4 ms·

If you wanted to live to a 1930s standard of education, healthcare, food, entertainment, interior decorarion, transportation, savings etc etc you could most def

If you wanted to live to a 1930s standard of education, healthcare, food, entertainment, interior decorarion, transportation, savings etc etc you could most definitely do it on very few hours of work. Lots of people associated with homesteading, tiny houses etc do so. That said I agree we should be further ahead in paving a way to paradise.

jampekka 1y ago
It's not necessarily about the standard of living, but about production going into the zero or negative sum status consumption. Or as Keynes puts it: > Now it is true that the needs of human beings may seem to be insatiable. But they fall into two classes -- those needs which are absolute in the sense that we feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those which are relative in the sense that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel superior to, our fellows. Needs of the second class, those which satisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed be insatiable; for the higher the general level, the higher still are they. But this is not so true of the absolute needs -- a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
That's not what Keynes meant.
- 0xBDB 1y ago
  It's precisely what Keynes meant. He meant that 15 hours of labor now will buy you what 40 would then. How could he have meant anything else? How would he anticipate houses 50% larger than his generation's, or cars with twice the horsepower at four times the gas mileage, or universal air conditioning (as few houses in the US lack air conditioning now as lacked running water in 1950) or a monthly bill for Internet or proles being able to afford intercontinental flights more than once in a lifetime?
  - jampekka 1y ago
    He postulated eightfold increse in economy, though not clear at what working hours. If he assumed 40 hours then and eightfold productivity increse, with 15 hours that would still be threefold increase in living standards. The productivity has increased even more than eightfold. Keynes was quite damn good at anticipating things.
    - 0xBDB 1y ago
      > He postulated eightfold increse in economy Yes. That's math, the rule of 72. At a 2% growth rate the economy will be 8 times larger in 108 years, more or less. The rate is a bit higher, so we're a bit over 8 in the 95 years since that's been written. > Keynes was quite damn good at anticipating things. But that's not anticipating things, that's projecting an existing growth rate out for another century. Improbable really that it would neither rise nor fall, and one of the reasons it hasn't fallen is that we didn't cut our work week to 15 hours. So the only thing (in this context) that he really anticipated was wrong.

jampekka 1y ago

It's not necessarily about the standard of living, but about production going into the zero or negative sum status consumption. Or as Keynes puts it: > Now it is true that the needs of human beings may seem to be insatiable. But they fall into two classes -- those needs which are absolute in the sense that we feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those which are relative in the sense that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel superior to, our fellows. Needs of the second class, those which satisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed be insatiable; for the higher the general level, the higher still are they. But this is not so true of the absolute needs -- a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.

insane_dreamer 1y ago

That's not what Keynes meant.

0xBDB 1y ago
It's precisely what Keynes meant. He meant that 15 hours of labor now will buy you what 40 would then. How could he have meant anything else? How would he anticipate houses 50% larger than his generation's, or cars with twice the horsepower at four times the gas mileage, or universal air conditioning (as few houses in the US lack air conditioning now as lacked running water in 1950) or a monthly bill for Internet or proles being able to afford intercontinental flights more than once in a lifetime?
- jampekka 1y ago
  He postulated eightfold increse in economy, though not clear at what working hours. If he assumed 40 hours then and eightfold productivity increse, with 15 hours that would still be threefold increase in living standards. The productivity has increased even more than eightfold. Keynes was quite damn good at anticipating things.
  - 0xBDB 1y ago
    > He postulated eightfold increse in economy Yes. That's math, the rule of 72. At a 2% growth rate the economy will be 8 times larger in 108 years, more or less. The rate is a bit higher, so we're a bit over 8 in the 95 years since that's been written. > Keynes was quite damn good at anticipating things. But that's not anticipating things, that's projecting an existing growth rate out for another century. Improbable really that it would neither rise nor fall, and one of the reasons it hasn't fallen is that we didn't cut our work week to 15 hours. So the only thing (in this context) that he really anticipated was wrong.