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The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

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Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#171

Post by luckylion »

mcBesse wrote: post #160
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, clothes from Target might be relatively durable considering the price. But you need more clothing now. In a lot of places, it is socially unacceptable to wear the same thing for days in a row, even if you change your undergarments. You also don't have a realistic choice to make your own clothing. Cloth, thread, buttons and zippers aren't cheap and it became more out of reach in the late 80s and through the 90's…

> In a lot of places, it is socially unacceptable to wear the same thing for days in a row This piques my curiosity as it's definitely not the case where I live. Can I ask what sorts of places?

I've heard similar things from women who worked in majority-women offices in e.g. HR. They were expected to steadily rotate, even wearing the same vest over other stuff two days in a row would result in questions "where they had slept last night" from their co-workers.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#172

Post by rodric »

biglost wrote: post #100
klipt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay how about modern medicine then? If you got a cancer that only became treatable in the last ten years, would you trade your life away so that everyone in the last century could work 15 hour weeks and most likely never discover the treatment which was the cumulative result of a century of people working 40 hour weeks?

I would be dead if i was born 20 years before. Also, working gives hobby a meaning. I don’t know a translation for this: El ocio es la madre/padre de todos los vicios. Too many free time would kill us. We are a specie which evolve through work. But it shouldnt mean: bad job = ugly death

An English equivalent is “idle hands are the devil’s workshop”

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/idle_hands_are_the_devil%27s_...

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#173

Post by mgrthrow »

kazinator wrote: post #92
mgrthrow wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd encourage you to read The Conquest of Bread for some high level thoughts on other ways we could arrange things that a) aren't primitive and b) aren't capitalism.

Unless demonstrated otherwise, this sort of "could" is indistinguishable from "couldn't".

Good news then, because many of his ideas have been demonstrated!

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#174

Post by mgrthrow »

nradov wrote: post #67
heavyset_go wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't a dichotomy between wage labor and living in the woods picking berries. You can have extremely similar production and economies that we have now, but without wage labor. One other option is worker ownership, as owning the fruits of one's own labor is not the same thing as wage labor. There are plenty of examples of historical and contemporary worker ownership, and none of them involve living in the woods.

Worker cooperatives are legal and there are some around today. There's nothing stopping workers from owning the fruits of their own labor. Yet most workers choose not to join or start cooperatives, and instead prefer wage labor. Why is that? It seems that most workers prioritize a steady wage without the risk of being an owner. And it's difficult for worker cooperatives in capital-intensive industries to attract outs…

It is orders of magnitude more challenging to found a co-op. Let alone get enough capital to get started.

We've set up our society to make it difficult for worker owned businesses.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#175

Post by kqr »

kergonath wrote: post #136
matkoniecz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> According to Lafargue, wage labour is tantamount to slavery It does seem to be quite useless way to look at the world. It seems that they are unaware of what slavery actually means or deliberately mislead. Or Wikipedia is inaccurate.

I cannot voluntarily not work, and I don’t get to choose who gets the benefits of my work. And I am in a privileged situation because I could lose my work and still pay rent for long enough to find another one, but this is not the case for a vast class of people in western countries. These people are effectively bound to their employer because losing their job means losing their home and means of subsistence. The wor…

You work for somewhere between 6 and 14 hours per day, and the rest of the time you can choose to spend anywhere you're able to go, and tie relationships with whomever you're able to attract, and your owner can't decide these things for you. That's a categorical difference, not one of degree.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#177

Post by yourapostasy »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #124
eternityforest wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other had, we are a lot better at making things out of cheap materials. Clothes from Target are relatively durable considering the price, especially if you do basic repairs like they would have back then. Even the food is probably better now. It's not perfect, but modern products are pretty amazing. A shirt can sell for $2 and last 20 years in some cases. Of course sweatshops and pollution are still awful.

Sure, clothes from Target might be relatively durable considering the price. But you need more clothing now. In a lot of places, it is socially unacceptable to wear the same thing for days in a row, even if you change your undergarments. You also don't have a realistic choice to make your own clothing. Cloth, thread, buttons and zippers aren't cheap and it became more out of reach in the late 80s and through the 90's…

> In a lot of places, it is socially unacceptable to wear the same thing for days in a row, even if you change your undergarments.

Maybe depends upon how you own the choice. You react negatively to snide or snark: you lose power and social standing.

You shrug neutrally then move on unaffected, and only when pressed do you explain you save time making decisions over unimportant clothing that you put to turning a profit: you're hailed a visionary and VC's clamor to be let into your Series A's.

I wouldn't mind spending the time and money on Ship-of-Theseus-replacing what wears out on a few items of extremely high-quality high-durability clothing, except I have not been able to establish suppliers for replacements. For example, I was excited about American Giant when they first came out. Until I determined I cannot purchase from them swatches of the same fabric, thread, and hardware they use to repair whatever I get from them, much less offer a pay-to-repair option.

As a personal preference, I do not mind paying 50% or more (even >100%) for a tailor to repair my clothing than I can "buy new", and if there are repair options in other possessions I also pursue prioritizing repair over buy. "Trash" is shorthand for, "my civilization is not scientifically literate enough and/or too energy-poor to re-structure diffused baryonic matter up the energy gradient sufficiently to use it again".

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#178

Post by nnoitra »

annyeonghada wrote: post #142
nonrandomstring wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. As a 'victim' of the Protestant Work Ethic, or maybe personality traits of the industrious/conscientious type, I find it the struggle is fighting for my right to be active in a world that increasingly lionises a passive, convenient and dependent life-stance. I just want to shake people sometimes. Look around you and see what needs to be done and the duty life demands of you!

>duty life demands of you I have no duty towards life. I didn't choose to be born, did I? In fact, I vegetate waiting to have enough strength to suppress my fear of death and kill myself. Yes, I've tried therapy in the last 15 years. Yes, I've tried exercise, meditation, journaling, workaholism, idleness, religion, philosophy, science and so on and on. I just want to be done. Every evening I pray to deities I don't b…

No post body was provided.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#179

Post by trifurcate »

M95D wrote: post #112
HyperSane wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP/hour of labor is a really interesting metric. For the US it is about $75/hour.

Romania has the second highest GDP/h in EU. Why? Because of undeclared employment / illegal work.

Is that really true? https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm , set the base to US dollars instead of 2015 normalized. Most EU countries and the EU average of $54.20/hour seems to be above Romania's figure of $38/hour.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#180

Post by _a_a_a_ »

ponow wrote: post #168
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, clothes from Target might be relatively durable considering the price. But you need more clothing now. In a lot of places, it is socially unacceptable to wear the same thing for days in a row, even if you change your undergarments. You also don't have a realistic choice to make your own clothing. Cloth, thread, buttons and zippers aren't cheap and it became more out of reach in the late 80s and through the 90's…

Boo hoo. The fact that society has upgraded is no argument against clothes getting cheaper, an absolute gain. The issue of repairability is mostly one of demand: almost no one wants to repair his own clothes, given how inexpensive they've become. Electronics and appliances are the same. For many people, it's not worth repairing something that can be bought new for a day's or even a week's wages. If people started val…

Society 'upgraded' how - what does that mean?

Anyway, there is an environmental price as well as a $$$ price to clothing production. What you pay might not be the true price (eg. aquifers getting drained, soil erosion, CO2 emission etc, possible deforestation).

Even ignoring my point about non-fiscal cost "that can be bought new for a day's or even a week's wages" is great if you're rich, even relatively speaking. From wiki: "...which found roughly 734 million people [in the world] remained in absolute poverty [circa 2015]". I guess you grew up not having your parents unable to buy except as a last resort and having to patch everything repeatedly.

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