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Comment by SolaceQuantum | Hacker News Reader

I find the effects of overwork to be quite interesting- a lack of space for self makes it impossible to perform actually life enriching behaviors such as retreats, meditations, socialization, and hobbies. This means there's simply no room for any other entertainment or enrichment beyond the most shallow/fast/addictive stuff - social media, twitter wars, the thrill of buying nice things.

(EDIT: I should emphasize why it's so interesting to me because people often overwork with the justification for life enrichment, but the actual act of overworking reduces space/time for life enrichment!

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Conveniently, consuming shiny things and lowest-common-denominator mass media is what the Western society very much encourages us to do. Work, consume, repeat.

It's the most efficient way to extract value from us

And the most efficient way to keep people from reflecting on their lives, realizing how far from their "ideal lives" they are.

When I was a teenager, old people told me that my political views would grow more conservative as I got older. If anything, as I've watched growing income inequality and the further concentration of wealth among the one percent, I can better appreciate the point Karl Marx was trying to get across to people.

Indeed. Same here.

It doesn't matter how nice a system of fluid economics the Wealth of Nations was on paper. The problem is that people will exploit them. And exploitation of rules leads to exploitation of people.

And where are we now? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/middle-class-americans-increasi...

"In 2014, the middle 60 percent of Americans accounted for 46.8 percent of federal aid offered to people who qualify for such help, Brookings found."

Any one of us can 'fall', and not able to be self-sufficient to 'pull up by ones bootstraps'.

We've given capitalism a good 300 year run. And we know its pathologies. Communism isn't necessarily the best, but it provides a converse theory to start the discussion.

> Communism isn't necessarily the best, but it provides a converse theory to start the discussion.

Well, compared to capitalism its much more utopistic - I mean how far it is from reality of human nature and how much you should expect from people in the system.

As history shows us numerous times, it really doesn't matter how good things look on the paper or during academic discussions. The reality is, evil, messed up, unbalanced, sociopathic etc. folks are part of society. I don't mean in insane asylums, I mean in schools, hospitals, corporations, hackernews, everywhere. And somehow, for number of reasons, when numerous factors combine these people rise to power although they shouldn't. Every communism I am aware of ended up as dictatorship very quickly. In real capitalism, they come and go much more quickly and the impact is smoothed out over time.

This is the breaking point for me where the system is obviously worse - in communism, those dictators always ended up as net loss for citizens and mankind. And you gotta be brutal if you want to force millions into situations they wouldn't choose themselves. There are other obvious issues - no private ownership means nobody will work hard to maintain/enhance/create if at the end benefits are marginal at best. Better enjoy that beer.

And over time, these things compound and the result is always the same. Capitalism wins through sheer efficiency and overall upper hand. When comparing similar starting systems, its pretty clear which is more beneficial.

But yeah, it looks cool and very nice on the paper, or in TV like Star Trek.

You're spot on with evil, messed up, unbalanced, sociopaths folks being part of society, and especially sociopaths gravitate towards power. No matter what system we set up they'll corrupt it. I think once we shed some light on psychopathy and narcissism things might look better for the future. I'm following an interesting channel on youtube. The owner, Sam Vankin is a highly intelligent narcissist who has studied himself and is very open about it and even proposes ways to treat it.

While communism is probably incompatible with human nature, I'm beginning to suspect that capitalism may be incompatible with things that are ultimately a lot more fundamental.

I used to think so, but it's not necessarily true. If, for example, we reduced our weekly work hours to 20 or even 30, and we ensured that no worker had any work responsibilities outside those hours, we could attend our more fundamental needs.

Add protections so that no person goes hungry, homeless, or without medical attention and you've almost got an Utopia.

The problem with a Marxist Utopia is not in the ideas or in the policies, it lies with the simple fact that humans are the ones carrying those policies out. There's a good quote that sums it up: "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." Some group of people will be in charge, and that group of people will exploit the rest. Communism works great in small groups, but breaks down at the population level.

Fair enough, let's test this conversely:

The problem with a Capitalist Utopia is not in the ideas or in the policies, it lies with the simple fact that humans are the ones carrying those policies out. There's a good quote that sums it up: "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." Some group of people will be in charge, and that group of people will exploit the rest. Capitalism works great for small groups, but breaks down at the population level.

Works both ways, so you are not actually proving anything with your statement except showing your ideological blind spot.

I don't need to prove anything through my statements, every government striving towards Communism has failed miserably several steps beforehand. Separation of power and limits on the influence of individuals is what keeps corruption at bay.

I'm not arguing for unbridled capitalism, nor am I arguing against socialist policies and checks against the formation of oligarchies. I'm arguing that state control of the economy, such as that which comes about when your population is too spread out and large to make decisions in an efficient manner, is inherently flawed and unsustainable.

You're right that statist communism (the ones from the 50's-90's) is an epic failure that turned dictator fiefdoms (companies) into a dictatorship (country). On the ground floor, there was no discernible individual ownership of society shared.

And countries like the USSR were not only dictatorships, but virulent military dictatorships.

>> Communism isn't necessarily the best,

Understatement of the century. Tens of millions of people have paid with their lives to learn this lesson.

>> it provides a converse theory to start the discussion

As someone who grew up in the USSR, I suggest that maybe you should spend half a year in Venezuela, with Venezuelan amounts of money for your living expenses, and then suggest whether it's a good path to take for this country.

I've heard this too. I think it is that people fear change intrinsically. Also they want to avoid anything that could kill property values. Plus there it is just competition in general that people view incorrectly as zero sum.

Feedback loops like transistors increasing economic efficiency to pay for more transistors are unusual.

Sure, over the long term markets change, but day to day most competition approaches zero sum. Americans are only going to pay for and consume so much food each year. That may move around a little, but mostly it’s a question of competition between food producers not expanding the market.

Entertainment competes for only so much free time and disposable income etc. Now as productivity increases people may have more disposable income, but Disney can’t really influence how much money people have.

I'd argue that rationale was based on a very different economic evironment to what we have now, and arguing that today, a failing to know and understand the different challenges that are faced by the very people they may empart this idea to.

Being conservative has little to do with consumption culture.

if only people really new what Marx said instead of the caricatures deployed by McCarthyism. Marxism is about alienation. read this and tell me you don't relate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienatio...

And especially so this one:

"Alienation of the worker from other workers"

Now, look at the 'gig economy'. Instead of grousing about shitty bosses, these companies pit 'employee' against each other. The gig economy companies are setting up zero sum style games: There's only X work per day, and each person claws for their slice of it against others.

I'm in the midst of reading Capital after realizing I'd never read any Marx, but only heard second hand stuff. It's surprisingly different from what I expected. It's a behemoth of a book, but I'd still recommend it.

Yeah, that's how I felt when I got my first job out of college. Then I met a bunch of Marxist-Leninists and they reminded me why I stick to democratic socialism.

I was born in the USSR, where Marxist socialism was implemented: no significant private property (you own your clothes and furniture, but not your apartment, a car is borderline suspicious), and most certainly no private business ownership.

Life was pretty miserable back then, if you ask me.

Even in capitalist societies there are still places like that, with free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment. These are called prisons.

> Even in capitalist societies there are still places like that, with free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment. These are called prisons.

I've seen this quote elsewhere, and the spurious correlation bothers me. That prisons supply inmates with basic necessities does not make systems that supply members with basic necessities akin to prisons.

In practice, many of them may operate with restrictions to freedom, but so does employment in most fields under capitalism. Even business ownership is a significant restriction of freedom if you cannot delegate work (i.e. you cannot afford to hire), liquidate assets, or stay free from mounting debt.

The difference you are ignoring here is voluntary and/or unenforced restriction of freedom (which is a contradiction in terms — you are free to change your conditions) vs. imposed and enforced restrictions.

Kind of important.

And the obvious thing you are ignoring is that prisons just dont do this:

free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment

Prisons are places where rape, neglect, and violence are the norm. Being pithy reduces whatever point you had into dust.

Perhaps in United States. Our European prisons are much more comfortable.

Additionally, in the USSR we perhaps had less rape and violence in peacetime (our prison guards were professional and order was enforced), but oh boy, we knew a thing or two about neglect.

The Gulag Archipelago paints a very different picture, torture was common according to that text.

Serves them right for not giving up every single ounce of grain they produced to the government.

Yes, that’s right; it is about the Stalin era, though. My personal experience with the USSR was limited to the end of 1980s, where things were much softer compared to those horrors.

> And the obvious thing you are ignoring is that prisons just dont do this: > free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment

Yes they do in all western societies apart from US

I don’t know, I pay $500/month for my medical insurance out of pocket. Last time I checked, unemployment was also rampant. Basic necessities are quite expensive. Education is nearly free compared to everything else, that one is true (costs of living quite compensate for that, though).

Americans are quite welcome in Europe, by the way. For some reason, however, the majority of people prefers to move in other direction.

It's a big problem that our current political imagination is so narrow to only allow the false dichotomy of either neo-liberalism or Stalinism. The number of top-down Stalinist within the general leftist movement is tiny.

Indeed. Since capitalism is "lots of smaller dictatorships(companies) with a set of rules for all", and the migration to communism was "get rid of the smaller dictatorships and make a nation-wide dictatorship".

"Communism" ala USSR, North Korea, etc just moved the problem to a strictly worse area, and something you could not get away with. At least in capitalism, there are better and worse 'masters'.

Stalinism wasn’t existing in the USSR since 1956. Marxism, however, was always acknowledged as the foundational ideology — right until the collapse.

My intention is not to get in to some sort of debate on when the legacy of Stalinism ended, but to say that authoritarianism is properly shunned within the left movement as well.

The modern democratic and republican parties are chock full of pro-totalitarian, pro-authoritarian, "pro-state control of people's lives" politicians (of course they're inconsistent and they'll say or vote the opposite when they are pandering to their base though).

If the "modern socialist" types gained tons of traction tomorrow and became mainstream within the democratic party people like Feinstein and other authoritarians won't stop pushing regressive authoritarian policy. They'd just do it in a way that's sculpted to line up with the (newly) popular "socialist" sentiment. So the end result would be pretty darn Stalinist IMO.

So yes, you're right that current socialists are generally not in favor of secret police and shipping undesirables to the gulag but you're also wrong because if socialism becomes popular it will include all the totalitarians on that side of the isle who do want secret police and gulags.

As regrettable as it may be I don't see any path for going from the status quo to something more socialist without the current crop of totalitarian jerks in the ruling class turning it into a 1984 dystopia (the technical, procedural and much of the precedent for said dystopia already exists) along the way.

From my European perspective both those parties are firmly capitalist and right-wing. I will never expect anything other that what you described from members of them. Certainly not to do some sort of socialist transformation. The current US mainstream "socialists" are after all at best bog standard EU social democrats - that is, still capitalist.

I don't believe that currently ostracized strains/ideas/people will somehow inherently come to power just because democratic socialist ideas become mainstream. Democratic minded socialist are just as inoculated against authoritarianism as liberals. These people were persecuted and killed by ML/Stalinist authoritarians too.

From my European perspective the Europe is hopelessly socialist, indeed (which is not a good thing). Even the fringe right-wing authoritarian parties hated by the left (and every sane person) are still socialist, pushing authoritarian market regulations by _them_. Nobody here wants to protect economical liberties and free markets.

>From my European perspective both those parties are firmly capitalist and right-wing.

I hope that "anyone who believes in capitalism is therefore right wing" is not a mainstream European perspective. You can have a pretty darn socialist government without seizing the means of production.

>I don't believe that currently ostracized strains/ideas/people will somehow inherently come to power just because democratic socialist ideas become mainstream.

The fact of the matter is that these totalitarian beliefs are not nearly ostracized enough for that statement to be anywhere close to reasonable.

On one side of the isle it's considered perfectly reasonable to violate all sorts of rights as a hurdle to buying the tools of self defense. On the other side of the isle it's the same thing but for abortion. This is but one example. These kinds of people won't just find a way to use the popular movement of the day to push their beliefs.

Sure they might make things more socialist if that's what the people demand but don't think they won't also work on their totalitarian pet project at the same time.

>Even in capitalist societies there are still places like that, with free healthcare, basic necessities available for everyone, guaranteed roof over your head, and even full employment. These are called prisons.

Or "schools". Or "military bases." But you do you, I guess.

As a member of military, you are allowed to own property, but have to take orders. Same, same, but different. But yes, many people compared the USSR to essentially a huge military organization.

School students are very limited in rights, indeed. Their welfare depends on welfare of their parents. But they can hope to become free adults one day; no such hope for citizens of socialist countries.

What is your point? That every person who has to make decisions with costs may as well be in prison? Going to school and serving in the military are only different kinds of prisons because you can't escape them? You can't escape capitalism either.

Yes, it's a bit ironic to complain about "work all the time" culture and think Marxism is going to fix it, when the first thing the State does is essentially extend this workplace culture to the entire culture, so that you are never off the clock of being a correct-thinking employee obedient to your superiors in every way, even your speech, even when alone with your family. (And that was prior to when we all carried around portable surveillance devices voluntarily.)

The US may draw you in to that culture, but plenty of people escape it, and plenty of people in it can yet get out of it with reasonable effort. Marxism created cultures where it is a crime to escape that culture.

Ah, the good old "noncentral fallacy" [1].

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yCWPkLi8wJvewPbEp/the-noncen...

So, you are calling USSR a non-central example of Marxism implementation? What would be a central example, then?

And it’s still less toxic a hobby than being annoyingly smug on the internet.

A zinger.... except is this even remotely true?

Buying bigger TVs every year and disposing of them in landfills (and sacrificing your quality of life to afford it) seems a bit more toxic than "being smug on the internet."

Plus, isn't the remark itself exactly what it accuses others of... smug?

I doubt it's being smug on the internet that has brought us to the brink of a global ecological disaster.

Ha! I’m going to file that line away.

Depends which social class and country are we talking about here its not as cut and dried as that.

This is exactly correct. The more one overworks, the worse his impulse control becomes. After a long enough stretch of overwork (months, years) one can be transformed into something else entirely. Fat, drinking too much, angry at the internet. He could see it happening every day, and every day lose the fight to stress and easy relief.

It kind of changes your character. Some people cope by drinking or eating, others whatever means. The insidious thing is: the change happens so gradually that it is, IMHO almost impossible to recognize while it is happening. You do recognize when the circumstances change, by which point it might be too late. A solid social network of friends and family helps, but is also one of the first things to loose with this lifestyle.

I can’t think of any of the big founders that were fat alcoholics - bill gates, Steve Jobs, Zuckerberg, bezos? Pretty sure they all work all the time, as in no weekends, get emails at 11 pm every day, at least when they worked.

There is a vast difference between being at the top of of the apparatus vs being enmeshed in it.

A) The people you mention were essentially post scarcity long before they were household names.

B) They had substantially more agency in their work than mid and low level workers.

C) No one in their work life is akin to a “boss.” They have customers, advisors, peers, employees, investors, etc - no bosses.

Sure, but I think most “workaholics” are attempting to work towards a position like that, if not the founder then a major shareholder of a startup that will make it big, portfolio manager of a big fund, partner at a m&a firm or bank, etc.

I think arguing that it’s insane to work 80 hour weeks as a dead end test engineer at a large stagnant company is a straw man. Most people have a tenable goal in mind.

And at the end of it I don’t see the majority of them being fat alcoholics.

Software/IT is full of people working crazy schedules to get their products out.

The early days of ID software. They worked their day jobs and then worked nights/weekends to create their own games.

The early days of eBay when Pierre Omidyar was up all night fixing the site as it crashed.

People at Netscape sleeping under their desks so they didn't waste time driving to/from work.

Yes, absolutely. I apologize, I didn't mean to aim this at founders. I was just thinking about overwork in general, and its effects on people.

I don't think there's a chain of valid reasoning that can start with a few very exceptional people (that is to say these people are an exception, whether it be by talent, effort, or luck) and end with any conclusions about what is normative for the burned-out developer.

Musk had an overweight phase. I think he likes nice wine.

This is exactly by design. It encourages consumerism and the idea of consuming your limited free time with entertainment and superficial activities.

But it goes far beyond that. With limited free time people cannot develop political consciousness and drive social change.

There are historical examples: most dictatorships go/went very far to keep people busy and preserve the status quo.

Universities, on the other hand, has been often driving social change given that students usually have more free time and freedom to organize their time.

"Bread and circuses"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

I don't think it's just overwork that has this effect. Work, in general, along with the constant pressure to remain "employable" forces us to structure our lives in a way that leaves very little time and/or energy for other meaningful endeavors:

> I begin with a simple-sounding question: at what point does a day’s work truly end? Whilst our jobs might contractually oblige us to work a certain amount of hours per day, it is clear that we do not simply step out of our workplaces and into a world of freedom. This was brought to light by Theodor Adorno in a short but poignant essay from the 1970s called ‘Free Time’. Adorno questioned the extent to which workers are truly autonomous in their time outside work, arguing that the covert aim of non-work time is simply to prepare people for the recommencement of work: free-time is not free at all, but a mere ‘continuation of the forms of profit-oriented social life’. This is because it involves activities which often have a similar quality to work (looking at screens, doing chores), but also because more alienating or exhausting forms of work produce a powerful need for recuperation. By draining people’s physical and mental energies, work that is alienating ensures that much of the worker’s non-work time is spent winding down, retreating to escapist forms of entertainment, or consuming treats which compensate for the day’s travails.

https://www.zedbooks.net/blog/posts/free-time-pressures-empl...

I don't have a source, but I'm pretty sure that the people who enjoy what you call the most shallow/fast/addictive entertainment probably work the least. I don't think people that are unemployed (voluntarily or not) or work few hours enjoy many of those life enriching behaviors. Personally I find that those are most enjoyed by those who work a lot professionally, although not at the extreme end, and make time for it.

[edit] Found a link suggesting that video game use is correlated with unemployment or working fewer hours. It's not clear whether those individuals are using it to fill time or are dropping out of the labor force to pursue more of these types of leisure activities.

> They are not leaving home; in 2015 more than 50% lived with a parent or close relative. Neither are they getting married. What they are doing, Hurst reckons, is playing video games. As the hours young men spent in work dropped in the 2000s, hours spent in leisure activities rose nearly one-for-one. Of the rise in leisure time, 75% was accounted for by video games. It looks as though some small but meaningful share of the young-adult population is delaying employment or cutting back hours in order to spend more time with their video game of choice.

https://www.1843magazine.com/features/escape-to-another-worl...

Maybe its by design - give people too little time to live their lives that they come to depend on services and consumption thus perpetuating capitalism.

Nicely said.

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