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Why is everyone so busy? (2014)

economist.com

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Re: Why is everyone so busy? (2014)

#141

Post by nradov »

mayniac wrote: post #139
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " ...the notion that sitting in traffic each morning to reach a room where one stares into a screen for 9 hours - every day, for 40 odd years - is desirable is the greatest con capitalism has ever pulled. " I think you're ignoring the biggest benefit of capitalism. While many people will do something fairly similar to what you're describing, it's not explicitly required or unchangeable. You have the ability, even i…

>For a person washing toilets, this could be the dream of sitting in front of that screen one day. For the person in front of that screen, it could be starting their own business or taking an early retirement and living the rest of their years off the beach. And socialism could eliminate entirely the need to have someone washing toilets. I work in an office of about 2,000 people, over 10 floors, each with 2 sets of b…

Apparently you're unfamiliar with Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage.

Re: Why is everyone so busy? (2014)

#142

Post by nradov »

hliyan wrote: post #53

I'm of the opinion that the root of the problem is inflation (but I'm open to correction). My thinking is that we're constantly being pushed to work harder because no business today can reach a successful steady-state -- it must keep growing. The reason businesses must keep growing is that investors demand it. Investors demand it because they believe that wealth sitting around not making more wealth is a waste. Infla…

The root cause is more fundamental than just inflation. In order to form a new business or expand an existing business, entrepreneurs need capital. Rational investors will only give out that capital if they expect a good rate of return (enough to compensate for the risk of losing the investment and not having that money available for other uses). Thus businesses most grow in order to pay back investors. Otherwise potential investors would just hoard their capital and the economy would never advance.

This is literally Finance 101.

Re: Why is everyone so busy? (2014)

#143

Post by nradov »

YPCrumble wrote: post #118
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both rents and tuition are included in the CPI: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-an... https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/college-tuition.htm

This looks suspicious. There is not a single mention of square footage in the rents document. So let's say everyone moves to a smaller house because housing costs are so high, that's not a sign of inflation?!

The BLS corrects for those factors using hedonic adjustments.

Re: Why is everyone so busy? (2014)

#144

Post by mkagenius »

rhapsodic wrote: post #119
terrytrend wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the money. Fuck the 9-5 corporate work life. I've been doing this everyday for 12 years..and I'm about to blow my brains out. I encourage everyone to find one thing they love and find a way to do it everyday for the rest of your life.

>I encourage everyone to find one thing they love and find a way to do it everyday for the rest of your life. If everyone followed your advice, we would probably have garbage piling up in the streets, because I doubt there are enough people who love collecting it or working in landfills to handle even a fraction of the garbage we generate.

Your reasoning assumes, there can be no one interested in developing automated way to collect garbage or that there could be garbage which is auto collected. My point being, there are endless possibilities if you do not restrict yourself.

Re: Why is everyone so busy? (2014)

#145

Post by laurencerowe »

hliyan wrote: post #53

I'm of the opinion that the root of the problem is inflation (but I'm open to correction). My thinking is that we're constantly being pushed to work harder because no business today can reach a successful steady-state -- it must keep growing. The reason businesses must keep growing is that investors demand it. Investors demand it because they believe that wealth sitting around not making more wealth is a waste. Infla…

Growth and inflation are separate concepts. Inflation measures how nominal prices change year to year (price of a pint of milk) while growth measures the increase in aggregate output (total volume of milk produced.)

Our econonomic system is predicated on continual growth but inflation has been incredibly low since the late 1990s in most western economies, 0-2% compared to 10% or more in the 1970s and 80s.

Re: Why is everyone so busy? (2014)

#146

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

dev1n wrote: post #89
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a [1] hypothesis that economic growth is mostly the result of 1) population growth, 2) energy consumption, and 3) interest rates. Current projections estimate that population will peak at 8.7 billion in 2055. Nearly all of that growth will occur in "developing" countries. Yuval Harari makes the case in Homo Deus that the world is quickly reaching a point where the less developed areas of the world will be mos…

it is quite possible we are near peak energy consumption this is related [1]. [1]: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/can-economic-growth-last/

Wow, this is actually the blog where I first encountered this hypothesis, but I wasn't able to find and link to it. Thanks for doing it for me!

Re: Why is everyone so busy? (2014)

#147

Post by mmsimanga »

prostoalex wrote: post #125
mmsimanga wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take is that organisations after some time begin to mimic animal farm or emperor's clothes type behavior. CEO genuinely believes their contribution to a company they ran for five years yet has been around 50 years is worth hundreds of millions. I have no issues with founders taking that amount of money. Director of marketing doesn't want to be outdone, vice president ... This is why we are so busy and why companie…

Most boards would likely block any kind of cash compensation approaching eight or nine figures, and will strongly insist on stock options. The headlines you see about 9-figure CEO compensation are mainly related to companies whose stock has outperformed. CEOs whose stock languished and didn’t amount to much compensation rarely make magazine covers.

Fair enough. Everything is legal, above board and not all CEOs get the big payload when they eventually sell their shares. Does that make it right?

Re: Why is everyone so busy? (2014)

#148

Post by TangoTrotFox »

mayniac wrote: post #139
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " ...the notion that sitting in traffic each morning to reach a room where one stares into a screen for 9 hours - every day, for 40 odd years - is desirable is the greatest con capitalism has ever pulled. " I think you're ignoring the biggest benefit of capitalism. While many people will do something fairly similar to what you're describing, it's not explicitly required or unchangeable. You have the ability, even i…

>For a person washing toilets, this could be the dream of sitting in front of that screen one day. For the person in front of that screen, it could be starting their own business or taking an early retirement and living the rest of their years off the beach. And socialism could eliminate entirely the need to have someone washing toilets. I work in an office of about 2,000 people, over 10 floors, each with 2 sets of b…

You're not going to just decentralize every job. Toilet washing doesn't sound glorious but janitorial and especially plumbing work comes with some significant skills you have to learn. And besides that, if you spent just 30 minutes for each 'side' job, you'd find everybody in that building working about 20 hours a day and not getting a lick of programming done. There's an enormous amount of work to maintain a 10 story facility, and the vast majority of it is like most work - not exactly pleasant.

Beyond this your argument that janitors have ideas/ambitions/etc again supports a capitalist system. There is nothing overtly stopping these people from trying to take their shot, difficult though it may be. Jack Ma is a good example there. He came from extremely humble beginnings and couldn't get a job even at KFC. He didn't ended up manually biking 'rich' tourists around to get by. In the process he ended up learning English and got exposed to some ideas and concepts that weren't so well known in China. A bit of luck, a lot of ambition, and some great ideas - and he's now one of the richest people in the world. He started his first business when he was already in his 30s, got his first computer when he was 33.

Really I think people are unrealistically critical. Today every child in developed nations has the internet and guaranteed access to basic education and effectively guaranteed access to advanced education. Einstein, for instance, was teaching himself calculus at age 12. That sort of extreme outlier in ability, and maybe even more importantly - ambition and motivation, is not something or somebody that's going to end up end up toiling fields in modern society. And the privileges we all have today are largely a product of the extremes of wealth that allow people to be educated for decades before having to return a single cent back to society.

Re: Why is everyone so busy? (2014)

#149

Post by rhapsodic »

mkagenius wrote: post #144
rhapsodic wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I encourage everyone to find one thing they love and find a way to do it everyday for the rest of your life. If everyone followed your advice, we would probably have garbage piling up in the streets, because I doubt there are enough people who love collecting it or working in landfills to handle even a fraction of the garbage we generate.

Your reasoning assumes, there can be no one interested in developing automated way to collect garbage or that there could be garbage which is auto collected. My point being, there are endless possibilities if you do not restrict yourself.

>Your reasoning assumes, there can be no one interested in developing automated way to collect garbage

That's ridiculous, my reasoning assumes no such thing. I'm well aware that there are, and for at least decades have been, many people engaged in that exact activity. (Whether they "love" it or not.) And yet, we still need many many people who are willing to undergo the drudgery of manually collecting garbage. My reasoning does assume that we will continue to need those people, albeit in decreasing numbers, for decades to come.

Re: Why is everyone so busy? (2014)

#150

Post by YPCrumble »

nradov wrote: post #143
YPCrumble wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks suspicious. There is not a single mention of square footage in the rents document. So let's say everyone moves to a smaller house because housing costs are so high, that's not a sign of inflation?!

The BLS corrects for those factors using hedonic adjustments.

"Hedonic adjustments" sounds like a term for "the number is whatever we want it to be but we want it to sound official so people don't question it."

If you mix "hedonic adjustments" into every number then there is zero value in the numbers. There is no meaningful way to quantify a "hedonic adjustment". Is a smartphone a positive or negative "hedonic adjustment" relative to a landline? Lots of people would say it's positive. Lots would say it's negative. Nobody knows the actual answer because smartphones have only existed for a few years.

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