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The Importance of Being Idle

theamericanscholar.org

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Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#41

Post by nekitamo »

lmf4lol wrote: post #35

I really do like the idea and the thinking behind it. I wpuld even argue that modern Europeans are already embracing and practicing much if it. Nearly no one I know in NL and DE works more than 36hrs per week. And we all have a sh”tload of holidays and irregular days off additionally. Need to get kids from school earlier? no prob… Need to spontanously (!) to go the dentist? no prob. (Honest disclaimer: I am talking h…

As an American living in Europe, I don't think the well-balanced European way of life is the cause of Europe "falling behind". Instead I think it's a combination of the following intertwined factors: bad policies, a stunningly incompetent array of bad leaders, and bad deployment of capital (by both private investors and the state).

Agreed otherwise, the essay is great.

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#42

Post by bigiain »

ghaff wrote: post #16
RickHull wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jargon term, slack , comes to mind, in the concept-cluster of the old Google 20%-time, Slackware Linux, and Church of the SubGenius.

In general use though slack has an even stronger connotation of e.g. slacking off and not doing anything useful with the time.

Alternatively, ensuring you have enough slack in the schedule is, at least for some tech leads and project managers, an essential tool to enable meeting deadlines.

(So, I suppose using "slack" in a positive sense by project management, while probably still being considered a pejorative thing by non technical management or beancounters...)

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#43

Post by joe_mamba »

lmf4lol wrote: post #35

I really do like the idea and the thinking behind it. I wpuld even argue that modern Europeans are already embracing and practicing much if it. Nearly no one I know in NL and DE works more than 36hrs per week. And we all have a sh”tload of holidays and irregular days off additionally. Need to get kids from school earlier? no prob… Need to spontanously (!) to go the dentist? no prob. (Honest disclaimer: I am talking h…

>Nearly no one I know in NL and DE works more than 36hrs per week.

You mean 36h in a full time employment contract or by self reported work hours or is it part time work?

> I am talking here solely about my white collar bubble

Well from where I am in the EU and across other people I know in EU, for white collar jobs 40h contract is the norm in most places for most people I know. 36h is kind of an exception in select few fields in certain high-welfare countries with strong unions(German IG-metal for example in Germany, Airbus in France, etc), so you could simply be biased by a privileged bubble that isn't the norm in all of Europe.

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#44

Post by [deleted] »

lmf4lol wrote: post #35

I really do like the idea and the thinking behind it. I wpuld even argue that modern Europeans are already embracing and practicing much if it. Nearly no one I know in NL and DE works more than 36hrs per week. And we all have a sh”tload of holidays and irregular days off additionally. Need to get kids from school earlier? no prob… Need to spontanously (!) to go the dentist? no prob. (Honest disclaimer: I am talking h…

[deleted]

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#45

Post by lmf4lol »

Animats wrote: post #36
syphia wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." - Blaise Pascal Translations vary slightly.

Computers, TVs, video games, and smartphones have solved that problem. There are now more things to do alone in a room than ever before. It didn't help.

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's *inability* to sit quietly in a room alone." - Blaise Pascal

Smart phones etc just prove that we can't sit quietly in a room alone.

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#46

Post by nickvec »

namanyayg wrote: post #4

It feels like there is no correct translation for it in English -- idleness carries connotations of laziness whereas a better way to think about it is being aware and present of the moment. I have been practicing Buddhism for a while and it often is indescribably blissful to just sit in nature, feeling the wind in my hair and sun on my back. Anyone can experience this door with just a little bit of practice and I enc…

Agreed. Meditation and mindfulness have confirmed the importance of “being idle,” at least for me. Making an active effort to not be distracted by thought is quite the challenge, but it has brought me great peace.

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#47

Post by joe_mamba »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #39
lmf4lol wrote: post #35

I really do like the idea and the thinking behind it. I wpuld even argue that modern Europeans are already embracing and practicing much if it. Nearly no one I know in NL and DE works more than 36hrs per week. And we all have a sh”tload of holidays and irregular days off additionally. Need to get kids from school earlier? no prob… Need to spontanously (!) to go the dentist? no prob. (Honest disclaimer: I am talking h…

European who has travelled/lived extensively in China and the US. I don't believe our problem is idleness. It's instead a pernicious belief in peace. There's no sense of geopolitical competition in society at large. We generate a lot of wealth in those 36 hours, but an immense amount of it is syphoned into areas that don't help us get ahead. We are too invested in tides that lift all boats. Being well-rested is not t…

>I don't believe our problem is idleness. It's instead a pernicious belief in peace. There's no sense of geopolitical competition in society at large.

I disagree entirely. It's because most EU workers(at least in the richer most developed countries) don't get a proportional slice of the fruits of their labor, but only breadcrumbs after taxes. Working harder as an EU employee just means your boss/company gets to be richer and your government gets more of your taxes, while you get nothing more in return, just taking home a few extra bucks at the end of the month, making the juice not worth the squeeze, causing everyone to optimize for doing the bare minimum because why bother.

Especially when the big city CoL rises higher than your salary anyway, what's the point of working harder? You'll be more tired now and still won't be able to buy a nice house, ending up on the same standard of living and housing affordability as someone who optimized his life around extracting the most amount of welfare and benefits from the government while dodging work. So then why wouldn't you do the same?

Same story around entrepreneurship and VC funding or lack thereof. The taxes, risk and responsibilities of being a business owner with employees on your payroll are far higher that in other places on the planet like the US, making it a better deal to just not bother with all that and choose the cushy life of an employee in a old dinosaur company in an ageing and declining industry, rather than the stress of being the employer/innovator.

Geopolitical competition will not fix this because the monetary incentive structure around hard work still remains messed up. You can fix this by changing the tax laws to reward those working harder instead of punishing them with higher taxes and no gains to pay for the lifestyles of those who contribute the least in society.

Simply look at what Poland or Czechia did to become economic powerhouses in a short amount of time, and just do stuff like that. And you'll find out they didn't start off by giving their workers Scandinavian style of income taxes, welfare and benefits, that I can tell you, but more like cutthroat capitalism and the harder you work the more you can earn tax structures.

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#48

Post by saidnooneever »

lmf4lol wrote: post #35

I really do like the idea and the thinking behind it. I wpuld even argue that modern Europeans are already embracing and practicing much if it. Nearly no one I know in NL and DE works more than 36hrs per week. And we all have a sh”tload of holidays and irregular days off additionally. Need to get kids from school earlier? no prob… Need to spontanously (!) to go the dentist? no prob. (Honest disclaimer: I am talking h…

interesting. want to say most people i know, same countries, works more than 40 hrs a week. It really depends on your circles i guess, this perception.

I do see more people with higher wages chose more for time off than more money, and work 4 days for example..But the majority of the population does not fit that category i think. (i dont have the exact numbers, but most jobs are not high income in general)

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#49

Post by raincole »

lmf4lol wrote: post #35

I really do like the idea and the thinking behind it. I wpuld even argue that modern Europeans are already embracing and practicing much if it. Nearly no one I know in NL and DE works more than 36hrs per week. And we all have a sh”tload of holidays and irregular days off additionally. Need to get kids from school earlier? no prob… Need to spontanously (!) to go the dentist? no prob. (Honest disclaimer: I am talking h…

It's not that Europeans embracing being idle. It's that they realized typical white collar workers hardly produce any value (unlike Americans who still pretend they do) so it makes no difference for them to work less than 40 hours per week.

Junior doctors across Europe reported working an average of 57 ± 17 hours per week (216 ± 61 hours per month)[0].

[0]: https://www.juniordoctors.eu/assets/rest-report-DeLrwvob.pdf

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#50

Post by squidbeak »

camillomiller wrote: post #21

I hope that people realize still that LLMs will never ever be able to produce a piece like this. This is extraordinarily written. It is etymologically out of the average. It’s complex. Concepts intertwine and build on each other. The linguistic choices are unusual but perfectly placed. >>“But even idlers, try as they might, cannot ignore the passage of time. In 1911, a dozen years before Capek published his essay, Pa…

In what possible sense is a hackneyed word like 'dovetailed' "perfect, yet statistically improbable"?

> I hope that people realize still that LLMs will never ever be able to produce a piece like this.

Never is a long, long while for LLM development to catch up with hack journalism.

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