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How did we get so busy?

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Re: How did we get so busy?

#41

Post by zecho »

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.

Realign the things you want to the free things in the world and your perspective may change a bit. I have a habit of sometimes vanishing from work on particularly nice days, for no reason other than to lay in the grass at the park. I live way up north, so there are only so many nice days a year here. I figure a few hundred truly perfect days over the rest of my life.

I also enjoy fishing, which really only has startup costs for a rod/reel combo and some accessories (or a found stick and a hook on a line). After that, I can find bait in the garden, to my wife's dismay.

Anyway, the point is fun is really what you make of it. As they say, some of the best things in life are free.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#42

Post by sliverstorm »

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…

It's easy to get by for cheap if you are not picky about where you live.

I don't work 80 hours a week, but I also would have trouble getting by on less than $20k/year, largely thanks to cost of living. I am bound to a limited set of locations by the career I want to have.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#44

Post by vidarh »

001sky wrote: post #8
zenogais wrote: post #7

Or we could look to Marx, who predicted exactly this state of affairs succinctly by showing that, at the most basic, there are three traditional ways to increase competitive advantage: 1. Work more intensely over the course of a fixed working day (eg. the 8 hours most people normally work in the United States) 2. Work longer hours thereby generating more surplus value while only being paid for a smaller proportion of…

Marx seems superflous--it's more (likely) the red-queen effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis

The point of Marx' view is exactly that he saw capitalism as necessarily forcing capitalists to continuously adapt for their businesses to survive competition. What zenogais set out are how this, according to Marx, leads to the kind of adaptation that gives the state of affairs in question.

The Red Queen hypothesis alone just claims that continued adaptation is necessary to prevent extinction. In that respect it is much more limited, as it does not predict what those changes will look like.

But in terms of mechanism, the Red Queen hypothesis is very much in line with Marx' views on capitalism. He saw the inexorable need for adaptation to remain competitive as a critical part of driving production to a level where socialism would be possible.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#45

Post by jpatokal »

nlawalker wrote: post #24

Reminds me of this article, which was also here on HN ages ago: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-tra... "Busyness" is a social defense against other people making us do things we don't really want to do and a mechanism for coping with feeling guilty about things we know we should do, but don't. My intuition is that people have had to project themselves as busier and busier over the last couple…

Came here to post this. I think this is the key bit:

It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.

There was another article (which I can't find now) that summarized this even further to state that "I'm so busy" is actually code for "I'm a self-important asshole"... and there's a grain of truth to do this. "Can you help me with X? Can you do Y?" "Oh, I'd love to help, but I'm sooo busy doing other stuff that's more important than you!"

Re: How did we get so busy?

#47

Post by vidarh »

malyk wrote: post #14
nugget wrote: post #11

I'm a naturally competitive individual and I like to out-compete my peers at work - in other words, to win. I don't think this part of human nature will ever lessen no matter how far technology advances.

You should re-calibrate your winning condition to "spends the most time relaxing" instead of "makes the most money". Really, you should do whatever you like, but part of the problem is that our collective winning condition is based on a number that has, after a certain point, little relation to happiness. Personally, I try to optimize my happiness. I'm not doing that great a job though because I still spend more than…

Jonathan Haidt's "The Happiness Hypothesis" makes the point that very few things actually long-term moves the needle when it comes to happiness:

Meditation does. As does therapy. And drugs.

These can move our "normal range" of happiness. Most other things, Haidt argues, will temporarily bump our happiness up or down, but we quickly revert to our normal range.

Some things that generally don't affect our happiness in the long term according to Haidt: The amount of time we work or spend on leisure activities. Major health problems that are not degenerative (heart attack, losing your legs). Winning the lottery. Getting that big raise at work.

The reason, it seems, is that we adapt very quickly. Winning the lottery will make us very happy for a short while, but without a lot of discipline we've shortly adapted to our new-found wealth and the needle goes back down to our "normal range". Losing your legs will make you depressed for a while, but soon we adapt and the needle springs back up. Getting a raise is great for a month or three, but then we're used to it and looking forward to the next one.

As long as things are steadily getting better, we are mostly happy. If they are steadily getting worse, we are mostly unhappy. Even seemingly earth-shattering events that totally changes our lives only tends to affect most people for a while.

This does explain some of the obsession with GDP: It is a proxy for growth, and ongoing growth is associated with happiness. But as point out, optimizing for GDP can happen at the cost of negatively affecting other things that are also associated with happiness, and the net result is not necessarily all that great.

An interesting aspect of Haidt's claims is that we should not aim for a too rapid improvement if they make further improvements harder. That is, it's better to get a steady 3% increase in salary, than 50% now, and then nothing for many years. If you do get that 50% raise (or a huge exit), it is better not just for your finances but for your happiness to invest most of it, and slowly increase your spending over time.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#48

Post by ochs »

I like the winner-take-all hypotheses best. A lot of people are employed in advertising, marketing, PR, sales, lobbying, law, etc. and even those who are not might be required as part of their job to do some of those things from time to time.

The problem is that it's more lucrative to manipulate people to buy things they don't need or to trick them to pay more. Note that there are industries where marketing costs are outrageously high, sometimes higher than production and/or R&D. A company that doesn't spend the same amount on marketing or lobbying might make less profit (e.g. due to network effects, other scaling effects, special protections or subsidies) and thus seem like a bad investment.

This leads to a sort of arms race: everybody needs to hire more and more marketers, patent lawyers, etc. and donate more to political campaigns.

Solution: Heavily regulate advertising and lobbying. Some kinds of advertising could just be outlawed, and the rest could get (time or space) limits. Anonymous electronic cash would also help to make internet publications independent from corporate advertising money. Tax money could be used to support independent institutes or publications that try to spread actually helpful consumer advise.

I think some winner-take-all mechanics might also be at play on a personal career level. Note that there are actually lots of people with nothing but free time, though usually not by choice. Many governments deny those people a decent standard of living (some even a home, food or medical care), forcing them take shitty, low-paying, insecure jobs. The constant threat of losing your income to someone else who will work harder or for less money kind of naturally creates a situation where you either work long hours or not at all.

Re: How did we get so busy?

#50

Post by eggnog »

Why is there no consideration of unemployment in this exploration? In order for leisure time to be evenly-distributed, in an anti-freeloader society, work would have to be evenly-distributed as well. That means having two employees working 20 hours, instead of one working 40. However, employers would need to be able to supply the workers the same salary they now pay the 40-hour worker, or else the workers would have to be willing to consume less.
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