Everything must be paid for twice
raptitude.com
raptitude.com
From an external point of view working 60-80 hours a week is not "normal"[1] It's a very US centric thing. In, dare I say, most countries a 40 hour week (or less in places) is normal and working past that is not expected, and often frowned upon.[2]
If you are in the SV rat race, where you do 80 hours a week, then you can't imagine a world where people do less than that. But (spoiler alert) it works out just fine.
On the other hand if you have successfully indoctrinated employees to work for you for 100 hours a week growing your business for you, selling you their lives for nothing more than money, then by all means get rich off their sweat.
[1] I'm referring to regular salary work here, not minimum wage service jobs.
[2] there are also countries, often the same ones, that _require_ you to take 4 weeks of paid vacation every year.
I think these people are just the loudest and like writing articles about how much they work. No one writes about how they work 40 hours and life is fine.
There is also the other case where someone may go to the office 10 hours a day, punch some time on the weekends, claim they "worked" 60 hours, but in reality only got 4-5 hours worth of work done per day.
I just don't buy it.
They spend the other 5-6 hours writing about their 10 hour days.
996 and Japanese salarymen entered chat...
You might not consider much of what they do "work". You might consider their choice freely-given. Others reasonably have a difference of opinion. I'd advise caution when baking in assumptions on what you see in an asymmetric power differential context.
However, meeting Japanese-style salaryman-type management expectations of butts-in-seat-appearing-busy, or in a poorly-led consulting company that underbids and expects hapless employees to still deliver with uncompensated overtime while timesheets read exactly 40 hours per week, or overbook in a subscription-based business and throw the overage onto the heads of the employees, or any number of numerous scams I've seen?
Yeah, that happens plenty. Any area of human activity that is so structurally secular that it not only has a formal label ("overtime abuse"), but has law firms specializing in litigating it [1], makes it a real stretch to assert it is a "myth". I'd like to see where your assertion is coming from, because this is a concern I have to address with job candidates, and I'd really love to have persuasive evidence that it really is a myth in general, and with my organization in particular.
[1] https://winebrakelaw.com/abuses-of-the-executive-employee-ex...
One of the great errors your comment exposes is that making your employees suffer enormously is going to make your company run well.
One of the first laws the Romans and Egiptians discovered is how unproductive slaves were compared to free men. It is a universal rule that applies to modern days as well.
The South pole was conquered (Amundsen expedition)making the men go SLOWER than what they wanted to go because that way the effort could be sustained over time.
I do that all the time in my company because I don't want heroes that do not sleep one day just to be zombies the next day making expensive mistakes.
You (the worker) may opt out (this is a domestic add-on, not all countries have this I think) and work more hours, but you can't be required to, and may not be fired or discriminated against if you do not.
That's blatantly false. In Austria the maximum is 60h/week since it's the maximum allowed in the EU.
So your 60 hour week needs to be offset by, for example, a 36 hour week at some point. Unless you opted yourself out, or you work in one of industries where it doesn't apply.
However, it doesn't appear Austria has the opt-out at all.
As far as I'm aware this came from the EU Working Time Directive so it's been law for a long time.
No human being can run a marathon for 8 hours a day, every day. They will tell you they do but it is not true, the people that know the best are those that are used to run marathons.
The people that work 80 hours have an intensity of work that is extremely weak, or else they will not be able to work in a sustained way. Most people I know delude themselves and can do as much in way less time increasing their intensity of work and using delegation and automation.
By the way I am competitive doing that and lots of my friends also are doing the same.
I don't think this is necessarily a fair way to frame this side. I was very close to burnout in a previous job, and it's taken me probably two years to realise that one of the root causes of my problems was that I just never, ever ever got a chance to switch off. I would be doing "light" work on the weekends (responding to people, messages, build issues), and in the evenings people would be messaging me with questions because I was in a different time zone where my evening overlapped with their afternoon. I turned off notifications outside of work hours and started getting feedback that my work was suffering so I turned them back on. What started as one message a week from a stressed coworker was now 4-5 messages every evening. I was starting work at 9am, finishing at 6pm, and then connected and pretty much unofficially on call until midnight, and then basically on call from 3pm until midnight on weekends. It was probably 90 hours a week all in, and I was definitely doing probably 50% more work than another engineer doing a 40h week, but I was doing it because I was working 2x the hours.
How can this be legal? (not to mention physically and mentally healthy)
Sure you can pay for others to do things for you (cleaning, cooking, laundry, gardening etc) but there is still only 24 hours in a day and you need to chose wisely on what you spend that time on. Likewise for money, I am not just working for my own personal benefit but I am also paying for my family's needs too. You can't just nope out of a job because you want more time to ready moby dick when you need to buy food to feed your kids.
Of course if you had limitless funds things would be different. I don't know where that point is, but I at least certainly still need to work the 40 hour week.
As in: things take up space and if you consider the cost of that suddenly everything becomes expensive.
I while ago I wanted to buy a threadmill - I think I could get a decent one for €1000. BUT it would occupy two square metres in my apartment, so the space for that item is worth €5000 in my area.
€6000 for a threadmill? I think I'd rather use one of the two gyms available within a five minute walk.
The idea that getting rid of stuff is _just_ getting rid of stuff is missing the "third" cost, discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30042285
A better calculation would be annual costs. So say 2% mortgage × €5000 = €100/year. While the treadmill is €1000 / 5 years = €200 / year.
A lot of my hobbies require time devoted to maintenance. Woodworking, for instance. Lots of tools to keep sharp.
If anything you actually paid 5000€ to not use it at all. Money wasted. But if you buy a treadmill you're finally putting it to use and starting to generate a ROI.
Running might be different, depending on your local streets.
I can't tolerate the drudgery of any cardio machine that isn't a rower, but that's basically irrelevant.
Instead of taking the trouble to pirate or talk someone in the US through configuring a RaspberryPi on their home network, I just miss out. Previously, resentfully; now, joyfully.
JOMO.
It also disengages people from society, local communities, public matters and advocacy.
This does not happen by accident.
Contrary to what a lot people believe, minimalism is not a thing for the poor or a way to get rich. It's a lifestyle for the people who can buy/rent anything whenever they want and those people usually have a lot of money. You'll end up with a lot of less things, physically and mentally.
About time, you have to think about time x money. Is there any way that you can pay for some thing or service that free up your time? For example, you can drive to your work or you can pay a taxi and have that time to do something else. When on vacation, you cay pay more for a hotel that is near the place you're interested. You can pay for a personal assistant to handle smaller things, etc.
A good example is when you get a bicycle, you do the equation and realize that within two years you will have saved in on the cost of public transportation. But it's when you start using it you realize that suddenly you always end up sweaty arriving to work so you need to buy good ventilated outdoor clothes and then a little bit later the winter arrives and you realize you need the same type of winter clothes, and then your first tier brakes and you realize you don't have any tools, so not only do you need to buy a new tier but also the tools. And here the initial smart calculation has fallen apart long time ago.
Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of benefits riding a bike to work so it may still be very much worth it. But once you have this realization you can apply the same logic to anything you buy or thinking of buying which may helps prioritizing because there's just so many black holes you can have in your life.
> In microeconomic theory, the opportunity cost of a particular activity option is the loss of value or benefit that would be incurred (the cost) by engaging in that activity, relative to engaging in an alternative activity offering a higher return in value or benefit.
No, I'd say the gp is talking more about "hidden TCO" (Total Cost of Ownership).
Opportunity Cost is about finite time which forces the choice of one action to come at the expense of other alternative actions.
Hidden TCO is being ignorant of auxiliary costs of the base products (accessories, maintenance, etc.) An extreme example of that is a "free puppy" can become one of the most expensive items to own especially when you're uneducated about the true TCO of dogs. I.e. In addition to obvious vet bills, going on a vacation now means you have to pay for a dog sitter which you didn't initially account for. Owning recreational boats is another example of hidden TCO.
People prefer owning and bleeding money where the cost gets spread over time than to pay a smaller amount in lump sums when they need the service.
The truth is it's different psychologically to spend $150 on going out to the mountains instead of the marginal cost of driving out to the mountains in a car you already own. Yeah you can be like but that's not rational with X Y Z reasons all you want but the actual decision experience becomes "do I want to spend $150 today on going to the mountains", which is matched up against any other thing I could do that day for much cheaper, and still have a fair bit of fun. $150 would buy you & someone else dinner at a very nice restaurant! Hell, it would nearly buy a round-trip plane ticket from Seattle to Palm Springs to visit Joshua Tree NP.
Paying for stuff only when you use it puts the costs in your face and puts you in control of your spendings.
Friend after friend jokes about how their truck is more useful, but the one time I really needed one (to purchase a refrigerator) it cost $19 + fuel from Lowes and that was that.
It was quite a nice way to do things.
I make my work high quality, and I want to spend the time I have using things that are well designed and well thought out. In some small way I hope that seeing those things will inspire me to keep my quality up. It’s extra work, but I think that allowing things in one area of my life to be “kinda shitty” will creep into other areas of my life.
How I’ve dealt with this is just doing less. I live in a smaller, more maintainable house. I drive nice, but not luxury, cars that I can afford to keep maintained (both in the sense of time and money), and while I have hobbies (wife says too many), I go for nice gear that is a good value and easily maintainable, that I can resell if I need to.
That’s not to say the most expensive is the best, but I find Kinda shitty comes with the cost of our initial research, purchase, downtime after it breaks or just a less safe/enjoyable experience, trying to get out of the first thing by selling it with a low resale value, then re-purchasing a nicer thing.
I guess my metric is: if I can’t afford to pay for it in cash and don’t have the time or money to maintain it, I probably shouldn’t be buying it - or I should be getting rid of something if I do.
This is more a counterexample.
I bought a bike eighteen months ago, it's my only transportation, it sits outside in the rain, and so far I have spent €0 on it. It's a good bike, but by no means an expensive bike.
> But it's when you start using it you realize that suddenly you always end up sweaty arriving to work so you need to buy good ventilated outdoor clothes
I don't get sweaty walking somewhere. Why should I get sweaty biking?
If you treat biking as transportation and not a race, you won't get sweaty.
> then your first tier brakes
I'm not quite sure what you mean, but I assume you mean you need maintenance. Well, don't buy tools, go to a bike shop. They can do it quicker and better than you can, and it will cost very little - certainly a tiny fraction of what car maintenance is.
I got a bike to _simplify_ my life and it has worked.
That’s only true if you live in a flat region, are never in a hurry, never wear rain clothing, and never dress even slightly too warm. My bike commute has some very minor hills, and it’s virtually impossible for me to not get at least somewhat sweaty. And I view bikes purely as a pragmatic transportation vehicle — not a bike enthusiast.
Take the Moby Dick example... the author says you don't get the return on it until you have paid the 16 hour price of reading it... but isn't those sixteen hours the actual reward? You don't read a book to be finished with it, you read it because you like the reading process. The reward starts the first minute you start reading the book.
Not only that, but you don't have to finish the book to get something out of reading it. If you enjoyed the time you spent reading, that is enough.
This attitude seems very "completionist", where you only get value after you finish something. That isn't how I view things.
Also, why does he think mindless apps and games are the same as doing nothing? The idea is you enjoy the time spent playing the game. Sure, you don't end up with anything after, but you enjoyed the time.
People want 1.5 speed because that's what gets the narrator back to a normal speaking speed.
You can read those masterworks at a superficial level and they’re usually somewhat rewarding. Or you can read Dostoyevsky while deep diving on Russian history and get a notably different experience. But it takes a lot longer.
1: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/08/th...
Overanalysing it kills that pleasure and atmosphere. That is not reading, that is doing seminar.
I speed read War and Peace for the first time in ~4 hours for the school test (I refused to read assigned literature). It went into one ear and into another.
I then re-read it while recovering from the surgery over a leisurely week and enjoyed it tremendously as I think would anyone who gives it time.
My mother told me she read just the Peace parts, while my father admitted to reading only the War parts (they are pretty much alternate chapters).
There was a time I wanted to learn Russian to read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
It's too bad we can't structure assigned reading and coursework in terms of choice, I distinctly remember choosing to work on harder assignments when given choices back in the grade school era.
I have this problem with games; there are lots of games. I can only find out if I enjoy one by spending time on it (and unfortunately the industry seems to like drawing things out such that the first hour or three aren't necessarily representative). Unfortunately, very often it is the case I go in hoping I would enjoy it, but after a while have to cut it short because it's not enjoyable. Not only have I not gotten much out of it, I've lost all the time I could have spent on something more enjoyable (or productive). And it's still true that I've lost the time, even if I enjoyed the activity. One tricky part with games that start out as fun (and addictive) is that it can take a while to realize it's not fun anymore and hasn't been for a while. And I've definitely had regrets with games that don't feel fun but after consulting opinions, "trust me it gets better." Ugh.
That sort of plays in to the value calculus on games.. a common mindset I see in reviews is that if a game offers hundreds of hours of gameplay, it is a high value game. For me, it rarely works out that way; I'm not a bored teenager desperate for entertainment, and in practice long games rarely seem to respect my time. They're long because they drag on and push you into running around, dull repetitive grind and fighting, mass produced shallow quests, boring errands, copypaste scenery spread over a large map... Quantity over quality. From my perspective, a game can definitely have negative value.
What I'm looking for in games today is definitely the opposite. Maximum quality that lasts a weekend at most and then I can move on in life. And I still don't want to waste most of my weekends playing games, even if I could find good ones.. Similarly, I have a bunch of books about which I've been wondering whether it's really worth my time reading them.
I'm sure I'd feel differently if I could somehow make more time available to me (e.g. work only three days a week oslt).
Try a board game! Seems like a great fit for what you want.
There's definitely an alternative framing for entertainment. My friend gladly traded $60 for something that promised to take 100 hours. If it only took 50 hours, he would have found it less valuable.
"Only once the second price is being paid do you see any return on the first one."
So he agrees with you: you start getting the benefits as soon as the "second price" is being paid.
And I don't think it's quite right to say that the sixteen hours are the actual reward. They're the space in which some of the actual reward occurs, so to speak. You pay the price of using 16 hours of your time to read Moby-Dick. You get the reward of 16 enjoyably-spent hours, and also the reward of having your brain reshaped in whatever way reading Moby-Dick does for you -- deepening your ideas about friendship or obsession or sailing or whales, etc.
The 16 hours you have to spend are still a price, even though you enjoy spending those hours. (Some people enjoy spending money. They're still paying when they do.) The 16 hours you spend reading Moby-Dick are 16 hours you aren't spending reading The Brothers Karamazov or sleeping or doing lucrative consultancy or talking with your friends.
However, this is basically just the idea of opportunity costs, and pointing out that they apply to more than just the money spent, but also the time.
The article's point is that there's a particular relationship between these costs and benefits. Namely, that the first cost only enables you to gain the benefit, but that you can't actually receive the benefit until you pay into the second, time cost. This is interesting because it's easy to forget or miscalculate that second cost, and because the second cost gates the benefit that means you may not be getting the full benefit from paying the first cost.
It is not something that costs me anything other than time, however that's not the "price" he's talking about. Otherwise "low price pleasures" wouldn't be a category, if you enjoy that time it's not marginally better than nothing.
1) money
2) time
It costs money to get access to the good you are consuming, and hours to unlock the value. Whether or not you enjoyed reading Moby Dick, you have 16 less hours in the time bank.
If you do enjoy it (I did not), you have paid 16 hours out of the time bank and reaped the reward of 16 hours of pleasurable reading.
There are “cheaper” thrills. I am told you can spend 5 minutes on TickTock and receive some quick gratification. The up front cost is low. The cumulative payoff of spending 16 hours watching cat videos may not be as ultimately rewarding to you as plowing through some classic literature.
I don’t think it’s just time but also, as you allude to a bit, the extra effort, mental or physical.
So I wouldn't cross out "staring at a wall" as inarguably invaluable. It's what's going on in your head when you do it. Same as when reading that book.
The time spend by purely relaxing activities like reading or watching is on itself a reward. You do it instead of doing something less pleasant- staring bored at the wall.
And the idea that you could have spent all that time doing something super useful is wrong if it is about opportunity cost. I tried multiple times to cut off all "time wasters" like reading fiction or videos. It ended in low productivity and depression each time.
All original content. It has its own twist to it. All in 5 to 10 minutes. Everything just flows, I never use any browsing. Just swipe.
EDIT: I also need to mention that TikTok is host to many, not just one, many emergent properties. Trends take off, people from around the world do the weirdest things which become super popular. Such as ASMR videos, example: whispering secretary
When you're young and poor, the sticker price seems very close to the actual value, but as you get older and richer, you come to see the time spent as by far the most significant scalar quantity.
But yeah, many things require time and once you paid for something, often using isn't instant.
I think, in addition, there is an 'unpleasant' quality about needing concentration for reading that the author feels more than you do. But that unpleasantness is not the core of the piece. The limited budget is.
Consider someone who reads 10 hours a week and buys 5 books a week. They will be buying books they will probably never read. They are paying the first price but never the second.
Honestly, I'm not sure if you can say that the money spent is truly a "cost" either.
Consumers love buying books (spending money) as much as they love reading books (spending time).
There is definitely a sense of reward in simply buying a book - even one you never read - just as there is for buying clothes you'll never wear or gadgets you'll never use.
Is there? Doesn't that just make you feel like an idiot for wasting your money? The only feeling I ever get after spending money is "this better not suck".
Feeling a sense of reward simply for spending money sounds unhealthy.
Of course there is. Most books people buy can be borrowed from a library for free, but people still do it.
Personally, I only think money is wasted when you don't get what you were trying to get when you spent the money. So if you decide to spend your money buying a delicious burrito, but it turns out to taste bad, then it was wasted money.
If you are trying to buy a book to bring you the joy you feel when buying a book, and you get that joy, then it isn't money wasted. If you buy it and then regret it after and don't feel the joy, then it was wasted.
It's still wasted. That person would just be an egocentric idiot. Even if they are a happy idiot.
A capitalist society cannot work properly if the experience of buying is valued at the cost of whatever is bought.
Neither can this world or society sustain widespread wastefulness. It hurts everyone (else).
Wasting money on things that are unused causes labor and resources to be diverted from more worthy endeavors. More directly it causes the price of those goods to increase, or even become unavailable.
Ultimately you need to trust that if someone spends, there's utility to the spend, otherwise they wouldn't have - even if the act of spending is the benefit itself.
It's not for 3rd parties to judge the usefulness of the spend. To illustrate this, think about the typical teenager who's mom says wastes all their time on "insert hobby mom doesn't like" and extrapolate that to the world's consumption habits. Everyone thinks others are wasteful.
It seems healthier than having a sense of anxiety. Living in a moneyed society requires spending money, so why attach a sense of dread to it?
Also, if the experience of spending itself was valued at the amount being spent, this economy would break down in an instant.
If I was going to drive myself to destitution chasing good feeling like a rat in an experiment, there are far more effective hits I could get than just "the feeling of spending money on something I like, but may not actually use."
I already have to have the skills to not let good feelings completely drive my decision making, so what benefit is there to making an unavoidable process into a source of negative feelings? Would it be healthy to feel nausea every time I eat so that I don't overindulge?
It might be healthier than becoming obese which comes with it's own negative feelings.
Despite obesity being a (if not the) leading cause of death, people are overindulging anyways.
It would appear that overwhelmingly people will act against their best interests if it just makes them feel good. At least when it comes to food.
I'm happy for you that you appear to be an exception.
There are some uses of money which are primarily philanthropic or social messaging. In these cases, the utility of the good or service is ancillary to the purchase. As overall economic welfare continues to improve, the niche for these things increases. The split between purpose and utility varies, maybe 5/95 for that chocolate bar that says it is protecting the rainforest (doubtful) but 40/60 for Girl Scout cookies. It's hard to straddle anywhere near that 50/50 line, but again, as the niche expands, the markets will eventually figure out more products for the space.
"This NGO better be honest". It's not about the water bottle.
When I spend money, I expect something (to happen) in return. It doesn't have to benefit myself.
If you enjoy wasting money on books you are not going to read, I suggest you just set the money on fire instead. Or bury it and take the location to your grave. You'll do everyone else a favor by driving down the cost of goods, and nobody had to labor or waste resources on something you weren't planning to use. The economy will instead find something useful to do it with that labor and those resources.
Alternatively donate it as in your example - if you want to benefit someone specific. Maybe to the author whose book you weren't going to read?
If someone buys a collectible book with no intention of reading it, is it really a waste of resources?
Stuff is collectible because it's not being made any more and can't be. A signed first edition of something can't be sending an economic signal to produce more.
The money paid represents labor and resources forgone, and the more that the collectible costs, the more labor and resources is reserved for better purposes.
It is depriving someone else who would like to own it and possibly read it, but is that honestly a loss to society?
- You still need to manage / expose / dedicate space / maintain your collectibles to enjoy them
- It can be an investment so it’s really different than buying something to use it. It’s buying something hoping to resell it. Still, we could say you also pay with incertitude, maybe stress and responsibility if it’s something expensive.
This is true. A sense of proportion is always useful. Wouldn't you expect maintenance to be orders of magnitude smaller than creating things in the first place, very generally?
>It can be an investment so it’s really different than buying something to use it
I don't know what you are trying to say. Investment is inherently deferred consumption, and the higher the value, the more consumption is deferred. That leaves more resources for people who need them.
Imagine a stylized society with one rich person who has a billion dollars, and everybody else is poor.
If that person spends their billion dollars on a rare book, then the only thing that has been taken away from society is that book. And usually there is more than one copy of a book, so other people can still read the story, they just don't have the specific physical object.
But if they spend their billion dollars on, say, constructing a palace, then the resources could have been used to build thousands of homes for ordinary people.
Money is not a resource.
> Is there?
W-w-what? Of course there is reward in simply buy a book. Or, perhaps, one could say there is reward in the possessing of the book, and maybe not the purchasing. Or maybe that's a distinction with no distinction. In any case, it's certainly true that one can get reward from buying books without the necessity of reading them.
> Doesn't that just make you feel like an idiot for wasting your money?
Sorry, I'm not seeing where any "wasting" enters into it. If I buy a book I want, the reward is having it. There is no waste. I got what I wanted. What you're saying only makes sense if you make the rather odd assumption that the value of a book is exclusively in the reading of the book...
I mean... do you, or have you ever, collected anything simply for the sake of having that something? Stamps? Vinyl records? Magazines? Bicycles? Video game consoles? Something?? I mean, it's quite a common activity. I would think most anybody would be able to relate to this.
Then when I did read them, they greatly affected me, and were as worthwhile as I had originally hoped.
I could've died without ever reading them, but I still bought them to read at some undefined future date.
If I wanted to have books on a shelf for visual decoration, I believe that there are fake books available. But I have enough real ones.
Getting a signed first edition or something for the collector value seems reasonable to me, but I don't know why I would want it if I hadn't read some version of it.
I do. But only digitally nowadays. I hardly own any physical goods. Maybe $10-$15k taken together at most. I realize this puts me close to an extreme end.
As a kid I used to 'play' trading card games - but I hardly played them and mostly just spent a large portion of my meager allowance on buying painted cardboard. With the benefit of hindsight I could've spend that money on things that would have brought me considerably more joy, but I consider that a valuable lesson in itself.
I don't begrudge people their collections. There's still purpose in that. However buying something for your collection is different from buying for the sake of buying.
You pay literally for physical copy only in this case. You literally can get it for free.
That said, I own several books and games that I haven’t put the effort into reading/playing yet. Reading and gaming aren’t effortless
I think the broader point the author is making is that we are over-consuming — because we can. But without the fulfillment that comes from the time spent with the purchased thing we are finding our lives paradoxically empty.
The problem the author elucidates really resonated with me, but perhaps it was framed a little awkwardly.
We are living in an age when consuming is easy, while time has become so much more precious. Contrast that with days past when the opposite was true: purchases were precious while time was more plentiful.
When exactly was supposed that be?
People like pastoralists who watch over grazing flocks are relatively free too, it is not a constant work comparable to a factory floor.
Traditional female works were a bit different. A lot of spinning, for example, that was a major time eater, and independent of season.
Yeah no. That meme came from estimation of some economist that completely ignored what actually male (or female) peasants done. And conditions they actually lived in.
And they already knew how to make candles.
I have some first-hand knowledge from them, which I consider quite reliable. They are all dead now, but their conditions were quite alike.
The work in the height of the agricultural season was very hard and arduous. A huge problem was the weather: if it rained too much, or not at all, food would become very expensive.
But I stand by my claim that they had a lot of free or semi-free time. Their entire rhythm of living was different.
For example, every Sunday, there was a market in a town 20 kms away. My grandma walked there and back to sell some eggs and cheese and buy whatever the village did not produce (e.g. kerosene for the kerosene lamp). It was 4 hours each way, but the time spent walking there wasn't work. The villagers went in a group, talked, told stories, flirted, sung etc. on the way. So the journey was a mix of leisure, exercise and bonding.
Or another example. Girls would often knit or decorate clothing together. It was an important activity, but under no hard deadline or quality pressure (unlike in a factory), and they usually gathered together and had a good time talking, sewing, relaxing for a bit. Someone could actually read stories aloud to pass time etc.
These days, we have rather hard divisions between "work", "hobby" and "leisure". Only a few moments in the day (the watercooler chit-chat) are somewhere in between.
That wasn't the case in premodern rural society and my grandparents yet lived in such a world.
Decorating cloth is work. It just is and was. Nor something you can avoid and something you are judged on. I listen to music when coding and to podcast when doing repetitive work. Does not make it not work.
You know why we girls don't don't anymore? Because it is boring repetitive chore to large majority of us. And I actually did some embroidery - it is cool in small amounts. Emphasis on small.
And it was not all relaxing either. You are talking about period with huge pressures, periods of lack of food due to wars.
In generation in between, there are people who cant relax. They feel guilty and will badge you if you dare to sit and rest.
The 200 hours isn't quite the reward. A jog isn't rewarding. Reading a paragraph isn't rewarding. You need to read perhaps a chapter at least to get some reward.
I bought Dune. I read until the legendary "fear is the mind killer" scene. And then I put it down and haven't picked it up yet. I got some reward from it, probably not the full amount, but I just couldn't afford the hours to finish the book.
For many years we have just been chucking stuff in the bin and trying to forget about it, but for most things that not sustainable.
Because I just drove through Nevada and can personally attest that we are not in danger of running out of places to dig big holes to put old stuff in.
Trucking trash is pretty cheap - think about how cheap it is to transport retail goods across the country. Now think about the cost savings from not caring about the condition of the “product” on arrival.
And anyway, it’s gotta be cheaper than sending waste to China, like we used to do.
In an efficient market, the price you pay would include a carbon tax paid to the "Earth fund", and the fund would be used to replenish the planet's resources (eg. by carbon capture and storage).
But until then, the version of capitalism we operate is one where the largest participant (planet Earth) is only being stolen from; never being paid.
The current system, as far as I understand it, is a market. One of the better ideas I've seen governments implement. You can purchase carbon credits only to the extent other carbon credits are on the market - like people planting trees.
I've noticed an increased sense of joy and satisfaction by when I, for example, wash and wax my car. Instead of just using it when I need to go somewhere spending time taking care of it reminds me i own it, that it was a large purchase and keeping clean and in proper working order is beneficial and I should be proud.
It has definitely helped me be less materialistic this past year and really appreciate the things I have purchased.
So much waste. No more repair.
This also leads onto another problem which is a lot of things you own demand attention and money throughout their life. Cars are the obvious example which demand new tyres, servicing, fuel, cleaning, their own house to be stored in, etc. Even the bookshelf that Moby Dick sits on will need dusting from time to time.
It's extra ironic that the entire issue they're describing is caused exactly by such (IMHO) over-economic thinking.
A long time ago I started computing entertainment in terms of quality hours per dollar.
So for example a good book might cost $20 but last ten hours of high quality entertainment, which is very good value at $2 per hour.
Movie tickets are not-so-good at something like $20 per hour, $40+ if I have a date and we're buying snacks.
Some computer games are ludicrously efficient. I never paid a cent for some games and played them for thousands of hours. Even factoring in the cost of the PC and electricity, we're looking at cents per hour.
Holidays are the worst, at something like $1K+ per day or $60 per waking hour.
I had to explain to the missus that we're wasting money going to a so-so restaurant on an overseas holiday. Since we've already sunk thousands into just being present at that location, and every hour was costing us Real Money, we may as well go to restaurant that's just shy of 5 stars and costs triple digits. Do the sky dive. Then do a dive under the ocean. Snowboard. See something spectacular! Otherwise, what's the point? We're burning money for what... doing nothing... but in a different part of the planet!?
There is some merit into investing from an "hours of fulfilment resulting from the investment" perspective, but if you overdo things, it may actually spoil most of your vacations. If in every moment, you reflect what you could have done, and calculate the hourly opportunity cost instead of enjoying the moment, any money spent on being right under that clear summer sky with romantically sparkling stars on the French coast will degrade to a spreadsheet exercise.
My recommendation: use such considerations in the planning phase, but not _during_ a vacation or date! "Be here now."
I optimize for having a good time with people I care in places where we get know how other people live, taste what other people eat, appreciate different landscapes. I also optimize for relaxing and thinking about life, without the regular worries I have at home. Walking around to see how different cities are.
I don’t optimize for “stories to tell”, “adrenaline”, or “instagrammable moments”.
We are different people and there is nothing wrong with your view on vacations. The only issue that I see is when you try to convince your partner (I’m not sure if that’s what “missus” mean) that this a “waste of money”. “Waste” here is completely subjective. There is nothing objective about it as you seem to imply. So I would make sure that they spontaneously agree with your perspective, before trying to convince them of what is a waste of money and what’s not.
He's not framing it in an economic way. It's just that the words "pay/paid" are very common conversational shorthand for "effort you have to expend". E.g. when parents often say "you have to _invest_ in your children" -- or -- "if you don't exercise consistent discipline when they're young, you will _pay_ the _price_ when they're older" ... the parents are not being clinical economists.
If you're still sidetracked by "pay/price", the alternative metaphor for the same concept is: Don't buy stuff for the "fantasy self" you're imagining. Instead, you have to be brutally honest in your self-assessment of what you will realistically use.
I.e. Don't buy a stack of cookbooks when you don't really have the motivation to cook. Thinking that the colorful photos of completed dishes will spur you to action is fantasy.
Yes, somebody might still complain that "fantasy self" is wrong because "I would never frame cooking food as a field of speculative fiction genre in literature" ... then I guess we're in a never-ending loop of focusing on the metaphor instead of the underlying message.
Some people need to learn how to relax, forget about maximizing value of everything, and just enjoy the act of doing nothing.
I consider taking the time to learn these apps an investment.
The other reason is people making money - the vast, vast majority of people will never make money from music production or guitar plugins (not because it is inherently worse, but because a lot more people do it for fun, v/s photo or video editing). Photoshop and Premier know that a substantial amount of customers use their products to make a living.
OTOH, what you're saying is definitely true to some extent for Guitar Plugins et al. Native Instruments has a bunch of free guitar plugins, and Tonebridge is amazing, and neither have any reason to be free.
This is news to me. It seems like the major DAWs have each cornered a particular sub-market. Cubase for orchestral, Pro Tools for studios, Live for live electronic stuff and EDM in general. Then there are smaller ones that claim share on the weaknesses of the others: Studio One, BitWig, Reaper, FL Studio, etc. I've been in this for a long time and never got a sense that Logic Pro was more than a strong contender. And I mainly get that sense from Logic Pro users who describe it as an oft-ignored underdog.
Is your claim only an intuitive thing based on the limits of one person's perspective, or do you have some stats for it? I couldn't find anything. My view is based on accounts from people who use it. You're the first to describe it as dominant.
The time spent on making some good is merely an argument for some minimum pay, but if the thing you made is worthless to the other party, then there is no guarantee that you'll be rewarded for the effort you made over time. If all else is equal, then sure, you can save money by working faster. But there are a lot of ways to work around working faster, such as working smarter or making time into your friend, say by buying something that compounds over time.
Time, on the other hand, is a constant. Whether you "make use" of the time or not is irrelevant. Add to this that about eight hours a day is "wasted" to sleep! You only ever have a rough measuring stick as for how long you'll live, and beyond that point, time stops bearing any meaning what so ever for you, because you're dead. That is quite important, because you can't experience time when you're dead. And so, from your perspective, time stops existing until your next experience, however long that may take.
Now what does that tell you? Well, for one, it should probably tell you that time isn't nearly as valuable as folks make it out to be, though what you make out of this life is of course pretty important. And so you might value other things more than the hustle and bustle of making something faster or on time. Instead perhaps enjoy life more.
While throwing something in a garbage may be "cheap", there are many hidden costs, especially for the society as a whole.
I have definitely started to consider "price of disposal" when purchasing new tings.
Ask anyone how many hours they took to sell a car, house, or their art work and you can see 'ending' costs add up quickly - other items often have disposal costs like appliances and tires.
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54785515-four-thousan...
I don't have anywhere near enough money (I'm literally under the poverty line) but I definitely feel like I have enough "acquisition power." I don't want to acquire more, I want to sort through all my junk and get rid of most of it.
It turns out I'm already quite wealthy in the categories that are important to me.
I, too, am trying to get rid of a lot of things. Not to be a minimalist or anything, but to quit feeling like I owe time to those objects and the spaces they occupy, and instead focus even more time into the things I care more about.
Second price: utilization
Third price: room, board and feeding
The third price is the total cost required to own something, independent of any utilization.
Think rent on storage units filled with unused and forgotten items. Or simply the clutter and lost useful space in a room due to the simple presence of an object.
The third price is often the worst.
Book needs new bookshelf, bookshelf needs bigger room, room need bigger house, house need lawn, lawn need lawn mower, lawn mower need garage, garage need paint job, and so on. Think about all the items you own and if you really use them or if they are there “just in case” or to support some other useless single purpose item.
Not saying you shouldn’t buy the things you enjoy and your garage might be a joy for other reasons. Just be mindful that once you reach the limit of one space, practicing one-in one-out is a very good idea. People renting storage units (not temporarily) are frankly just sad. How are you ever going to use something if it’s stowed away so deep.
But without religion or other compelling organizations or meaningful jobs, it's the most natural way for people feel a part of an experience together. There is a significant return on investment: you get to compare opinions with your family about the latest Marvel movie, or chat with your friends about the newest Taco Bell offering. Otherwise what can you talk about?
The problem isn't the presence of a "consumer society" but the absence of meaning.
But I like the author's perspective, so I agree that we should at least consider the second price and prioritize purchase of items for which it is negative.
Personally, I think reading the standard definition first would be much more helpful:
The concept sounds appealing, but a Facebook group is one of the last places I would associate with finding ‘depth’ (Slack or Discord being a close second and third).
Cost = the amount of money I bought the book Value = the rush feeling that I have about being a reader/phantom feeling of being a little better
But actually:
Cost = the amount of money I bought the book + keeping/transporting the book + not reading it + fueling to my addictive behavior spiral Value = none, maybe when I sell the damn thing with a profit - the time and effort = negative value
Overall, the value is far less than the cost. This article value is ++ for me.
Now, I try to be more conscious about what I buy through simple accounting. I always record everything I order with my ledger. Together with that, I also have a list of the items I currently own with an indication how much I paid for it initially and how long have I been using them. Regular tracking really helps to make sense of your financial decisions.
These two otherwise orthonormal concepts collapse into each other in a manner perhaps related to the swings between pleasure and jouissance.
If I buy a flute, I get a carefully configured bundle of metal, cork, and leather pads.
I didn't pay for the skill.
Likewise, when I buy a novel, I didn't pay for the knowledge.
It's not a second cost, it's two purchases.
People today have much more money (or purchasing power) than pre industrial people. They have the same amount of time.
There’s a big consequence to your behaviors whether you have more time, or more money. When you have more time, you backpack, take long buses and sleep in hostels. When you have more money than time you fly, use guided tours to do things quickly etc (all within your preferences of course)
The author then goes through the problem with what another comment described as “completionist attitude”. That’s not necessarily a good way to live your life I reckon.
I could never put the concept from the scene in words, but first and second price describes this problem perfectly.
This is why you should always have a cooldown period before buying anything, to help avoid letting marketing influence you as heavily versus your actual needs.