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> It's patently ridiculous for a person to spend half their life not working Why is this ridiculous? The idea that the poor should have leisure has always b

by jayunit 14y ago

> It's patently ridiculous for a person to spend half their life not working Why is this ridiculous? The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. In England, in the early nineteenth century, fifteen hours was the ordinary day's work for a man; children sometimes did as much, and very commonly did twelve hours a day. When meddlesome busybodies suggested that perhaps these hours were rather long, they were told that work kept adults from drink and children from mischief. -- http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html Genuinely curious - I'm no economist, and don't understand whether Russell's argument is full of holes, outdated, both, or if rather his proposed reallocation and reduction (through technology) of work is something we should be aspire to.

kamaal 14y ago
You are onto something here. Let me explain you what the problem is. The concept of work is relatively modern compared to the entire human history. Organized work is something that was needed to scale organized living, and growth of human population. Without agriculture, architecture, transport, communication and health care human kind wouldn't have made it till now. Hunter gatherers had it a little easy, each man for his own or at the max his offspring. But this was not scalable, then extremely unpredictable. To scale we had to get down to staying at one place for long periods of time[read: civilization], and then produce food in bulk quantities[Read: Agriculture/farming]. But no man would work for others, so then came in the concept of doing other kind of work. Like building homes, pottery, carts etc and then people would trade one for the other. This was still OK, until the kingdoms and kings came along. And then automatically came the concept of slavery, then soldiers who are supposed to die for king. Misery was the norm in this era. A lot of people were stuck building large monuments and cities for kings. Its during this period the notion 'born into richness' and 'born into poverty' evolved and to a very large extent continues till today. If you are born to some one poor, the world assumes you now have absolutely no 'right' to be rich. And if you do get rich by your work, the rick kids/people think of it as unfair to them. And now matter how lazy, unproductive some rich guy is he considers it unfair to him that he must become poor out of his own actions.
- intended 14y ago
  wut? Tribes have specialized warriors, and also would raid other tribes for loot and spoils of war which included slaves. This didn't need the creation of Kingdoms to achieve this. Man will come up with this at the proto-civ stage because other humans beings are the best tools. You also are drawing some sort of line of intent, that hunter gatherers knew to move towards agriculture, AFAIK the data on how the transition occurred is spotty and is still being debated. EVEN then, from tribal structures and from studying nomadis/hunter gatherers its clear that "men did work for others", at the very least for the good of the tribe, and often because the village headsman would be able to mobilize people to work on mutually beneficial tasks like say, a granary, or even a juju enhancing spirit walk. Bulk food also is something of a recent phenomenon, if you look at the chart of human population growth its balooned since around 1950, and before that the total human population of the world was nearly a billion people. And thats with the invention of the plough, harness, irrigation and so on. While agriculture was massively advantageous compared to whatever we had before, it wasn't without its own pitfalls - such as famines, droughts, pests, bad crops and so on. Finally your last para is at odds with the entire ethos of the USA for a large portion of its existence, that you could get somewhere with merit. Matter of fact its only in the recent past that this has stopped being true.

by jayunit 14y ago

kamaal 14y ago

You are onto something here. Let me explain you what the problem is. The concept of work is relatively modern compared to the entire human history. Organized work is something that was needed to scale organized living, and growth of human population. Without agriculture, architecture, transport, communication and health care human kind wouldn't have made it till now. Hunter gatherers had it a little easy, each man for his own or at the max his offspring. But this was not scalable, then extremely unpredictable. To scale we had to get down to staying at one place for long periods of time[read: civilization], and then produce food in bulk quantities[Read: Agriculture/farming]. But no man would work for others, so then came in the concept of doing other kind of work. Like building homes, pottery, carts etc and then people would trade one for the other. This was still OK, until the kingdoms and kings came along. And then automatically came the concept of slavery, then soldiers who are supposed to die for king. Misery was the norm in this era. A lot of people were stuck building large monuments and cities for kings. Its during this period the notion 'born into richness' and 'born into poverty' evolved and to a very large extent continues till today. If you are born to some one poor, the world assumes you now have absolutely no 'right' to be rich. And if you do get rich by your work, the rick kids/people think of it as unfair to them. And now matter how lazy, unproductive some rich guy is he considers it unfair to him that he must become poor out of his own actions.

intended 14y ago
wut? Tribes have specialized warriors, and also would raid other tribes for loot and spoils of war which included slaves. This didn't need the creation of Kingdoms to achieve this. Man will come up with this at the proto-civ stage because other humans beings are the best tools. You also are drawing some sort of line of intent, that hunter gatherers knew to move towards agriculture, AFAIK the data on how the transition occurred is spotty and is still being debated. EVEN then, from tribal structures and from studying nomadis/hunter gatherers its clear that "men did work for others", at the very least for the good of the tribe, and often because the village headsman would be able to mobilize people to work on mutually beneficial tasks like say, a granary, or even a juju enhancing spirit walk. Bulk food also is something of a recent phenomenon, if you look at the chart of human population growth its balooned since around 1950, and before that the total human population of the world was nearly a billion people. And thats with the invention of the plough, harness, irrigation and so on. While agriculture was massively advantageous compared to whatever we had before, it wasn't without its own pitfalls - such as famines, droughts, pests, bad crops and so on. Finally your last para is at odds with the entire ethos of the USA for a large portion of its existence, that you could get somewhere with merit. Matter of fact its only in the recent past that this has stopped being true.