Hacker News Reader

Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

The above sentiment is not altogether wrong.

Once people have certain comfort they cease to be productive and look for ways to while away their time. Sometimes its neutral, sometimes it may be a productive hobby and sometimes it's detrimental (as in they know what needs to change in the world and they will make it so).

It's also telling that at the dawn of the XX cent, the US was not a wealthy country. Per capita we were more or less on par with countries that are today still "developing". Out position isn't a foregone conclusion and needs active development to remain there.

View on HN

What terrible phrasing is "they cease to be productive and look for ways to while away their time."

We don't live to work, we work to live. Once less work is required to live, more living can be done. Some people may 'while away their time', others do valuable things that don't produce monetary value.

This is also not a new phenomena but something that has been slowly increasing over human history. Before agriculture, humans spent almost all of their time hunting and gathering. Agriculture freed up some time and every major technological revolution has in some way made society more productive and efficient allowing us for more time not working. At some point in the 19th century the concept of leisure time came around and its only been growing.

Reducing the work required by each individual to survive and support society is a natural effect of technological progression. If people are getting more work then we are regressing.

>Before agriculture, humans spent almost all of their time hunting and gathering. Agriculture freed up some time

Agriculture is more work than hunting and gathering, but it's a much more consistent food source.

https://www.zmescience.com/science/hunter-gatherer-farmer-ti...

And agriculture itself is less work than we think of. Medieval peasants worked less hours than we do.

https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...

> And agriculture itself is less work than we think of.

That depends entirely upon the ratio of agriculture to other industries in a society and the level of automation.

People operating today's corporate farms in the US probably work fewer hours than their 1920s analogues, but produce far more output. People operating today's small/"family" farms are probably about on par in terms of hours worked, but still produce much more and there are far fewer of them.

It doesn't. People working today's farms (corporate and self operated) AFAICT put in more hours than their 1920s analogues as much more of their time is consumed by the other parts of the business rather than working the fields component.

They do create significantly more for their time, true. But this idea that exists that automation has given us more free time isn't quite borne out by the evidence.

I didn't say agriculture gave us leisure, I said it freed us up to do other things. You may spend less time hunting and gathering but everyone is a hunter and gatherer. With agriculture a smaller part of your society is dedicated to food production. This allows for specialization and civilization.

Leisure, as we understand it is a pretty modern development. In that study they are defining leisure as the opposite of labor. I wouldn't call that leisure personally. Partaking in or consuming entertainment and hobbies is leisure.

It would seem plausible to claim agriculture put demand on innovation; tools to make more efficient agriculture. Things like irrigation channels, planting tools, harvesting tools, etc.

Maybe technology developed for conflict came first but I’d guess peacetime uses also put demands on innovation.

Interestingly, I watched some video somewhere where in some part of India[1] there were people who were harvesting wheat with a curved knife (sickle) like implement rather than a scythe. So people had to bend down to harvest a field. Meaning sometimes technology doesn’t diffuse everywhere —even well known solutions.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iU0uYeO7XI

Hunter gatherers worked at best 4 hours a day.

Agriculture did not free up time, it costs more time. It also has been a catastrophe for the human diet, which was superior before. Besides food, living constantly next to cattle has caused all kinds of new diseases.

Finally, agriculture established the concept of property. Almost all the negative behavior we commonly attribute to people...greed, competition, theft, envy, hoarding...come from the invention of personal property. It's not a natural occurrence of human behavior.

It was a catastrophe for the human diet, back when most people ate grains for 90% of their meals. Now we benefit from having basically any food available to us consistently. Hunter gatherers had better diets than their farming descendents and we know this because of their skeletons. But what farming provides is a surplus of food. Extra food means you feel comfortable enough to have a bunch of kids and all sit around inventing things like computers and Hacker News

There still are hunter gatherer societies, and they don't spend all their time hunting and gathering.

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/10/01/5510187...

I haven't though it through in detail, but I think it has to do with the intersection of these two things. Netflix and ice cream is pure leisure, toiling in the mines is pure work, but there's significant overlap...I'm sure for many here working on a personal coding project can be both a joy in the sense of leisure and also productive work in the sense that other people would pay for it, or it brings significant economic value to them.

So...the middle of the Venn is the important part. Insofar as leisure is both joyful and productive, good. Insofar as we continue the "opiates of the masses" arms race and make ever better Netflix + ice cream, bad.

Progress depends on people or, the economy in general, progressing. If everyone is happy where they are and want no more, there is no need to innovate and progress stops. That may be fine if we think we have achieved all we need to achieve as a society or species but most think we have a bit of a ways to go still before we can declare victory.

What about people who are made happy by innovating and progressing?

When social support for that goes away, it's only the "crazy" who would do that just because. But without societal support it's a dead-end.

There are countries with lots of people --but whose contribution to innovation is substandard. There is no societal support so innovation is stunted.

It’s like thinking justice will happen just because… No, it happens because society supports justice. Justice or innovation don’t just “happen”.

Innovation does just happen, but only under circumstances that need it. People support it because it makes their lives easier. If it doesn't do that then honestly who cares? Don't confuse innovation in general with how many startups the country has.

There has to be some pull. If people are conditioned to be happy with say UBI + Netflix and conditioned to think that you should have a small impact on the planet (little consumption) and your daily needs met (food, shelter) innovation will go down in a generation or so.

[to answer weakfish who appears "dead": no it's not wrong to revert to a subsistence existence, but it has trade-offs. Just be aware of the trade-offs.]

Why should innovation lose support? It would fall under "people do what they like" so the innovators would go on innovating. And if the innovations bring even more to the society of course they will be adopted.

Let’s look at the Soviet Union to Russia transition. The state no longer had the same demand for space innovation. Their tech sector has stagnated. People didn’t carry on just because they could.

In the US a lot of people are very, very unhappy.

The lack of real political and economic agency for most of the population is one of the defining features of US capitalism.

Citation needed. There are all sorts of measures of gross happiness out there.

Why bring in outside materials into this conversation? Do we lack the capacity for reason?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com