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How did we get so busy?

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Re: How did we get so busy?

#31

Post by erobbins »

charlespwd wrote: post #27

Hi, I've been a lurker here for some time now. I rarely ever comment on stories because, well, I have better things to do. But now, I really need to broaden my perspective. I just don't get it. *Disclaimer : I am young (23), broke but happy. This past year, I spent four months in Asia travelling. I rock-climbed for a while, tried bungee, canyon swing, diving, trekking and the motorcycle. I was able to afford all that…

Well, I have expensive hobbies. However, I only work enough to be able to afford them. 40 hours a week is plenty... but I do have to work those 40 hours.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#32

Post by tgcordell »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #30

You are only busy if you choose to be in this country. However, how you make the choice is implicit by your level of consumption. I am happy to live on 30k/year even though I make almost 200k, because in 5-10 years, I don't want to be so busy. You can make the choice--either live an extravagent lifestyle and remain busy, or live modestly for a decade or less and then do whatever the fuck you want 24 hours a day.

Doing 'whatever the fuck you want' costs money too, and its something you'll have avoided due to the frugal life style. So, at the point you retire early, either your frugal habits have become ingrained, or you quickly learn that 'fun' comes at a price. Its an interesting conundrum to say the least.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#33

Post by bluenose69 »

wnoise wrote: post #16
mrbabbage wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably the day the article will appear in the print. It's very common practice among websites of print publications, so that there's no discrepancy in dates between the online and print editions.

Close. Yes, they keep the same date, but the common use of the date is the _last_ day it should be available for sale, so the day before the next issue is out. This lets bookstores and newsstands throw out everything with a date before today, no matter the frequency of publication. For weekly magazines, it is thus six days in the future. Monthly magazine need give only the month, and that does correspond to when it s…

That's very interesting. Thanks for explaining it.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#34

Post by BenefitOfDoubt »

How did we get we busy? (or did we?)

Average American watches 5 hours of TV per day: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/average-american-watch...

Perhaps people spend more time at work then they used to, but while not at work they spend way less time working on things like mowing the lawn, cooking, washing clothes, ETC.

Women blaming men for them being too busy need to weight their options IMO. If you are too busy, quit your job and stay home. To maintain the quality of life that existed while Keynes wrote this book, a single income is often adequate. It's not worth killing yourself over.

I think what much of what explains the wealth gap is free trade and illegal immigration. We import everything from China today. We would not allow these sweat-shops in our country with children working in dangerous conditions for pennies an hour. We wouldn't allow it here, but we do support it by buying these products. This breaks the whole premise that Keynes was basing his predictions on (Illegal immigrant employment as well). People can get rich paying illegal workers almost nothing, or importing a product from China and marking up it's price by 8-10x.

This throws things out of the balance that he envisioned.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#35

Post by pyrrhotech »

tgcordell wrote: post #32
pyrrhotech wrote: post #30

You are only busy if you choose to be in this country. However, how you make the choice is implicit by your level of consumption. I am happy to live on 30k/year even though I make almost 200k, because in 5-10 years, I don't want to be so busy. You can make the choice--either live an extravagent lifestyle and remain busy, or live modestly for a decade or less and then do whatever the fuck you want 24 hours a day.

Doing 'whatever the fuck you want' costs money too, and its something you'll have avoided due to the frugal life style. So, at the point you retire early, either your frugal habits have become ingrained, or you quickly learn that 'fun' comes at a price. Its an interesting conundrum to say the least.

I'm a firm believer in the diminishing marginal returns of happiness that levels of consumption provide. I have no delusions that I wouldn't be happier if I were a billionaire than a 1-2 millionaire early retiree. But how much happier?

I don't believe in any type of extreme frugality, though I do plan on increasing my spending to the 100k/year range by retirement at 35. I'm saving more now because each additional dollar saved now means a lot more than money saved later, plus since I work, I honestly just don't have time to enjoy large expenditures right now, but I will in retirement.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#36

Post by voteapathy »

My guess is that we as humans tend to look at what we've missed out on rather than what we've gained. During Keynes's time there wasn't quite as much competition for one's time and attention, and whatever they had probably wasn't as cheap. Now we just have so much entertainment at our disposal that we can't feel satisfied with what we have.

I'll call it the Deal or No Deal irrationality. Essentially, if you go on that show hoping to win $1,000,000 but end up with just $100, you probably feel pretty disappointed. The $999,900 you didn't win ends up eclipsing the fact that you won $100. $100! A free night out with your friends! A nice fancy dinner! Who doesn't want that sort of bonus?!

[I might have accidentally stolen the above example from a Dan Ariely book. If I did then I do apologize]

Now in our society we have competing forces of remaining sociable, watching TV, browsing the Internet, maintaining hobbies, going on vacations, and (as the article notes) trying to work and more more in the process. I mean, I've had to sacrifice watching TV and playing video games just because I need to to have 'more productive leisure.' Board games, lifting weights, going out with friends, and programming are things that I like to do, sure, but that doesn't quite fill in the gap a video game may do in the same way. At the same time I'd like to do more biking and get into other more artistic hobbies, but the time cost to learning is so great and the ROI relative to what I already have on my plate.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#37

Post by sizzle »

herokusaki wrote: post #17
greedyBrah wrote: post #10

Awesome article. I don't have much to add, but it's interesting how "funny" we are as a species in that we're never fully content. What we think of as a "perfect life" today will be trivial in 100 years and that society 100 years from now will yearn for their own perfect life.

An alternative that is not to be easily dismissed is that in 100 years we will have learned to manipulate our contentment. If handled badly enough, this could become our final discovery. Not that we would then care.

reminds me of a previous front page submission: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1lb/are_wireheads_happy/

Re: How did we get so busy?

#38

Post by da02 »

charlespwd wrote: post #27

Hi, I've been a lurker here for some time now. I rarely ever comment on stories because, well, I have better things to do. But now, I really need to broaden my perspective. I just don't get it. *Disclaimer : I am young (23), broke but happy. This past year, I spent four months in Asia travelling. I rock-climbed for a while, tried bungee, canyon swing, diving, trekking and the motorcycle. I was able to afford all that…

Pardon the random questions: Did you stay in hostels or family-run hotels? Have you written about this somewhere? What jobs did you do for the money for the trip?

Re: How did we get so busy?

#39

Post by BenefitOfDoubt »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #21

Of course they blame men. Never mind blaming misguided feminism, pushing women to endlessly new heights of perfectionism, elitism and competition both within and across their fairer sex. And strangely its not OK that the man knows how to relax, minimizes extraneous work and does a sufficient job... Hits a nerve for me if you can't tell.

You sexist... How dare you challenge feminists, They have every right to fight mother nature... So what if they are biologically and mentally a perfect fit for taking care of children and domestic duties. So what if men are the obvious natural choice as breadwinner. So what if this ruins countless marriages and families, so what if kids are raised by day care providers who don't give a lick about them, so what if it causes tens of thousands of abortions by career women each year.

Taking the man who is biologically programmed (via evolution or creation) to be the leader, head decision maker, and breadwinner essentially switching him into the minority power role because he is not the primary breadwinner? How could that ever hurt a marriage? How could that ever make his wife respect him less?

Taking the women and putting her in roles of abstract logic and non emotional decision making against her nature? how could that ever cause stress for her. How could sending her kids off each day to be raised by a day care provider ever cause her guilt or grief due partly to her in-built nurturing instincts/programming? How could she avoid hating her husband for not being the mother that he should be?

How could any of this negatively affect society today and for future generations? That would be obscene. Just look at the positives of where we are today... Emmm better get a microscope.

I don't blame feminists for their beliefs, I blame men (past and present). If men would have respected and taken care of their wife's and daughters the way they should have, they would have been happy, fulfilled, and never started rebelling and trying to turn against men and even against nature itself.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#40

Post by mey »

psychometry wrote: post #18
mey wrote: post #9

Why are we busier? Go here http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/productivity change the start of the graph to 1959. I would argue that technology has radically helped our productivity but at the end of the day, people are always expected to get better. Honestly I don't know if this is sustainable but the idea of always growing from a gut check doesn't seem to be. The question could be what is the breaking po…

Gains in productivity don't help the working class much; they mostly help the owners of companies. Those owners have no financial incentive to reduce working hours to compensate for gains in productivity when they could rather cut half their workforce and tell the remaining workers they need to work harder/longer because there is more competition for their jobs now. Those who predicted a "leisure society" back in the…

Exactly. To achieve a leisure society we would need to see GDP grow while the productivity index either was flat or decreased.

If you use the same link and look at GDP per capita on that same graph, in 2008 area, productivity started to overtake GDP.

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