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The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

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Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#181

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#182

Post by mdp2021 »

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…

> socially unacceptable

Are you familiar with Gomez Addam's wardrobe?

Interestingly, he may have also had a few ideas on social acceptance.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#183

Post by _a_a_a_ »

luckylion wrote: post #171
mcBesse wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Rotate then. You don't have to wash it every time.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#184

Post by zozbot234 »

agalunar wrote: post #164
zozbot234 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of "being focused, exerting mental effort, being creative, having long-term goals or engaging in long-term endeavours, &c." if it's not beneficial to society in some way? Also, PG is explicitly talking about people doing things that they enjoy at least to some extent. That's what motivates them to stay active. Not very different from your example of sports - except that sports are rarely helpful to o…

> What's the point of "being focused, exerting mental effort, being creative, having long-term goals or engaging in long-term endeavours, &c." if it's not beneficial to society in some way? PG's statement [1] seemed to be about individuals, so the point is that doing x, y, z is beneficial to the individual. I may have misunderstood, but the only other interpretation of his statement I can think of (besides "we were d…

> there wouldn't any reason for PG to suggest that people need to be forced to work

PG isn't suggesting this. He's saying that people are already forcing themselves to work, with rather dismal results (later in the same piece, he argues that this might define the real-world ethic of "professionalism") while suggesting there would be less need of this if business reoriented itself more towards work that can be enjoyable and fulfilling.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#185

Post by dicethrowaway1 »

mgrthrow wrote: post #174
nradov wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A good elaboration of this point is Greg Dow's "Governing the Firm" and "The Labor-Managed Firm".

In short, worker-owned businesses are rare because individual workers are poor (relative to the capital that's needed) and they can't get external funding because the investors want control in return, which labor management can't provide.

That's why most large-scale worker-owned businesses are part of a federation supported by a bank - e.g. Mondragon's Caja Laboral. Institutional design indeed does matter.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#186

Post by thfuran »

IndySun wrote: post #134
cjfd wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very good thing to read to realize that when one hears this kind of complaining today there is nothing new in it and it is not a signal of the apocalypse coming or of a unique new age. Well, the apocalypse or a new age might be coming, but this is not an indication that it is. It always was the case that one should pay attention to from whom one is buying.

cjfd... >when one hears this kind of complaining today... What complaining, and what kind of complaining is it?

Did you read the comment that they replied to?

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#187

Post by nathan_compton »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #80
elefanten wrote: post #51

Funny this guy was arguing, in 1883, that automation could reduce the average workday to 4 hours. Good example to consider when reasoning about the current AI wave

The thing that will reduce the workday is everyone deciding to do it. Imagine the silly meetings and pointless work that just can’t be done when you starve the machine of humute (human compute) hours. Innovation would be the result. Entire businesses may be untenable and rightly so. Few things need long work days if we are happy to sacrifice some convenience. Supermarket hours can be fewer for example. Jobs like poli…

When your solution to a problem is "everyone spontaneously decides to do it" what you really want is _regulation_.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#188

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

nverno wrote: post #73
nradov wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you're just making excuses. In the USA at least, there are still small parcels of fertile land available very cheaply in isolated rural areas where no one else wants to live. Look for places in Alaska or Appalachia. If someone wants to live the 18th Century subsistence farmer lifestyle then it's totally possible. Get off the Internet and go live your dream.

There are quite a few Amish communities that pretty much live like that. We are lucky in the US- we still have quite a bit of wilderness, plenty to lose yourself in, and live a hunter gatherer lifestyle. I think it would be significantly harder to get away with farming without buying the land, at least in the contiguous states.

> Amish

I think a typical Amish family farm is nowadays worth $1-2M, maybe more. And I believe their children have been moving to new places in recent years, in search of more affordable land.

> farming without buying the land

Illegal cannabis farms apparently operate in national forests. There are surreptitious irrigation systems, and there's a whole cat-and-mouse game to find and destroy them.

> We are lucky in the US- we still have quite a bit of wilderness, plenty to lose yourself in, and live a hunter gatherer lifestyle.

You're right though. Particularly, I would bet, up in Alaska.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#189

Post by heavyset_go »

kqr wrote: post #175
kergonath wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mandatory on-call duty exists, as do drug tests, background checks, security clearances, etc. Employers can certainly decide how "free time" is spent and with whom you associate.

Re: The Right to Be Lazy (1883)

#190

Post by heavyset_go »

drekipus wrote: post #97
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.

This really is the same as the YouTuber "how I bought a house within a week of watching this video" "Ownership is so easy, imagine if you not only have to work, but also have to deal with ownership problems such as maintenance, insurance, business and real-estate, logistics, marketing, depreciation, and management. - and, best of all, you don't own any of it if you stop working!"

Please show me where in my post I said anything about things being easy or not.
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