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What sucks in reading the bread book is when you get to the bit where he talks about productivity. He has some great figures on the productive output of every i

by 1-more 5y ago

What sucks in reading the bread book is when you get to the bit where he talks about productivity. He has some great figures on the productive output of every industry in France, and what it would take for everyone in France to have enough down to the per capita consumption of meat, grain, etc. And he pointed to the industrial changes that had done so much already: surely the age of plenty for all and copious leisure is right around the corner, if we can just muster the political will! But it doesn't work out like that. We still work a lot. In fact there's a loosely negative correlation between difficulty of a job and standard of living in the U.S. So every time a futurist talks about how AI or automation or whatever is going to give everyone so much free time we won't know what to do with ourselves, I can't help but think back to the facts and figures of this dude writing before we'd even harnessed electricity at scale.

teg4n_ 5y ago
>copious leisure is right around the corner, if we can just muster the political will! But it doesn't work out like that. We still work a lot. I don't think we've ever mustered the political will to even give it a shot, so the fact that we work more than ever is not really a point against Kropotkin, IMO.
- galaxyLogic 5y ago
  I think the issue is we are all mortals. No matter how much wealth we have we will all die. Sorry to crash the party. But wealth can prolong life and make it more enjoyable. People will never have enough so they will work more even when they don't have shortage of food. Even if you are rich and think you have more than enough, you SHOULD think you want to earn more just to be able to give it away to the less fortunate.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    I think you underestimate the number of people who'd accept a relatively comfortable life. Not everyone wants to max things out.
    - galaxyLogic 5y ago
      > number of people who'd accept a relatively comfortable life Congratulations to those who have achieved that level of spiritual enlightenment. Of course we "accept" what we have since it is what we have. What you're gonna do file a complaint? People in need think they would be more than happy to "accept" a "relatively comfortable life". Who wouldn't? The point is the word "relatively". Once they achieve that level then relatively happy will mean the next thing.
      - germinalphrase 5y ago
        That “having enough” requires enlightenment speaks volumes about our cultural disease.
        gretch 5y ago
        Why is it necessarily a disease and not a natural part of the human condition? It seems to me like if we were the sort of beings to say “this is enough”, we would have never made it out of hunter-gatherer.
        beaconstudios 5y ago
        Ambition and curiosity are separate instincts from greed. If you think all innovation comes from greed, that itself is a cultural belief and cannot explain the greatest innovators in history like Einstein, Newton, Da Vinci or Tesla. The icon of innovative greed would be someone like Edison who was a profoundly cruel and greedy man who stole the ideas of others more tab he created himself. There's your icon of capitalistic innovation.
      - dgb23 5y ago
        Many would be content with maintaining a sustainable, comfortable life. Today the general worker in developed countries is more productive than 40/50 years ago but gets less for it. Less and less middle class workers can afford to by their own house or apartment and those with lower paying jobs are barely getting by often under harsh conditions. Life should be getting better for all due to overall increase in productivity, but it's getting worse for many or is stagnating, while there are few who have been amassing obscene amounts of wealth and power.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    The majority of the people who routinely work more than 50 or 60 hours a week don't do it to become rich. They do it to survive. The stereotypical hard working SV entrepreneur is in a very tiny minority. Interviews to people in hospices show that one of the most common regrets is having worked too much.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - notinty 5y ago
    I feel like the word wealth has been bastardized pretty badly, but using its original meaning I'd argue that wealth has to be created; it isn't straightforward to "give it away". Teaching to fish and all.
Animats 5y ago
"copious leisure is right around the corner, if we can just muster the political will! But it doesn't work out like that. We still work a lot." This is worth thinking about. What do people actually do? Well, this is what.[1] - Farming is tiny. Under 1% of the labor force. In 1900, it was around 40%. (That's typical of most developed countries. Since the US is a net food exporter, that's not due to imports. Food preparation is 10x the size of farming. (Farmers complain that they capture only a small fraction of the value of food as eaten, but they're not doing more than a small fraction of the labor involved.) - US manufacturing is around 5% of the labor force. Some of that is due to imports. In Kropotkin's day, those two categories covered most of the workforce. - Health care, broadly defined, consumes a sizable fraction of the labor force. An interesting question to ask is how much other employment is not really necessary. How much is zero-sum activity? - If advertising was no longer a tax-deductible business expense, there would be a lot less of it. - If insurance was standardized (as it is for Medicare), the insurance industry could be far smaller. - If finance faced a tax on financial transactions and was restricted to the product set of 1980, finance would be far smaller. This would look a lot like China's policies today, or US policies of the 1950s. [1] https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/emp-by-major-occupational-group.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/emp-by-major-occupational-gro...
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  > Farmers complain that they capture only a small fraction of the value of food as eaten They’re still not wrong. The difference between what they get paid for a potato and what I pay for a bag is quite extreme. I think it’s quite a bit different than say, gasoline vs barrel of oil, or iPhone at Bestbuy vs what Apple gets paid, or lower-end clothing. I get that potato is low value/lb, but I’m thinking the same applies as you go up the value/lb for raw things.
  - nine_k 5y ago
    Production is cheap because it's massive and economies of scale apply, but distribution is not because it works with every customer inevitably. Every customer in a supermarket needs to interact with a cashier. Also, transporting, washing, sorting, storing are all scalable but not free, and these are important parts of the easy availability for the end customer. Then, storage is not preserving 100% of produce, some of it inevitably withers or spoils, and handling this is also not free. Potatoes are only dirt cheap if you buy them in bulk on the farm, then store in your basement, and sort and handle yourself. This is a lot of work and time spent, I've seen such an approach firsthand.
nine_k 5y ago
Have you read Clay Shirky's "Gin, Television, and Cognitive Surplus" [1]? He argues that technology does free us from more and more work, and we find ways to spend this time, by wasting it, or by fitting other things into it. E.g. the lazy Saturday when people can just do sweet nothing, watch TV, play games, or maybe feel bad about nothing good to do is a very recent development. [1]: https://gist.github.com/jm3/6724931 https://gist.github.com/jm3/6724931
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  People like Marshall Sahlins (Graeber's mentor) woudl strongly disagree that leisure like this is recent, in the sense that he believe(d) that pre-agricultural human societies had lots of free time available to (almost) everyone.
  - nine_k 5y ago
    Yes, much like gorillas. The problem is the same as with gorillas: habitats supporting such leisurely life are rare, and cannot support density required for any kind of technological and most forms of social advancement. This makes life leisurely but full of peril.
    - AutumnCurtain 5y ago
      The memoir "Indian Boyhood" by Dr. Charles Eastman gives excellent examples of this. He describes life in his native American tribe as alternating between the best life can offer and desperation / extreme discomfort. They did little to no work in spring and summer but faced constant warfare and often bitter winters, not to mention the risks involved in hunting large game. He notes how they lived at all times just moments from calamity but didn't live in fear per se.
dgb23 5y ago
Other anarchists have been talking about this issue specifically. A interesting example would be David Graeber[0]. His books Debt and especially Bullshit Jobs were discussed on HN quite a bit. Many of us in software and tech in general understand what he was saying on some level, some even make a huge buck out of it by cutting away the cleric and managerial work. We haven't figured this out completely but the general drive I observe from people who think deeply about process and information is that we tend to be allergic against bureaucracy and the thing we call accidental complexity. If you look at this things through the lens of a radical, then you might come to the conclusion that the underlying problem is systemic. We have a economic system that is optimized for growth and competition, while most of our big challenges today require maintenance and collaboration. And we have a political system that is rigid, bureaucratic and often violent, when people long for self-determination and peace. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber
- 1-more 5y ago
  Yeah, I'm a big fan of his. Bullshit Jobs kinda changed me, honestly.
neilparikh 5y ago
The law of rent[0] means that broad increases in productivity[1] will eventually just be captured by land. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent [1] - ie. increases in productivity of everyone in the region rather than just a few individuals or industries
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  Also applies to the iron law of wages where productivity gains are captured in profit and wages are held as low as the market can sustain.
dredmorbius 5y ago
See Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class.
darthrupert 5y ago
Difference is that they had to work all the time to generate enough wealth to produce enough to stay alive. We just fill up the day to 8 hours because "everyone has to work 8 hours a day" -- even when the productive parts could be done in 30 minutes per day.

by 1-more 5y ago

teg4n_ 5y ago

>copious leisure is right around the corner, if we can just muster the political will! But it doesn't work out like that. We still work a lot. I don't think we've ever mustered the political will to even give it a shot, so the fact that we work more than ever is not really a point against Kropotkin, IMO.

galaxyLogic 5y ago
I think the issue is we are all mortals. No matter how much wealth we have we will all die. Sorry to crash the party. But wealth can prolong life and make it more enjoyable. People will never have enough so they will work more even when they don't have shortage of food. Even if you are rich and think you have more than enough, you SHOULD think you want to earn more just to be able to give it away to the less fortunate.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  I think you underestimate the number of people who'd accept a relatively comfortable life. Not everyone wants to max things out.
  - galaxyLogic 5y ago
    > number of people who'd accept a relatively comfortable life Congratulations to those who have achieved that level of spiritual enlightenment. Of course we "accept" what we have since it is what we have. What you're gonna do file a complaint? People in need think they would be more than happy to "accept" a "relatively comfortable life". Who wouldn't? The point is the word "relatively". Once they achieve that level then relatively happy will mean the next thing.
    - germinalphrase 5y ago
      That “having enough” requires enlightenment speaks volumes about our cultural disease.
      - gretch 5y ago
        Why is it necessarily a disease and not a natural part of the human condition? It seems to me like if we were the sort of beings to say “this is enough”, we would have never made it out of hunter-gatherer.
        beaconstudios 5y ago
        Ambition and curiosity are separate instincts from greed. If you think all innovation comes from greed, that itself is a cultural belief and cannot explain the greatest innovators in history like Einstein, Newton, Da Vinci or Tesla. The icon of innovative greed would be someone like Edison who was a profoundly cruel and greedy man who stole the ideas of others more tab he created himself. There's your icon of capitalistic innovation.
    - dgb23 5y ago
      Many would be content with maintaining a sustainable, comfortable life. Today the general worker in developed countries is more productive than 40/50 years ago but gets less for it. Less and less middle class workers can afford to by their own house or apartment and those with lower paying jobs are barely getting by often under harsh conditions. Life should be getting better for all due to overall increase in productivity, but it's getting worse for many or is stagnating, while there are few who have been amassing obscene amounts of wealth and power.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  The majority of the people who routinely work more than 50 or 60 hours a week don't do it to become rich. They do it to survive. The stereotypical hard working SV entrepreneur is in a very tiny minority. Interviews to people in hospices show that one of the most common regrets is having worked too much.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- notinty 5y ago
  I feel like the word wealth has been bastardized pretty badly, but using its original meaning I'd argue that wealth has to be created; it isn't straightforward to "give it away". Teaching to fish and all.

Animats 5y ago

"copious leisure is right around the corner, if we can just muster the political will! But it doesn't work out like that. We still work a lot." This is worth thinking about. What do people actually do? Well, this is what.[1] - Farming is tiny. Under 1% of the labor force. In 1900, it was around 40%. (That's typical of most developed countries. Since the US is a net food exporter, that's not due to imports. Food preparation is 10x the size of farming. (Farmers complain that they capture only a small fraction of the value of food as eaten, but they're not doing more than a small fraction of the labor involved.) - US manufacturing is around 5% of the labor force. Some of that is due to imports. In Kropotkin's day, those two categories covered most of the workforce. - Health care, broadly defined, consumes a sizable fraction of the labor force. An interesting question to ask is how much other employment is not really necessary. How much is zero-sum activity? - If advertising was no longer a tax-deductible business expense, there would be a lot less of it. - If insurance was standardized (as it is for Medicare), the insurance industry could be far smaller. - If finance faced a tax on financial transactions and was restricted to the product set of 1980, finance would be far smaller. This would look a lot like China's policies today, or US policies of the 1950s. [1] https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/emp-by-major-occupational-group.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/emp-by-major-occupational-gro...

Scoundreller 5y ago
> Farmers complain that they capture only a small fraction of the value of food as eaten They’re still not wrong. The difference between what they get paid for a potato and what I pay for a bag is quite extreme. I think it’s quite a bit different than say, gasoline vs barrel of oil, or iPhone at Bestbuy vs what Apple gets paid, or lower-end clothing. I get that potato is low value/lb, but I’m thinking the same applies as you go up the value/lb for raw things.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Production is cheap because it's massive and economies of scale apply, but distribution is not because it works with every customer inevitably. Every customer in a supermarket needs to interact with a cashier. Also, transporting, washing, sorting, storing are all scalable but not free, and these are important parts of the easy availability for the end customer. Then, storage is not preserving 100% of produce, some of it inevitably withers or spoils, and handling this is also not free. Potatoes are only dirt cheap if you buy them in bulk on the farm, then store in your basement, and sort and handle yourself. This is a lot of work and time spent, I've seen such an approach firsthand.

nine_k 5y ago

Have you read Clay Shirky's "Gin, Television, and Cognitive Surplus" [1]? He argues that technology does free us from more and more work, and we find ways to spend this time, by wasting it, or by fitting other things into it. E.g. the lazy Saturday when people can just do sweet nothing, watch TV, play games, or maybe feel bad about nothing good to do is a very recent development. [1]: https://gist.github.com/jm3/6724931 https://gist.github.com/jm3/6724931

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
People like Marshall Sahlins (Graeber's mentor) woudl strongly disagree that leisure like this is recent, in the sense that he believe(d) that pre-agricultural human societies had lots of free time available to (almost) everyone.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Yes, much like gorillas. The problem is the same as with gorillas: habitats supporting such leisurely life are rare, and cannot support density required for any kind of technological and most forms of social advancement. This makes life leisurely but full of peril.
  - AutumnCurtain 5y ago
    The memoir "Indian Boyhood" by Dr. Charles Eastman gives excellent examples of this. He describes life in his native American tribe as alternating between the best life can offer and desperation / extreme discomfort. They did little to no work in spring and summer but faced constant warfare and often bitter winters, not to mention the risks involved in hunting large game. He notes how they lived at all times just moments from calamity but didn't live in fear per se.

dgb23 5y ago

Other anarchists have been talking about this issue specifically. A interesting example would be David Graeber[0]. His books Debt and especially Bullshit Jobs were discussed on HN quite a bit. Many of us in software and tech in general understand what he was saying on some level, some even make a huge buck out of it by cutting away the cleric and managerial work. We haven't figured this out completely but the general drive I observe from people who think deeply about process and information is that we tend to be allergic against bureaucracy and the thing we call accidental complexity. If you look at this things through the lens of a radical, then you might come to the conclusion that the underlying problem is systemic. We have a economic system that is optimized for growth and competition, while most of our big challenges today require maintenance and collaboration. And we have a political system that is rigid, bureaucratic and often violent, when people long for self-determination and peace. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber

1-more 5y ago
Yeah, I'm a big fan of his. Bullshit Jobs kinda changed me, honestly.

neilparikh 5y ago

The law of rent[0] means that broad increases in productivity[1] will eventually just be captured by land. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent [1] - ie. increases in productivity of everyone in the region rather than just a few individuals or industries

beaconstudios 5y ago
Also applies to the iron law of wages where productivity gains are captured in profit and wages are held as low as the market can sustain.

dredmorbius 5y ago

See Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class.

darthrupert 5y ago

Difference is that they had to work all the time to generate enough wealth to produce enough to stay alive. We just fill up the day to 8 hours because "everyone has to work 8 hours a day" -- even when the productive parts could be done in 30 minutes per day.