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Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

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Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#131

Post by rbanffy »

sanderjd wrote: post #58
losteric wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're seeing the rise of humanity's vile offspring (to borrow from Accelerando)... ethereal ideas birthed from greed and made corporeal by law, financial machines beyond the power or comprehension of individuals.

At this point, I'm honestly not sure if this thread is a series of extremely pessimistic people, or a fairly clever riff on Lovecraftian doom writing.

People work a lot, are more productive than ever and, yet, the benefits of that are disproportionately funnelled to a tiny minority who owns the means of production. Most of the people consider this arrangement is moral, viable and sustainable and will defend it to their death.

Why would we be pessimistic?

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#132

Post by rbanffy »

wrong_variable wrote: post #17
static_noise wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cancer has befallen the whole planet. Everything will be made to money. The whole world is becoming one big machine.

Damn, glass half empty much ?

A bank owns the glass. You just rent it.

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#133

Post by rbanffy »

arca_vorago wrote: post #21
sremani wrote: post #4

Some are missing the point, most of the work we as software developers does not need long hours but deep focus. The best of the best are able to have 4 hours worth of deep focus, and we are lucky to get an hour or two of it. That would be huge. So the good habits that help us with focus and emphasizes on recovery like walking in the woods (our natural habitat), meditation etc. Its not the time, the hardware of brain…

On the same point, this is one of my primary frustrations as a sysadmin, because sometimes I need to be available lickety-split, but sometimes I need to be in deep focus mode, but my office environment isn't very conducive to deep focus mode... so sometimes I have to disappear myself to a hidden place just to get some thinking in. Or, what happens more often, is that my productivity suffers and I end up staying late…

> I continually hear the guys who have worked at a place more than 15 years say "You have to put in the work and effort and then hope they give you that raise, perk, etc...".

This is just disgusting. The oppressed defending the unfair system that enslaves them while hoping, one day, to be rewarded and turned into one of the oppressors.

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#134

Post by mikekchar »

mbrock wrote: post #114
mikekchar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earlier someone said that they want to opt out of the whole thing. Although I'm not you and I can't know precisely what you are feeling, I'm going to make an educated guess that this is the key to your freedom. This invisible boot is an illusion. I once read an article on privilege. The idea is that if you were a slave owner, you could "promote" some of your slaves to be "head slaves". This privilege creates a kind o…

From the "eerie" mindset, your comment is exactly on point as Big Brother-type soothing propaganda.

:-) Yes, you are probably right.

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#135

Post by vlehto »

austinjp wrote: post #129
dragonwriter wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do not live in a post-scarcity world, and to say that we do shows a failure to understand the economic concept of scarcity. If goods aren't scarce, they have no opportunity cost -- anyone in such a society could get as much, e.g., filet mignon as they want without sacrificing their ability to get quality healthcare, education, or consumer electronics. Greater overall and per capita productivity isn't, and doesn't…

I don't quite follow this. I'm inclined to believe we are experiencing scarcity. Sure, I can buy just about anything I desire and can afford. Any food item, cheap clothing, cheap travel. But I think that's an illusion. Let's say I'm prepared to pay £50-£100 for an item of clothing. Shoes, jacket, whatever. It's likely to be made by impoverished people on the other side of the world who are paid peanuts. I could even…

While pretty hideous sweashops do exist, there is still good chance that the person who sowed your jeans chose to do it. Because the alternative was even worse.

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#136

Post by berntb »

leonroy wrote: post #115
berntb wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been on both sides of the fence. I had continuous allergy problems without knowing it for a large part of my life. Among the effects were a minor depression. When I got rid of the allergies I had a bit of an identity conflict, I wasn't the one I thought. My humour and world view weren't as dark, I liked people more. It is a strange to adjust your self image so much after 40.

Did change in diet play a part in getting rid of your allergies? I only ask because a great deal of recent research suggests our behaviour is strongly affected by our gut bacteria which are in turn affected by our overall diet.

Well, a diet without allergens made a big difference. :-)

Also, I lowered coffee/sugar intak drastically when I wasn't tired all the time.

I still have the allergies. They got worse, which is why their existence obvious. (The main problem it took time was that I was bad for five days after eating anything wrong, so I never really saw anything but sick.)

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#137

Post by aninhumer »

6t6t6 wrote: post #29
simplemath wrote: post #8

Overworked? Everyone is overworked. We live in a post scarcity industrial world, or very very close to it, and bad actors have gobbled up the spoils of the huge gains in productivity in the last 50 years. How much of the entire economy is predicated on grey money? How much of your time is indirectly consumed by this leviathan? The more I think about it, the more i want to opt out of the entire fucking thing.

So, you took the red pill?

Just so you know, while it's a complete misappropriation of the reference, "the red pill" is a term associated with a particular group with strong opinions on gender politics: https://www.reddit.com/r/theredpill

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#138

Post by varjag »

metachris wrote: post #124
kagamine wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to Norway except for the bit about reparations, and it's 37.5 hours.

Here in Austria its 38.5hrs, 5 weeks vacation, and in June and December employees receive a doubled monthly salary ("vacation money" and "christmas money").

If it's anything like Norwegian "christmas money", it's just a tax accounting rule where you pay for it the other 11 months in year.

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#139

Post by vlehto »

rbanffy wrote: post #131
sanderjd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, I'm honestly not sure if this thread is a series of extremely pessimistic people, or a fairly clever riff on Lovecraftian doom writing.

People work a lot, are more productive than ever and, yet, the benefits of that are disproportionately funnelled to a tiny minority who owns the means of production. Most of the people consider this arrangement is moral, viable and sustainable and will defend it to their death. Why would we be pessimistic?

And the only alternative seems to be to swich the guys who get the money funnel. Or some other guys who get the money funnel. Or some other guys...

Yup. Feeling pessimist now.

Re: Overworked? Good habits, not holidays, are the answer

#140

Post by aninhumer »

refurb wrote: post #94
Tsagadai wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Volume and proportion are not the same thing. 50% of net is very easy when you have >10% of all wealth. No super rich individuals are taxed at 50% either of their net income either (if they are they are doing their taxes themselves and their lawyer is a fool), it is more common for ultra high wealth individuals to pay less than 10% of their net earnings.

I see your point, but don't forget that almost 50% of Americans don't pay any federal tax at all.[1] In fact some of them get EITC, so they are getting free money from the government on top of keeping all of their salary. So my question still stands, what would be a fair breakdown of tax burden? Top 1% pay 100% of all income taxes? 90%? I'm not trying to start an argument, I'm asking an honest question. Unless we kno…

I think asking what's "fair" is the wrong question. We should ask what is effective at creating the most utility. I believe the marginal utility of money is roughly logarithmic, and thus taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor creates a lot of utility. However, this must also be balanced with the economic incentives that (potential) inequality drives, which leads to a lot of utility creation.

The intuition I take out of this, is that letting people be billionaires is a complete waste of resources, because plenty of people would still aspire to wealth even if the richest person in the world had a fraction of that.

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