10 ms·

Call me old fashioned, but rather than working yourself silly to then spend your money buying time back, why don't we set society up so that you have to work le

• atomashpolskiy 9y ago
  More work produces more goods/services to sell, why would capitalists cut back on their profits?
  • beaconstudios 9y ago
    because not all capitalists work for publicly traded companies where they are legally bound to maximise profits. There are plenty of businesspeople out there who aren't constantly seeking out new ways to increase profits. Usually small business owners.
    • atomashpolskiy 9y ago
      What kind of impact do these lifestyle businesspeople have on an average person's life? Or do you mean that they are a good example of giving up on pursuing wealth in exchange for spare time and unquantifiable humanly joys?
      • beaconstudios 9y ago
        I mean they're a good model of what healthy capitalism can look like. Provide valuable services, don't work your employees to death to maximise profits for the mob-rule of shareholders, stay small and focus on well-roundedness. I'm very pro-capitalism and I can't stand the enterprise model of business, it's very dehumanising.
• shusson 9y ago
  > why don't we set society up so that you have to work less in the first place to earn a living I think in practice this is very hard and would require modification of economic fundamentals e.g at a very broad level capitalism vs socialism.
  • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    We did end slavery, we did introduce a 40 hour week, we did stop children working. If you take Europe as an example the country with the strongest economy is among the shortest working hours.
    • atomashpolskiy 9y ago
      Tell this to the people in "developing" countries, who make your clothes and gadgets.
      • beaconstudios 9y ago
        many of those things are made in south-east Asia, in countries that aren't really "developing" in the sense you're implying. China is a modern country, Taiwan is a modern country.
      • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
        Actually, all those things happened before we started outsourcing to Asia.
        • atomashpolskiy 9y ago
          True. The problem is that these things magically "unhappened" at some point in the last few decades.
    • terminalcommand 9y ago
      The problem is 40 hour week does not apply to high-earning professionals such as brokers, lawyers, doctors etc. I do not think corporate lawyers in Europe stick to a 40 hour week schedule. I'm currently interning at a law firm, and everyone around here works 10 or more hours a day on average. (official office hours are 09:30-19:30, but only on rare occasions you can leave at 19:30 sharp. )
• z3t4 9y ago
  Some people actually love what they do for "work".
  • TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Good for them. That would be a what, a pretty small fraction of the global population? And that's before asking whether it's true love or just Stockholm syndrome.
  • pasquinelli 9y ago
    I don't understand those people. I went out and got a job doing what I love, but it only turned the thing I love into a fucking job.
    • octygen 9y ago
      This happened to me too. I find the quality of the boss/leadership mitigates this for me. A good leader can make a job into something you love if it can be aligned to what you want to do. I try to attain this utopia with everyone on my teams.
    • z3t4 9y ago
      If it feels like work, it's work, otherwise you would do it for free right !? smile Most people enjoy the reward, and that's ok, but there's also people that enjoy the work. But you can't expect it to be fun all the time. But for those of you who hates your work, I think extrinsic motivation (a salary) works just as well as intrinsic motivation for both "success" and happiness.
  • Rainymood 9y ago
    Maybe work satisfaction is like a bell-curve? There are a small amount of people who absolutely LOVE what they do and also a very small amount of epople who absolutely HATE what they do with a large majority in the middle.
    • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
      Actually, I think the statistics show most people hate their jobs.
• andruby 9y ago
  When we work more and spend money to outsource household stuff, that increases GDP and allows the government to tax more of the economic output. If you do your own household work, that's not counted in the GDP and is non-taxable. I guess that's why some countries have been subsidising day care, etc.
  • ajdlinux 9y ago
    Intuitively, I'd expect that a day care provider has a higher ratio of children to staff than families have of children to primary caregivers, and that the difference is such that subsidising day care can increase GDP just by freeing up more parents to work
  • blowski 9y ago
    A relevant observation (not my own): > If I marry my housekeeper, national GDP goes down
    • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
      But personal well-being goes up.
• manmal 9y ago
  Update: Sorry this comment does not quite fit with parent, I actually wanted to post it as a root comment. My big hope for reducing time spent on current society's tasks is robotics. There already are robots for a lot of tedious tasks, in theory - vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, even window and BBQ grill cleaners. Alas, except for maybe vacuums and mowers, those tend not to buy time but just shift your work from the basic activity to maintaining the robot. But I think a universal, affordable household robot is absolutely within reach, and it would not require general intelligence, but just well implemented capabilities. From sorting dishes to vacuuming, stairclimbing, taking out the trash to a predefined location, sorting in groceries, to maybe cooking with the help of standardized storage and equipment - I don't care if it's all highly specialized tasks, it just has to do enough of them.
  • tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    A lot of those time sinks are self-inflicted, when vacuum cleaners came along we didn't use it as an opportunity to save time but rather to keep our carpets cleaner. The same pattern occurs with lawn mowers, washing machines, BBQ grill cleaners, etc. I know it's a hackneyed quote but our possessions really do own us.
    • mattferderer 9y ago
      I wish I would have read this before buying a Roomba. I thought it would save me so much time because my wife wanted to clean the floors nightly due to having an infant crawling around. Instead of the time saved resulting in relaxation, it ended up "allowing us" to clean other parts instead.
• UK-AL 9y ago
  Because it's more efficient. If your a software developer, 1 hour of your time could probably buy many hours of time from someone else.
  • dalbasal 9y ago
    Efficient by what standard? IE what are we optimizing for?
    • UK-AL 9y ago
      Time
    • IshKebab 9y ago
      Free time in that case. If I work for one hour to pay a cleaner to work for two I end up with more free time.
  • grecy 9y ago
    If you sit down and run the numbers, it's not even close. Going to work to pay other people to do things for you to "free up time" simply does not work. You will work a lot more than you would if you just did things for yourself. Money is an extremely inefficient middle-man, given taxes and everyone wanting their cut. Keep in mind you have to deduct taxes from your income, and the expenses it costs you to earn your income (clothes, transport, bought food, parking, car & maintenance, expensive housing, etc.). Also keep in mind you must pay others with after-tax dollars. So when you pay that mechanic or plumber $85 per hour, that's a LOT of money, not even similar to you EARNING $85/hr. I wrote a book about it, and in all my research and calculations, it roughly works out that most people earn only around 30-50% as much as they think they do.. so even if your salary is $120k, you're only earning something like $30/hr at absolute best, which is much lower than you pay a plumber or mechanic.
    • sideshowb 9y ago
      What would your alternative suggestion be though? Toil on a farm growing your own vegetables? (nb for me this is in the "don't like doing" and "I'm bad at it" quadrant). And if the implied alternative is to be workable for everyone, we have to magic roads, healthcare etc out of nowhere with no tax dollars.
• LouisSayers 9y ago
  There's a certain level of comfort that people will still want to have. I like the idea of doing both - earn high, spend low, and reap the rewards in-between.
  • kazagistar 9y ago
    I'm not sure which rewards you are thinking of. The reward of having a big bank account?
    • lkbm 9y ago
      Basic financial security if you can pull this off better than the average American. Early retirement if you do much better. Most people are stressed about money. Then they get a raise, their expenses grow with it, and are just as stressed about money. If you can skip grow half of one raise-grow step, you now have some breathing room. If you can skip several, you can get a lot of breathing room, and still have a comfortable life.
• jstanley 9y ago
  > why don't we set society up so that you have to work less in the first place to earn a living? The good news is you don't need to "set society up" to do this. You can just work less and live cheaply, and then you're done. It's especially easy if you're a highly-paid software developer or similar, which you most likely are if you're on HN.
• dalbasal 9y ago
  Well... I suppose it's because we don't set up societies. In some sense the technology has done its job. When Keynes predicted the 15 hour workweek he (ironically) got the technology predictions right, but the economics/sociology wrong. Individuals don't make the choices to optimize for less work. As few individuals make those choices, it is more socially and/or economically difficult to make those choices. For the middle classes, major aspects of the modern economy are also competitive "races." Good neighborhoods, good schools, good colleges... These things are effectively competitive, not absolute. Costs rise with earnings. T The social context isn't limited to pure economics. Generally speaking, people don't tend to choose lifestyles at all. We like to fantasize it, but don't do it that much. I think this comes down the the "we" problem. Lifestyle invention is something people do as groups (if at all) not individuals. We're more individualistic in modern culture, so there's less room for it even though it is more possible than ever. A religious group could more easily decide on a 15-hr-workweek, or some other major lifestyle engineering choice. There are stranger choices that endure longer than that.
• pizza234 9y ago
  Are we not back to the parable of the fisherman and the banker? http://www.garywu.net/fisherman-and-banker/ http://www.garywu.net/fisherman-and-banker/ - It depends on who "we" is. In some cultures, "being the banker" is the ultimate goal in life. I remember talking to a person coming from one of such cultures, telling that "we are taught ambition since we are children". Ambition for the sake of ambition is the root of "being the banker". So certain cultures are not "back to the parable" - they never moved; they likely, never will, and that's fine, it's their choice, and I don't assume that's negative just because I disagree with it. This relates to the previous statement: Call me old fashioned, but rather than working yourself silly to then spend your money buying time back "Bankers" (or "banking cultures", to follow up with the metaphor) won't do this - they will actually see it as opportunity to produce more with the same time.
• grecy 9y ago
  I agree with this wholeheartedly, and have used my ample time to drive around the world. I'm so passionate about it I wrote an e-book called "Work Less to Live Your Dreams". [1] [1] http://amzn.to/2vVzpbG http://amzn.to/2vVzpbG
  • jventura 9y ago
    I like the way you reason on your other posts about the "externalised" costs of not doing your own things at times, as I usually think on similar lines. That is why I usually try to fix my own things, buy second hand, and only buy when truly needed. For instance, I always assume that it will be I that will have to do all the maintenance of whatever I buy. Is this something you talk about on your book? Do you recommend some store where I can get an epub copy of your book (or pdf, but would prefer epub)? I don't have a Kindle, only a Sony PRS-T1. If you have a referal to yourself (outside amazon), it's perfectly fine!
    • grecy 9y ago
      Actually I don't have much in the book about doing your own maintennce, other that working on your car, painting your house, etc. Thanks for the input, maybe it will make it into the revised edition. My book is also on Apple iBook store and kobo. You can buy it off amazon and just read on your computer too.
• wvh 9y ago
  Because the American (referring to the story in link) would push through his own grand visions, create an empire and crush the little man, either as a struggling independent or as a underpaid cog in a large machine. If not enough people (majority?) agree on this philosophy, those that do are going to find themselves on the outside of productive society without the means to live in it. Think small grocery stores, book shops, bakeries, really anything that has been disappearing the last half century. And think how many people can't any more afford to live in the city they were born in.
• pascalxus 9y ago
  It's a good idea, but too many people are against it. And, ultimately, the reason we can't do it, is because we're too desperate for money. Modern day society only allows you to reduce your expenses so much - in CA, the latest generation must pay 50%+ of their salary for basic shelter. This doesn't leave much room to trade significant amounts of money for time. As long, 99% of the population is still shelter insecure (the lowest level of maslow's hierarchy of needs), we won't be able to trade money for time.