In Praise of Idleness, by Bertrand Russell | Hacker News Reader

In Praise of Idleness, by Bertrand Russell

harpers.org

55 pointscardigan25 comments

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Some previous discussion on Hacker News:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6513765

300 points | 824 days ago | 120 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9015092

161 points | 336 days ago | 50 comments

A timeless read. It is almost sad to see how people who lived in in the early part of the twentieth century were so optimistic about technology. From Russell to Keynes, they all predicted an era of surplus where no one would have to work so hard. Instead, we got draconian working hours, rampant worker insecurity, and reptiles like Greenspan making public policy who think worker insecurity is good.

There are 2 main reasons for this. One is the erosion of the welfare state, and we can see this in our return to gilded-age levels of inequality, and the other is our relentless desire for stuff (materialism).

Material goods mostly dropped in price. It's staples like education, housing and healthcare that skyrocketed.

So no, it wasn't desire for stuff that got us here.

Education, housing, and healthcare are inelastic. So the price will always increase to a level where people can barely afford them.

"Always" meaning "just the last 30 years" presumably?

It takes time for the prices to increase because it's not a liquid market. If wages or inflation are increasing faster then it creates a buffer time for these inelastic goods to catch up. There's also other factors, like institutions not maximizing profit, that slow down price increases. Also in the past there were less regulations, so it was easier for new homes to be built, for example.

At the time of the article (1932) many families in London lived in slums, several people in one room, and worked from morning to the evening for really poor wages.

Today, they live in an apartment/house where everyone has a separate space, and work at jobs that compared to the people from 100 years ago would look as high class idling.

So, I'd say that people will always spend huge sums to get the housing and services that are within their reach. They just get better housing for the comparable portion of their earnings.

> At the time of the article (1932) many families in London lived in slums, several people in one room, and worked from morning to the evening for really poor wages.

Having a lot of friends from Eastern Europe in London right now doing menial jobs - it is not much different for them. Due to reasons - housing is really squeezing people right now in a lot of places in the world.

I'm from Eastern Europe, and know many, many people from Eastern Europe, and, while they are poorer than the English of today, it can not even compare to the English from 100 years ago.

Our perception of the older times is based on books, paintings, etc, and those, in most cases, show idealized rosy picture, often of the people from the highest class. Even when they show lower classes, it is much prettied. Our perception of today is, however, based on the harsh reality...

I am from EE too. And I know the stories of people that are working in agriculture jobs or service economy. 3 people living in 20 sq meters with communal kitchen and bathroom is slums.

I know the stories of people living homeless, or in sewers etc. The point is that now it is not common at all, while 100 years ago it was rather common.

> 3 people living in 20 sq meters with communal kitchen and bathroom is slums.

Or just roomates in many large cities...

I would argue the desire is not so much for the stuff itself, but the social status that the buyer hopes the stuff will bring them (i.e. status symbols). Proof: a fake diamond ring will be frowned upon, even though noone but an expert with a magnifying glass can tell the difference.

I think this is the main reason very few want a four hour working day -- it feels like falling behind everybody else.

I think advances in cultural norms improve more slowly than advances in technology. Also if you are a policymaker who discourages productivity, then that is equivalent to discouraging economic growth. Even if it would increase the well being of workers, it's controversial to be anti-growth.

I think part of the problem is that our notion of productivity is tied up with producing, perhaps in some absolute and immediate sense. If we expand the idea to encouraging less work at the same level of efficiency I don't think it would be quite as controversial as discouraging productivity.

It's still somewhat controversial, because if everyone did that, it would reduce the GDP.

We have the surplus the philosophers theorized, but not the humanism to make beneficial use of it. When was the last time you went to the store to buy a shirt and they were out of shirts? The same applies for microchips and cars-- there is an unlimited quantity of these goods as far as the individual is concerned. The next major (albeit likely very gradual) revolution in human society will be of more equitable resource distribution which embraces (rather than grudgingly admits) the prospect of universal high standard of living.

The philosophers never realized that largely it is the inertia of a society that determines its prospects and outcomes in spite of technological advancements which might threaten to change the way of things.

Please also read accounts of people who wrote about the ordinary people's living and working conditions at the same time, such as George Orwell's Wigam Pier, many essays or Down and out in Paris and London, and you'd be amazed at how far better we live now.

Compared to that time (1920s, 1930s), people today (in the developed world) really DO NOT have to work so hard and the surplus is huge.

> Compared to that time (1920s, 1930s), people today (in the developed world) really DO NOT have to work so hard and the surplus is huge.

We could be working even less though.

https://c4ad.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/epi-disconnect-betw...

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/

Sure, but are you sure that we wouldn't get worse results and thus decreased living conditions?

On the other hand, who is 'we'? Some people already work even less ;)

Just to make clear, I do not argue that the situation is good as it is, I just replied to the post that complained that Russell was naive and off the mark. In my opinion, as far as predicting the future can go, Russell was fantastically right in many things. Of course not everything is right and we should work even less.

We should be living better considering how much immeasurable wealth society as a whole have developed. The problem is not that we are not making zero progress as a society, the problem is how much we are being held back by the greediest at the top. For those, efficiency is a matter of maintaining control, not moving us forward.

It's like middle-aged disillusionment combined with the 5 stages of loss, writ cultural.

I guess we're at stage 3 : Contriving a story that we can swallow. A story that will make us feel better about our fucked up machine-drone lives.

We're working on that story every day all day. You can see it on tv. Thrashing like a dog with its leg in a trap.

I think the main thing is that we aren't good at distributing the gains of this increased productivity, nor are we good at training people with the skills necessary to maintain the productivity.

The result is that the few people who do meaningfully contribute are tremendously overworked. They may make a lot of money but have no time to enjoy it, since they feel like they can never take a vacation or the whole thing will come tumbling down. Meanwhile, the rest of society is either languishing in poverty and unemployment or have to take soul-crushing, make-work jobs in order to justify someone giving them a paycheck.

Funny fact, this is used as Lorem Ipsum in a lot of npm packages.

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