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The Importance of Being Idle

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Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#121

Post by thaumasiotes »

joe_mamba wrote: post #109
vinaigrette wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty levels are roughly the same between Vietnam and the US from a quick search. Mean standard of living is a poor way to calculate inequality. If you have a link to a median one it would help to compare.

>Poverty levels are roughly the same between Vietnam and the US from a quick search. How is this an argument? A poor person in the US has a massively better standard of living than a poor person in Vietnam. Poverty is relative. If you have a small apartment in a city of McMansions, you're poor, but if you have a goat in a village of no goats, you're rich.

> but if you have a goat in a village of no goats, you're rich

No, you need more than one goat if you want to be rich, regardless of what other people have. Really, you need a few dozen.

One goat can't do anything but age and die.

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#122

Post by ThisNameIsTaken »

In a similar vain, I currently enjoy reading A Philosophy of Walking by Frederic Gros. Gros draws the musing of various philosophers on walking. To me, his description of the slow beat of the footstep that propels imagination resonates with how walking works for me. When I'm stuck on something and feel I need to keep pushing towards a solution, a short break, often the result of an obligatory walk/ride to the train station, already sets my mind in motion.

Crucial is that the walk is not an intentional break for the purpose of brainstorming, because then my thoughts stay stuck. Such walking is 'idle' in the sense that it is an almost automatic process. The whole point is that walking/idling should not be a productivity tool.

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#123

Post by achenet »

nekitamo wrote: post #41
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.

While I agree that having a well-balanced life isn't necessarily the cause of Europe "falling behind", I'd like to point out that the US also shares some of those issues:

bad policies: massive tariffs, extreme spend of the military-industrial complex at the cost of education and healthcare, a completely pointless War on Drugs that just increases violence (to be fair, many states have more or less legalized cannabis at this point), war in foreign countries (if all the money spent of Afghanistan had just been distributed back to American taxpayers in the form of either tax cuts of stimulus checks, how might that have affected the economy?)

bad leaders: I think most historians would agree that president Trump is not exactly Mount Rushmore material

bad deployment of capital: at the state level, this would mirror 'bad policies', ie I don't think war the Afghanistan/war on drugs was a net gain for the US taxpayer. On the private side, the boom/bust nature of tech investments - how many were buying Pets.com stock in 1998? How many people bought trendy NFTs in 2019? How many completely unviable businesses get funded today just because "our product has AI"?

so there might be other factors.

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#124

Post by watwut »

paganel wrote: post #116
watwut wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans seems to be intent to cause as much damage to everyone including themselves. USA is the only country that ever triggered article 5 of NATO and got military help out of it. And now acts like victims when others don't rush to help them with absurd badly planned war where they are clear aggressors. The second real use of NATO was to send armies to greenland to discourage USA to attack it just 2 months ago. So,…

> NATO and got military help out of it That was token help (the Brits excluded), let's be serious here, we're all grown-up men.

It was not token help, that part is complete lie. It was real help and real European soldiers died. Including the ones from Denmark which was threatened by Trump. Or especially from Denmark, Denmark had the highest loss per capita within the coalition forces.

Lets be serious here.

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#125

Post by bombcar »

nisegami wrote: post #120
joe_mamba wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Poverty levels are roughly the same between Vietnam and the US from a quick search. How is this an argument? A poor person in the US has a massively better standard of living than a poor person in Vietnam. Poverty is relative. If you have a small apartment in a city of McMansions, you're poor, but if you have a goat in a village of no goats, you're rich.

I always found it interesting that homeless folks in the US seem to live in tents a lot of the time, but in my country they rarely have more than a piece of cardboard. I don't know if my perception is incorrect, or if I'm ready too much into this, but my conclusion has been basically what you said: at every socio-economic level, the people at that level have higher standards of living in developed countries than in d…

It’s really hard to compare when you get down to it, even if you ignore “homeless” as a category.

Using money as a proxy doesn’t work perfectly because things can be more expensive, and trying to normalize with things like “living sq ft” doesn’t calculate externalities.

The best I’ve found is to track relative migration pressure - where do people want to go?

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#126

Post by achenet »

mr_toad wrote: post #106
tock wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's conditioning. We cannot be happy idle because society deems idleness as bad. Just like people cannot be happy with a balding hairline because society has deemed it to be ugly. If the trend changes in a century and balding is suddenly hot then the same people would be happy.

It’s all about sex. Being idle typically means being poor. Try being in the dating market when you’re poor. Being bald means being middle aged which is also a big negative in the dating market. The people who are lauding the virtues of being idle probably have money, and are of the age where they’re past measuring success by body count.

I have a few unemployed hipster friends who get laid a fair amount because their idleness enables them to go to hipster parties where they meet other idle hipsters to have sex with.

I'd argue that overall, having a job, unless it's a job that can easily get you laid (barman/barmaid, working in a shop, especially if you're a heterosexual male working in a clothes shop with an 80+% female clientele, music/artistic performance) is a net negative for your sex life. Working 60 hours/week in a tech company office, if you're a heterosexual male, is probably not as conductive to your sex life as being an unemployed bum who spends a couple of hours a day wandering the streets of a large city talking to strangers. Obviously, if you're a heterosexual female, being paid to be around a bunch of males in a tech office is probably going to massively help you get laid, but I think the key variable is just "number of potential partners encountered", not employment status.

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#127

Post by bombcar »

gzread wrote: post #80
ernst_klim wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. In DE I would argue that this is due to punitive taxes and I wouldn't call it progress. Poor people work their asses 40+ hours and up to overwork since it's always paid here. White collars work less time and often switch to 4 days because at this tax progression working your…

Is this actually a problem? We all know the average white collar worker doesn't actually work for 40 hours despite being at the office. The average - everywhere - is more like the equivalent of 20 hours of solid focused work per week day. Does more white collar work beyond a threshold produce more value, anyway? Sometimes yes but often no.

20 “usable” hours a week may be realistic, but 20 hours of work per weekday is startup class heh.

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#128

Post by graemep »

joe_mamba wrote: post #109
vinaigrette wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty levels are roughly the same between Vietnam and the US from a quick search. Mean standard of living is a poor way to calculate inequality. If you have a link to a median one it would help to compare.

>Poverty levels are roughly the same between Vietnam and the US from a quick search. How is this an argument? A poor person in the US has a massively better standard of living than a poor person in Vietnam. Poverty is relative. If you have a small apartment in a city of McMansions, you're poor, but if you have a goat in a village of no goats, you're rich.

Relative poverty is real, but absolute poverty is a whole lot worse.

I choose to live in a richer country where I am relatively a lot poorer, but overall the advantages of a rich country outweigh the disadvantages.

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#129

Post by graemep »

plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #97
graemep wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its complacency, at least in Western Europe. Centuries of being the world's leading powers have left an underlying sense of being at the top is just normal and is a position that does not need work to maintain. Even those who might accept this is no longer true intellectually find it hard to internalise.

> Its complacency, at least in Western Europe. Centuries of being the world's leading powers have left an underlying sense of being at the top is just normal and is a position that does not need work to maintain. I wouldn't say it's a matter of complacency, but rather a convergence of problems. To solve those problems, there need to be radical changes, but radical changes are not popular. Politicians win elections by…

I think a lot of people would welcome some disruption. This is why there has been a rise in populist parties which appeal because they promise something different.

Re: The Importance of Being Idle

#130

Post by tonyedgecombe »

maplethorpe wrote: post #61

I feel like right now is the worst time to be idle. Stopping to smell the roses or lie on the grass when you could be spinning up agents and burning tokens means you'll be left in the dust.

Anybody can spin up agents and burn tokens. There is nothing special or particularly valuable about that.
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