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Comment by bilsbie | Hacker News Reader

You wouldn’t get tired of the beach if you went every day?

This july I tried one month of living close to the beach, in a rental apartment. I took half of the time off, and the rest of the time I worked from “home”. I went to the beach every day, and plenty of days I went all day.

By the end of the month I got tired of sitting on the beach.

Absolutely not. I would live in a beach house, and I would indeed spend many hours laying in the sand, swimming in the ocean, etc. But I wouldn't literally spend the entire rest of my life doing nothing else at all. There would be socializing with friends and family, traveling, and taking care of my affairs. I would also spend plenty of time on hobbies of all sorts.

The key is that I would be living a life of complete and total leisure. Wake up whenever I want. Sleep whenever I want. Eat whenever I want. And each day, each moment, I would do whatever in particular I happened to feel like doing. I would not spend one moment of my remaining short life doing something purely because a capitalist system forced me to do so. That's the ultimate, probably unachievable, goal.

> The key is that I would be living a life of complete and total leisure. Wake up whenever I want. Sleep whenever I want. Eat whenever I want. And each day, each moment, I would do whatever in particular I happened to feel like doing.

I ended up in essentially this state for several years. It was about as blissful as you would imagine. The problem is, what got me in to that state was an intense drive (among other things) that becomes increasingly hard to sate without a meaningful purpose.

So I've voluntarily made my way back into "capitalist systems" and have to consciously remind myself that it is optional and a choice I've made. It's hard to find lasting contentment.

Any tips?

So this life of total leisure is the thing we all want, and it is for that reason the capitalist system seems to work. Someone has to provide the labor that allows you to continue in a life of leisure.

Society doesn't require many people to work to sustain itself (we have the recent example of the pandemic). If we could enjoy for a while what we have built until this current moment, without inventing or creating anything new, how much time will it take for society to collapse?

Animals live a life of leisure without much work, and they don't have the infrastructure that we as humans have. They don't collapse.

How much work is essential in a society? Medical, agriculture, logistics? If we stopped creating new hardware or software for a few years, how much impact will that have on society? I would want to run a test to see the results.

If our ancestors thought this way, we would be living in much worse conditions now. Even if your goal is to maximize your own happiness, you will find that humans are happiest when they move towards some important goal they set out for themselves. Ever tried playing a video game with cheats? It's fun for about 10 minutes. Then it becomes extremely boring and meaningless. I'm sure there are ways in which hedonists can to some degree overcome this(rotating between different hobbies, doing drugs, immersing themselves in fictional worlds etc.) but this isn't even sacrificing the future for the present, it's just sacrificing both.

> Animals live a life of leisure without much work, and they don't have the infrastructure that we as humans have. They don't collapse.

^ This claim doesn't really sound like it has a lot of evidence to back it up.

As i see this problem I can break it down in 2 parts: - systems (including animals & humans) evolve or decline - our species doesn't have a central decision system

So, as I see it, animals live a life of constant pressure where the strong survive and the weak are culled out. No judgement here on the implications of striving for strength.

Suppose humans stop advancing our way to creating supporting tools that enable our weak to live. In my view this means those tools will decline and tend to disappear. Thus as a species we would be heading to the type of life animals live - I described above.

So, I argue that all work is essential work because when the outskirts of the bell curve of essential work are cut off, then the height of the bell curve drops as well.

> systems (including animals & humans) evolve or decline

This is not necessarily true. We could maintain systems without evolution or decline. For example, I don't think that cloth manufacturing has evolved much since the 70s. Shops have new ways to sell (via the internet), but we as a society could wear clothes from the 70s and have the same quality of life (in terms of clothing) as people back then. Think about how much unnecessary work and waste have we created by consuming clothes every year. How much damage could be avoided by not manufacturing more clothes?

> So, as I see it, animals live a life of constant pressure where the strong survive and the weak are culled out

Animals have the pressure to eat. They hunt, they consume what they need, and they rest until they are hungry again. They aren't constantly accumulating food or killing other species. That's the difference between animals and humans. The fisherman goes fishing every single day from 9 to 5, no matter if society is hungry or not.

I think in some sense it feels like we want to live off the fat of the land so to speak.

And this totally doable, and I think a lot of people could live in leisure for quite a while.

At some point though unless we live much more nomadically and never storing up for the future, we will need to make sacrifices in life again for some higher goal, to those who come after us in order to once again have the fat of the land.

This is just the way of life though.

Fuck yeah.

With you all the way in this, including the probably unachievable part. starts to shed a tear

That's not capitalism to blame, that's just the free market.

I'm not sure any system will let you live this life without a significant investment back into it, first.

Well if anything a post-scarcity system would do it.

It's an interesting idea that's fairly new to me. I guess I don't have enough communist friends. :)

It sounds nice, but will never happen on a global scale IMO because people will always fight for positions of power. Complete freedom/autonomy/no agency is not what a government wants of its citizens.

So if there was some kinda revolution, sure, but I speculate it would be quite isolated.

Post scarcity is more likened to the SciFi utopia of star trek, but yes :)

>> I would not spend one moment of my remaining short life doing something purely because a capitalist system forced me to do so. That's the ultimate, probably unachievable, goal.

Given your profession, a capitalist society is by far the most likely way for you to get what you want. What do socialist-type EU countries pay software engineers again compared to the United States? How much money do you need to save to achieve your dream? The US is without question the best country to chase that goal.

Statistically the US is also the best country to end up destitute, homeless and harassed by the police regularly. Plus - what are "socialist-type EU countries"?

>> Statistically the US is also the best country to end up destitute, homeless and harassed by the police regularly.

The first two points are false, I could present to you high double-digit countries where it's much worse than the United States. Charitably though, I assume you mean non-developing nations, in which case, you have a point.

It also does not apply to the parent poster.

No, I could spend all day at the beach for the rest of my life. Same with hiking desert climates. Same with spending all my time in my wood and metal shop.

I would. Also my skin burns in like 15 minutes, so I'd have to wear a burqa or something. But I imagine OP doesn't mean literally being on the beach all the time. Just have leisure time that you can structure as you like. I could probably last a year or two like that if I didn't have to work. Or maybe I'd find a project or several to work on anyway, just not as employment.

My MiL’s place is a few minutes from the beach. When we visit, I mostly use it for nighttime walks. I would go crazy spending every day on the beach.

But boy is it great for a stroll with ice cream on a hot summer night.

Unlike the two people who replied to you, I would 100% get tired of the beach within... 2 hours.

A tiny anecdote just so you know the other extreme exists. I've lived very close to a beach (200 metres or so) for about 1.5 years and never got tired of the beach. Barring day where I was unwell or out of town, I went for a walk or a swim every single day. All my current career goals are centered around eventually settling down near a beach!

Speaking from experience, no.

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