one should be "productive" throughout the day otherwise it's a vice?
    - Chris2048 10y ago
      Lots of holidays though, and no overtime.

Chris2048 10y ago

Except in this case, it means a salaried worker who guarantees a certain amount of labor for a certain amount of pay, "buying" back their labor commitment by returning some of that salary. Why is it a shame that food, shelter and clean water have to be bought? They are cheap (well, shelter can differ) isn't that enough?

adrianratnapala 10y ago
It can mean that, but I primarily meant other things: you can buy back your time by hiring a house cleaner, or eating out more often, or buying labour saving gadgets, and probably in various other ways.
valleyer 10y ago
Because it means that the amount of free time people have (for mental or physical relaxation, spending with loved ones, personal [non-employment-related] study) depends on how easily you can part with some of your money. If you believe, as I do, that the amount of wealth people enjoy is in many cases a result of luck -- luck in who raised you and where, luck in the stock market, luck in genetics -- then it starts to seem wrong to distribute "time" in exchange for money.

mseebach 10y ago

That's a feature of physics, not vague notions around what "we" have built. Time is and can never be "plentiful" nor "shared in". Everybody has a limited amount of time which is theirs and theirs alone, and what you do with it matters - it's called opportunity cost. When you spend a large amount of time on something, it's not unreasonable to consider whether it was worth it (although that worth can reasonably be measured along other axes than money).

mfukar 10y ago

I doubt time has ever been a plentiful resource for humans.

grecy 10y ago
Numerous studies have shown that hunter-gatherer societies only had to spend a few hours a day getting food and shelter. The rest was leisure time.
- gpvos 10y ago
  Also, life was brutal and short.
- throwawayReply 10y ago
  But under those societies the world only supported a few million people.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Feature! Under those societies it could. And there was little endogenous reason why that might suddenly change. We've retained all the same exogenous risks, and added considerably more endogenous ones to boot.