America's misguided culture of overwork

My version:

I've always operated under the assumption that unequal wealth distribution ('fair' is a loaded word) has an economic cost, since equalities in wealth (+ economic freedom) encourage economy-expanding activities like entrepreneurship. [removed the last point as it is fair one on its own, but is not entailed from the previous statements.]

I could be wrong, though. Can anyone come up with an example of voluntary equal wealth distribution in a country relatively lacking in resources?

There is a game-theoretic problem with voluntary wealth distribution. I'm happy to give up my income if all my peers do, but I'm really not inclined to do this if my peers don't.

Anyhow, the Anglo idea-sphere seems to have a glut of free-market-is-the-best notions, and a vacuum where the counter-arguments lie. Here's one, for you, then: if there is more equal wealth distribution, then more people have more money (by definition), which almost always means that more people are better educated and have more economic opportunity. This means more people are free to invent stuff, to start businesses, and to generally innovate. It takes a particular level of education and economic opportunity to have the human capacity to support an Apple or a Google -- a level of education that is possessed by, conservatively, less than 20% of the population. Much of the American population is simply not equipped, by age 16, to have said opportunity. Imagine, then, what might happen if we doubled the size the base of people that could start/support an Apple or a Google -- wouldn't this lead to higher GDP and overall wealth?

The parent's inequality=economically-good assumes that the population's entrepreneurial spirit is static, and not affected by means or opportunity (while, granted, one can succeed in spite of a lack of opportunity, it does not follow that added opportunity will not encourage entrepreneurship or innovation).

My contention, thus, is:

more equality ==> a greater number of empowered people ==> more and better businesses and economic activity ==> more wealth.

I spent four months living in Germany.

I see tons more national pride when I am in the United States.

The only national pride I have seen Germany conveyed was for their football team. Some Germans find it difficult to even discuss their recent history, they feel very shameful about it.

If anything struck me about Germany it was how everyone could agree on rational things. Everyone agrees to fund the train stations. Most of them use rational arguments in conversation. Even in emotionally distressing times, it is common for people to fall onto their reason.

That would be my guess. And the only connection to national I pride I see, is trying to be so rational as to ensure that the last time they had too much national pride never comes back.

But then again, who really knows? How many millions of little factors could all add up to the net changes we see in our cultures.

Herd effects, and company policies. Americans != programmers at startups.

> Want a society with 20-hour work weeks? Cool. Go build one. Nobody is stopping you, and if it's wildly successful then others will very quickly copy it. This is a very easy thing. Actually from this angle I don't even see the point of the article.

In reality, there have been many societies with 20-hour workweeks (many hunter-gatherer societies) and many of them were wildly successful, as measured by the health and self-reported happiness of their members. But someone did in fact stop them.

If you try to set up a hunter-gatherer society with 20-hour workweeks in, say, Iowa, I guarantee you that someone will be stopping you in short order. There's plenty of grass seeds to gather and a certain amount of game to hunt, but you will inevitably come into land-use conflict with the other people nearby. Even if you are one of the tiny minority of people so rich as to be able to buy up a large chunk of central Iowa as a reserve for this purpose, you're likely to be prosecuted for permitting noxious weeds on your property, sued for allowing Roundup Ready soy to cross-pollinate onto your property, quite likely arrested for marrying your daughter off at 12, and perhaps committed to a mental institution.

(And then there's the difficulty of changing the culture of a group of people. Most utopian communities fail, because inventing a culture is difficult. People start with an existing culture and judge everything according to it. We don't even know what beliefs you'd need to adopt to live successfully as a hunter-gatherer, to say nothing of the knowledge.)

Wherever you go, you have to contend with the existing norms, laws, and resource allocations. You need a certain amount of natural resources to survive. The areas most richly endowed with natural resources are also richly endowed with groups of people who value their exclusive access to those resources and are willing to fight, or request others to fight, to preserve that exclusive access.

So, you know, it only takes a few hectares of most islands in Micronesia to support a human life, and collecting the coconuts, breadfruit, papaya, and so on is really pretty easy; you don't even need 20 hours a week. As a result, there are already people living off those hectares. If you try to "go build one" there, they will fight you, and the US government will ultimately back them up.

I'd be very interested in hearing about what you turn up. I've been playing around with this idea as part of a prolonged debate I've had with a friend of mine over the purported benefits of inequality. His claim was essentially that it takes an obscenely wealthy patron to create a Mozart and outsized rewards to provide sufficient motivation.

Presumably the first thing to figure out is what affects an individual economic agent's long-term output. There are definitely a lot of factors. Here are some off the top of my head, fwtw:

- capital available - education level - area of interest - availability of good mentorship - intrinsic emotional/psychological motivating force of income inequality (this is what you referred to earlier) - individual's exposure to "culture" of innovation/productivity