How is this different than me hiring a handyman to put up the shelves bought 2 months ago that I never found the time to put up?
Is it different in scale or in kind?
The Shut-In Economy
21–30 of 348 posts
Re: The Shut-In Economy
#22>So here’s the big question. What does she, or you, or any of us do with all this time we’re buying? Binge on Netflix shows? Go for a run? Van Ekert’s answer: “It’s more to dedicate more time to working.” Meh. It's specialization. It's been happening since everyone figured out Og makes better clubs than everyone else and he'll make you one if you give him food. Most of the people reading this site have a skill that b…
Now you make $50/hour, wait till commoditization hit your profession and see your wage dwindle before your own eyes.
Re: The Shut-In Economy
#23I don't have the historical knowledge to do it myself, but it would be fascinating to read an in-depth comparison between these services and the economy of servants in the 19th or early-20th century. The image in my head (from movies and books and reading [about] Piketty) is that the wealthy in earlier eras were more idle, living off rents rather than incomes. I imagine servants would have been more of a status symbo…
I don't think servants were just status symbols. Cooking, cleaning and laundry without appliances was a very time consuming job which probably occupied the days of the wife and daughters of a family with no servants. Add to that inconvenient shopping, clothes mending, child care.
Yep, your comment reminds me of the $3500 shirt:
http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/06/the-3500-shirt-history-l...
Re: The Shut-In Economy
#24This is how I feel. I don't watch TV for hours like I did as a child. What I do now is worse; stay in doors programming, browsing the web aimlessly, or staring at the ceiling. I don't blame my internet lifestyle for this really, but I literally don't know what else to do and the internet is so accommodating to me being a shut-in. I know I'm wasting my life but I don't know how to stop.
San Francisco is a beautiful city but it is wasted on me and I feel like I should feel guilty for that. I don't deserve this nice city; it belongs to creative people.
Trying to leave the house to do anything interesting takes herculean efforts. I can't find joy or interest in anything beyond an intellectual level. Everyday sometimes feels like it's worse than the last.
I'm trapped in an un-ending present where I grow older but never grow as a person.
ps - anything you have to suggest is something i've heard already x10 and have or currently trying, such as therapy.
Re: The Shut-In Economy
#25Good job Lauren ... I really enjoyed reading the article ... NYT caliber indeed but I wish that you could give more space to workers so they could express their points of view regarding the whole situation.
Re: The Shut-In Economy
#26> Many services promote themselves as life-expanding — there
> to free up your time so you can spend it connecting with
> the people you care about, not standing at the post
> office with strangers. Rinse’s ad shows a couple chilling
> at a park, their laundry being washed by someone,
> somewhere beyond the picture’s frame.
A case of letting the destination (free time for socialising) overrule the journey (social interaction in your everyday life)?
For example, if you go to a laundromat regularly or catch a bus regularly, you eventually end up seeing the same people and might even end up making friends with them. Maybe even good enough friends that you coordinate your journeys/tasks in order to catch up?
Getting philosophical, an awful lot of things, including life, can be viewed in terms of "nodes and edges". In the case of life, why put so much emphasis on the nodes (the goal) whilst most of your time is spent on the edges (the journeys)?
Re: The Shut-In Economy
#27This is how I feel. I don't watch TV for hours like I did as a child. What I do now is worse; stay in doors programming, browsing the web aimlessly, or staring at the ceiling. I don't blame my internet lifestyle for this really, but I literally don't know what else to do and the internet is so accommodating to me being a shut-in. I know I'm wasting my life but I don't know how to stop. San Francisco is a beautiful ci…
PS aside, you might find that walking aimlessly satisfies the same itch as browsing aimlessly, but you feel better at the end of it.
Re: The Shut-In Economy
#28The lingering question for me now seems to be if these people can afford purchasing the services of Alfred & Co, why didn't they pick or hire a maid to do all the domestic chores & errands for them???
Re: The Shut-In Economy
#29How is this different than me hiring a handyman to put up the shelves bought 2 months ago that I never found the time to put up? Is it different in scale or in kind?
In kind... probably not. Perhaps if you'd have said 'fix some electric work that I couldn't do', in that case it'd be different as this article describes work that anyone could do. e.g. they'll talk about expensive $5.000 a month apartments having awesome functional kitchens installed, yet everyone orders food.
In scale... well the handyman is a one time thing. But it seems a lot of new tech workers making $100k a year are fine spending $5k on ordering dinner 5 days a week for $20. That's kind of weird compared to all the centuries before. But at some point it might become more like the drycleaner: a service outside your home that's more expensive, but more convenient and not necessarily much fun. Perhaps cooking will become a once a week hobby type of thing, with everyday food not becoming a case of preparing lunch or dinner, but rather a case of choosing fashionable and exotic lunch or dinner, much like shopping for clothing. Who knows.
Re: The Shut-In Economy
#30I think the intelligentsia do better when they have some manual labor in their lives too. I posit that the gig economy is just a modern take on classism and indentured servitude. We would be better served to improve robotics, automation and efficiency rather than grow a servant class (again).