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Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

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Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#351

Post by burntoutfire »

62951413 wrote: post #243
jmyeet wrote: post #79

Common right-wing propaganda is that socialism is a poverty cult. This is particularly prevelant in American culture. It's a complete fabrication. The reality is everyone should enjoy the fruits of their labours to a greater degree than they do today. This is the very idea behind workers owning the means of production. Another way to put this is that every billionaire is a policy failure. A quote that is often mentio…

There are a lot of people on this forum (and most Bay Area companies) born in communist hell holes such as USSR or China. Go talk to them before saying stupid things about socialism and the level of poverty it forces upon people. And if you thing poverty is the worst thing about the Commies just remember that people are not allowed to leave Communist countries. Think about, people who don't like America or feel "oppr…

Yep. The communist countries were more or less one big forced labor camp. You couldn't leave and, while living there, obviously had to work to survive. For the most part, private sector didn't exist, so you had to work in a government-owned company, which usually paid you just enough to survive. You were beaten, tortured or killed if you protested or tried to escape. Pretty much a XX century slavery.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#353

Post by burntoutfire »

refurb wrote: post #52
Mizza wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is absolutely drenched in ideology, the kind of Protestantism that will grind the whole planet into dust if we let it. Sheer, absolute drivel. "As we all know" aside - what's wrong with slacking off? Does painting, writing poetry, playing sports with kids, learning an instrument count as slacking off? Why does spending 8 hours a day at a job where you perform some rote, pointless, abstract task - like se…

This is kind of a bizarre take. I don’t know anyone who would call “painting, writing poetry, playing sports with kids, learning an instrument” slacking off. And having lived in both wealthy communities and among poor communities in developing countries it amazing the general mood among the poor seems to ve much more positive and less anxious and neurotic. My interpretation is humans thrive when they have a purpose a…

> And having lived in both wealthy communities and among poor communities in developing countries it amazing the general mood among the poor seems to ve much more positive and less anxious and neurotic.

I've noticed that too. Here are some of the potential reasons that come to my mind:

1. Their day to day lives are less complex. If they work in jobs, they usually perform a routine set of tasks that can be more or less done on mental autopilot. If they're self-employed (usually farmers), they have to plan and worry about the future, but at least they're not subject to a set of pointless, unknown and arbitrary rules like people in complex office jobs are.

2. Their jobs are (on average) more physical and involve more genuine contact with people.

3. They often stay around the place where they were born and when their entire family is. This gives them both rich social life, help with raising children, as well as a safety net.

4. They're not conditioned to strive to be excellent, an "industry leader" or a great artist etc. They're perfectly content with boring/low-status jobs as long as they pay for the important things in their lives, such as their family.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#354

Post by colinmhayes »

scollet wrote: post #337
colinmhayes wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't think that's true. Everyone in the US has access to smartphones. They may not have large blocks of leisure time, but technology allows the average social media user to be scrolling for over two hours a day. You might not be able to live comfortably on 1 wage, but household responsibilities take much less time due to innovation. Obviously everything isn't rosy, but it's not really like we have less leis…

You are a bold-faced liar. If you have to work to live, leisure does not exist.

By your definition leisure has never existed for 99.99% of humanity. Doesn’t seem like a practical definition, but sure it’s be nice if people could just do whatever they want.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#355

Post by herbst »

chasd00 wrote: post #128

I think we do have a lot of leisure time. Otherwise, how would things like hustle culture or the other “make money while not at work” movements be feasible? If you got a side project going then you have lots of leisure time, enough for an entire second job.

Not many are able to pull a side project off the ground with a fulltime job. And of those who do many burn out fast.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#356

Post by hackerfromthefu »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #290
kubb wrote: post #48

I have several fantastic things that I love doing and work makes it very hard for me to pursue them. One of them is philosophy. There is a great deal of benefit and pleasure that a person can derive from learning about about and understanding the arguments that have been made across the centuries. Another is physical activity. It feels great to move your body, it makes you so much happier than sitting at a desk. Anot…

>> One of them is philosophy. There is a great deal of benefit and pleasure that a person can derive from learning about about and understanding the arguments that have been made across the centuries. >> Another is physical activity. It feels great to move your body, it makes you so much happier than sitting at a desk Maybe you should get a job doing repetitive manual labor. You get plenty of activity and it is compl…

If only they paid well!

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#357

Post by hackerfromthefu »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #21

I went to a "progressive" school where we had one strange class called "Design For Living". Today we'd probably call it "lifehacking". Among the fascinating and odd topics was a lesson on managing free time. The premise was a (socialist?) vision that everything would be done by robots by 2000, and we would have to find good hobbies and interests, keep fit and volunteer doing good things for our communities. I think d…

So you are saying you think the grass is greener over there?

I've worked lots in both, and it really is not. There's something satisfying about the physical movements, and being in different locations, about the house building work, but that is very different to the issue of completion of work you mentioned and I guess you just never did more than one physical building job?

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#358

Post by mlom »

wutbrodo wrote: post #222
mlom wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not leisure if you don't like it. slavery in entertainment is still slavery.

Can you expand on the slavery analogy? I'm aware that this is the naive perspective, but when I realized I was watching more TV than I liked, I stopped, and there was no overseer to whip, mutilate, or starve me into resuming. That isn't to say that it's trivial: I had to identify why I was doing it (I don't even like watching TV!), and then work on myself so that I had the mental energy to replace it with activities…

it's not a fucking analogy, if I don't pay rent I get thrown out on the street, or resort to prostitution (would you call that spending free time in the entertainment biz? fuck you), that's slavery, i'm not fucking worried about watching TV, truly the least of my problems. wake the fuck up

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#359

Post by Forgeties79 »

CodeSgt wrote: post #315
hansword wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's only people who are actually lazy and not doing anything useful with their lives that are looked down upon, and rightfully so. Your view is manifestly incorrect. There are so many groups of people that are looked down upon, what you describe is just a tiny tiny subset of these. If you are grasping to find an example, that shows a great deal about your position in life. (If you still struggling, start with sex…

I obviously wasn't saying the only prejudice in the world exists against lazy people and that no other group of people were ever looked down upon. You've got to use context clues before getting all fired up like this. The was in response to how we purportedly "tie work to morality". It was obviously meant as something closer to: > It's only people who are actually lazy and not doing anything useful with their lives t…

You’re being very rude and antagonistic.

Re: Experts once predicted that Americans would face excess leisure time (2015)

#360

Post by mrtksn »

scollet wrote: post #342
mrtksn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a person has enough to survive, why would they toil and labour? Just do whatever you like! It really boils down on how many people need how much resources and how many people produce these resources. You can argue over who should be your bourgeoisie, should it be the political elite or the entrepreneurs or should it be inherited or or should it be the the people from special blood or religion or should no one be…

I mean, how about we just take the wealth from the 10%?

How about it? You still wont be able to eat those numbers, albeit the numbers would be slightly bigger for some.
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