Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)
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I also took a break from corporate life for about 5 months now, and now trying to get back into it. I'm actually content with what I have, give me my laptop (which I already own) and my bookshelf (with probably more than 50 unread books), as long as I have money for food and house/utilities, I'm actually quite ok.
The problem arises when you are in a relationship and have a kid. It is really hard to 'convince' people (including the wife) the baby doesn't need 10 pairs of trousers or 50 plastic toys (He actually has a lot of hand me downs, and all of his toys, maybe 20 if the many, are handmade wooden ones).
Also, that vacation the wife always dreamed, you can't really do that. Or she wants a new fancy dress - nopes. Ohh the kid should go to private school (while I'm not fond of it, looking at public schools in the area, maybe isn't that bad of an idea), will the money be enough?
Yes, we can all live minimally, but we also have to agree, it maybe easier for us 'techies' to do so as a laptop is usually hours of entertainment, but trying this with a social life (girlfriend/friends/family) makes it really hard.
All this to say, I'm really sad I'm giving up my free time to work 9-5 again, but consulting isn't paying all the bills and allow me to provide a 'good' life to my wife and kid.
* I use a year instead of six months because occasionally you get that holiday-specific stuff that might be good to keep but only comes up annually.
When single I changed countries every 1-2 years (moved a lot around Europe). I learned to live with very little, but it isn't as easy when you have wife/kids (and uprooting your kid just for the sake of minimalism isn't really fair).
Wife and I talked about moving in a couple of years, but I'm reluctant because of the kid.
Strongly consider moving to ebooks for almost everything
Empty out closets (after eating a meal). Force yourself to throw out most of it.
Stop waiting to file. Throw it all in a drawer, go through said drawer infrequently at scheduled times.
- Offer a tablet to your wife
- Buy reusable diapers (it's more trouble, but cheaper on long run)
- Explain to the wife about the dangers of some plastics (BPAs, phtalates) and convince her to buy form local artisans (without trying to be political, tell her some of the toys are made by kids not much younger than your own)
- Put stuff in boxes you know she won't use. Store them away from her (a shed, storage unit, etc). After a year or so, ask her if she knows where item A,B,C is, and if she needs it. More likely she will have no idea where it is. Explain to her that if the last year she didn't needed that purple striped sweater, she probably won't need it ever. Suggest selling or donating.
- Ask for hand-me-downs from friends and family for your kid. It will be harder for he to justify buying new clothes ('But he needs a new pair of trousers') when you can point to the bunch that was given to you.
I think just those 5 things reduced a lot of the stuff we have in the house.
You will have to manage this of course, you can't expect everything to go your way. She will buy that dress/shoes, but avoid you doing it too just because she tells you also need new shoes. Also, we go on vacation (for her benefit as I really not into it) every once in a while. It is a partnership after.
Wanting things is a legitimate choice, and it seems unfair to deprive someone of that choice through trickery.
All the other things I talk to her, explain. Why buy new clothes every 2 months (seriously, the damn baby just keeps growing) if we can have a lot of hand-me-downs? She loves her kindle and iPad. The toys issue is a real concern and made it her concern as well. I started drinking a lot less because it was a concern for her.
I don't think it is manipulation. I hate clutter, she knows it, I try to find solutions where both are ok with it. I mentioned sometimes I get my way, sometimes she gets her way. I can't say for others, but I never found anyone that was 100 percent match in everything I like and believe. I mention it is a partnership. I hate going on holidays, hate it, but I go to make her happy. Of course I expect she does a few things to make me happy. If not (both sides), why the hell are we together? Just to save on rent?
Edit: Heck, if you read the top post, you even see I'm going back to work because I want her to have things she really wants.
Does it? My grandparents (and maybe yours too) had 5x more kids than this generation's parents, while making less money (my grandpa literally made the bricks of his house).
Believe it or not there are plenty of 'wives' out there that are less into consumption and waste than their husbands. Gender does not determine environmental consciousness and desire for simplicity.
I've read a lot of blogs about living minimally and one thing I've noticed is that most of the authors try hard to convince not the readers, but themselves that they're happy with that way of life. I don't buy that. To me minimalism was never about spending less money on things, just the opposite - spend more money, but on less stuff. In other words, quality over quantity. Spend money on stuff that makes you happy, be it travelling, sports cars or attending to as much concerts as possible. Money gives possibilities to experience things, and in my opinion it's what makes life interesting. I don't mind working hard to earn more money, so later I can experience more, without counting every penny. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot more important things in life that money can't buy, but it doesn't mean that money isn't essential to happiness. Just don't waste money on dull, unnecessary things, instead realise what really makes you happy and your life better and spend money on that.
I've mentioned this before but my company hires Rails developers for 24hrs/wk. Health insurance is provided and salary is proportional to full-time.
It's not for everyone, but it works well for us. Everyone's fresh and relaxed when they come into work, and the free time is great for learning, side projects, exercising, travel.
Anyway, we're actually hiring right now: if you're in the Bay Area and looking shoot me an email.
In some professions it's easier, because you work by 'smallish' project: copywriting, translation, etc
But the sw development world could benefit from that
This makes it sound like there's some kind of a conspiracy, like robber barons or The Man all got together to plan this out. It's a lot easier to invent scapegoats like this, but that doesn't make it true.
> Can you imagine what would happen if all of America stopped buying so much unnecessary fluff that doesn’t add a lot of lasting value to our lives? The economy would collapse and never recover.
Again, any kind of research to back up such a bold and incredibly controversial statement? That's just unsubstantiated fluff, without demonstrating any knowledge of actual economics.
The truth is much more prosaic. People buy what they want, and companies make money doing their best to give it to them. In fact, we celebrate companies that do a better job at this, like Apple inventing the iPhone. People like buying things, and decide on their own that they want to work harder to buy those things.
Of course, most people don't have the degree of self-awareness or reflection to realize what really makes them happy in the long-term -- but companies that provide short-term gratification are under no obligation to educate their consumers, and it's not like they have any better idea what makes you happier long-term either, since everyone's different.
We have a 40-hour workweek because most people prefer work twice as much and be paid twice as much as a 20-hour workweek. Sure, there are people who would prefer 20 hours and half (or less) salary, but they're in the vast minority, so that's not what companies build their workforces around.
To rebut the title: yes, your lifestyle has already been "designed", but it isn't intelligent design. No person designed it. It's just what cultural evolution has arrived at so far.
It's far more valuable to try and question the assumptions we make, even if it's often fairly futile to do so.
Yes, culture has evolved to where it stands...You imply this means there's no room for improvement. What a sad perspective.
Consider that a first step to cultural change is the realization that things are the way they are for a reason, but that they are not set in stone. This is an important realization for people.
I'm just saying that you can't blame capitalists or evil CEO's or the government for the state of affairs, which the original article strongly suggests with things like "because it makes for such a purchase-happy public" and "a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence", and in the title, that this has all been "designed".
I'm saying there is no intention, no engineering, no top-down designing, no man behind the curtain -- it's just the way most people choose to act.
There absolutely can be improvement, if people want it, if a large number of them choose to act differently.
The truth is simply that few people will find True Happiness following a median path in life. But, and this is what I feel this rant neglects, neither will they find happiness by reacting to that knowledge and simply picking an extreme path. The post you're reacting to only says each person will have to consider deeply whatever it is that makes them happy. That's it, no conspiracy necessary.
This is probably mostly true, but I think there are more factors at highly competitive places (which a lot of us hackers are at).
I take a look at any of the top firms in law, finance, medicine, etc - where even entry-level staff pull 60+ hours a week.
From talking with various friends in these fields, no one actually wants to work such hours.. a lot would even take pay reductions if they could work less. The problem is that the person who gets the most done is rewarded with great reviews which leads to career advancement which leads to, in addition to more money, more self-actualization... even if you could work half the hours for half the salary, you'd miss out on the exponential advancement opportunities.
If everyone agreed to limit their hours, things would be better for everyone. But that isn't going to happen; the incentives to "cheat" would be far too great.
A lot of times we think “Why is the television programming so bad? Why are television shows so demeaning, so poor?” The first thought that occurs to you is “Well, there is a conspiracy: the networks are feeding us this slop because its cheap to produce. [...] but the truth of the matter, if you study it in any depth, is that networks absolutely want to give people what they want so that they will watch the shows. If people wanted something different, they would get it. And the truth of the matter is that the shows that are on television, are on television because that’s what people want. [...] And that’s far more depressing than a conspiracy. Conspiracies are much more fun than the truth of the matter, which is that the vast majority of the public are pretty mindless most of the time.
There's no conspiracy, just mindlessness. It's just how society has evolved over time.
What the public do want is also in good part what he was taught to want, no?
If everyone you know has a smart phone you are going to have work hard not to feel that you should get one too.
We need to balance the gain of acquiring products with the inconveniences not only at a personal level but at a societal level one (work, environment, work condition of those producing etc.) This seems to be rarely the case.
Why did news teams last so long? Not because the television public wouldn't have watched crap - there was crap available, and they watched it. (Candid Camera was a sort of first-generation realitiy TV show).
It lasted because the guys running the business respected the news teams - for their power over politics, their ability to turn over rocks and reveal dirt, whatever.
At some point (writers' strike?) content became a race to the bottom, which is about where we sit now. This is a new phenomenon, not some natural ecosystem response.
> Whereas today in material production the mechanism of supply and demand is disintegrating, in the superstructure it still operates as a check in the rulers’ favour. The consumers are the workers and employees, the farmers and lower middle class. Capitalist production so confines them, body and soul, that they fall helpless victims to what is offered them. As naturally as the ruled always took the morality imposed upon them more seriously than did the rulers themselves, the deceived masses are today captivated by the myth of success even more than the successful are. Immovably, they insist on the very ideology which enslaves them. The misplaced love of the common people for the wrong which is done them is a greater force than the cunning of the authorities. It is stronger even than the rigorism of the Hays Office, just as in certain great times in history it has inflamed greater forces that were turned against it, namely, the terror of the tribunals. It calls for Mickey Rooney in preference to the tragic Garbo, for Donald Duck instead of Betty Boop. The industry submits to the vote which it has itself inspired. What is a loss for the firm which cannot fully exploit a contract with a declining star is a legitimate expense for the system as a whole. By craftily sanctioning the demand for rubbish it inaugurates total harmony. The connoisseur and the expert are despised for their pretentious claim to know better than the others, even though culture is democratic and distributes its privileges to all. In view of the ideological truce, the conformism of the buyers and the effrontery of the producers who supply them prevail. The result is a constant reproduction of the same thing.
From: Adorno/Horkheimer: "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception"
(translation taken from: http://marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1944/culture-in...)
There are dozens of books and movies about this. Life Inc by Douglas Rushkoff, the documentary Century of the Self, even John Taylor Gatto's book The Underground History of American Education goes into this quite a bit. Not to mention The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson.
The idea that we arrived at mandatory fiat currency, compulsory education, ubiquitous advertising, etc. through some process of 'cultural consensus' is ridiculous.
Basically, our brains are hard wired for this type of consumption. A good explanation for why so many are fat and broke.
Excuse me, but do you mind if I label this as a fallacy? It's a new one: the Free Market Fallacy. It's the fallacy of believing that a particular way of doing things came about as a result of a genuine consideration of popular opinion, as in a democratic election or the mythical "free market".
First of all, the United States doesn't have a 40-hour workweek, except in theory. It has a 30-hour workweek for wage workers, a 50-hour workweek for salaried workers, and a 100-hour "workweek" for the capitalist class (who actually mix leisure and work as they please, writing off cocktail parties as "networking" and other such things).
Second, we don't have what we do have because of popular opinion. We have it because of combat between opposing ideologies: the elderly, weakened "day's pay for a day's work" ideology of most workers, and the "love what you do" workaholism of the capitalist class and many salaried professionals. Their relative power over each other dictates the terms of their compromise.
The word itself was popularized relatively recently (only a generation ago): http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lifestyle&y...
It was driven largely by VALS, research done by Stanford Research Institute on new marketing techniques, which has been partially credited for transforming advertising into what we know today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VALS
The Adam Curtis film "Century Of The Self" has an excellent exploration of the term "lifestyle" and the context it came from.
I think it's interesting that we commonly use the word "lifestyle" to talk about breaking out of a consumer-driven mindset, when the language itself was developed precisely for marketing to that mindset.
But I agree that it's interesting that Tim Ferriss and co/ use the word lifestyle.
The funny thing is that it seems to conflate the same slight deviation from the average in the good direction: exercise, healthy food...
I don't really blame most people for having that kind of feeling (we are humans after all) but it does help to sometimes take a step back and ask ourselves why we live our life the way we do.
Ben Franklin used that kind of peer-pressure to learn new skills so it can be used for doing good too
I definitely wish each raise came with the option to work less.. 10% more money or 10% less work. When you consider that, on paper, a 20% pay cut could mean a 3-day weekend, it makes a lot of sense until you bring it up in conversation..
That's your problem right there
I think they might position themselves differently depending on the region, because in the midwest I had a totally different experience. There, prices were universally high at Whole Foods.
Used to do Shaw's + co-ops when I lived in Vermont. That was around $160 a week.
Now, in Boston, I pay about $100 total at Trader Joe's (for more groceries). 40% decrease - around $3120 per year in savings.
Random note: you can live in Boston for about the same cost as Burlington, Vermont. Something is crazy about that.
"We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing."
To start, this almost implies that there's a room full of Old Powerful White Men (let's be honest, that's what you imagine) figuring out how to raise little consumer sheep. Like it's a big conspiracy or something. Even worse, the government must be in on it, otherwise I wouldn't have to work 8 hours and feel tired all the time! Well, part of this 'conspiracy' is called 'marketing', and if you have an issue with that, then please address it with a logical argument. I think most of HN is fine with marketing, otherwise nobody would get to witness these new startups.
Regarding the 8 hour workday: this is an economics argument more than anything. Again, either address it properly or leave it be. What would be nice would be an alternative suggestion. However, I don't think travelling at large with a MBP sipping mojitos on the beach and skyping clients is something society at large can start doing. But the author probably can. (There's a bit of an interesting aside - should intelligence and technical skills afford you more freedom?)
To wrap up, what really bothers me with that paragraph, and this post in general, is this: it's being implied that personal happiness and fulfillment (so nothing "feels missing") is not a personal responsibility. What? Let's look at that last sentence again:
"We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing."
Just because consumerism isn't "filling your inner void" doesn't mean it caused it. That's not to advocate for or against consumerism, just to suggest that there are other alternatives to these problems. And it's your own responsibility to go find them.
All that being said, I found the post interesting enough to think about and reply to, so thanks for writing it.
I've never been in such a meeting, but what would you imagine is discussed when sales strategies are devised?
- How can we drive our customers to buy more of our products? How can we sell more to existing customers, how can we attract more new ones? Marketing, advertising campaigns showing how happy our customers are?
or
- Do our customers really need that much of our products? Should we educate them on the fact that excess usage of our products is unhealthy? Should we make sure they don't hurt their budgets or rake credit card debt?
What I'm saying is that it's not a conspiracy, but the "hand of the market" does not care if you are better off buying something or not. McDonalds wouldn't care if you ever eat anything but fries, Johnson & Johnson wouldn't care if you wash your hands obsessively 25 times per hour, and no home electronics provider would care if you hoard their products in stacks in your basement. The only thing they care about is to sell as much as possible, and ideally make you come back for more.
The economy would collapse and never recover."
I used to think this, but I don't believe that so much any more. It would take a hit, but would adjust to people spending more time and money on things that mattered more to them - the things that take more money to do, vs the $5-$10 impulse purchases on things of limited value.
What things might those be? Travel? More energy efficient housing/appliances? More experience-oriented stuff in general (time with family/friends/etc)
Nominal GDP would definitely fall when people move their time "spending" from labour transactions (i.e. working hours) that add to GDP, to spending time instead. So if you measure economic activity by GDP, this alternate working approach would appear to "collapse" the economy.
And the degree to which people who make desirable "stuff" also subscribe to this new lifestyle, the more expensive that stuff will become. Supply is reduced, therefore the price will rise until demand falls and supply rises (because the price is higher) to match one another. In effect, a population following this approach will have lower purchasing power for desirable stuff than a control population stuck in the rat race. Or to put it another way, they will be poorer, and may suffer from envy.
So IMO the approach is currently only realistic for a certain subset of the population - those whose labour is valuable enough - and hopefully doesn't spread to factory workers etc. Ideally factory workers will be replaced by robots, so that we no longer have to worry about using up human lives to feed the "stuff" production machine. (By factory workers, I mean everyone who makes commodity (not bespoke) "stuff" you can touch.)
But I can certainly see a future where unskilled labour, and a lot of skilled labour, is done by machines. A capitalist economy based on scarcity won't work so well then; democracy won't stand for it.
One thing I've witnessed time and time again is that, a lot of times, the price of an item is based on what the market will pay for it.
1. I am traveling more. Unlimited vacation + not insisting on having multiple $x00 payments (like a fancy new car) means a $300 round trip ticket isn't even something I have to plan to purchase. I'm averaging a trip by plane every three months and a smaller weekend road trip once per month.
My buddy has a big fancy truck and he pays the equivalent of two round trip tickets per month but his average round trip commute is about 2 miles. I'll never understand this (if for no other reason than my love of the bicycle).
2. When I go to dinner I eat at better (healthier) restaurants. I've never been a picky eater but I've definitely found myself turning my nose up at food I would have enjoyed six months ago. I have probably only eaten at fast food places maybe 7 times in that period. This so far has been my favorite plus.
3. When I do buy things, I have no reason not to buy the nicer of two items.
4. I can afford a gym membership and personal training sessions. Actually where I go it pretty much works out that if you brown bag your lunch every day you can afford the membership + 3 sessions per week.
5. My apartment looks huge without all the clutter. My aunt lives in the same building and has the same apartment layout but you'd assume mine was at least 50% larger.
70% of US GDP is personal consumption. About half of that is spending on consumer goods and frivolous services. So you're hitting 35% of the US GDP [1]. Let's assume that if people across the nation stopped spending as much on fluff, they stopped spending by about 2/3. You're looking at a GDP fall of more than 22%. For perspective, the Great Depression saw a fall in GDP of 26%. The Great Recession saw a GDP fall of * merely * 5% [2]. And that figure understates the final effect because it ignores feedback loops: consumer goods spending falls, which causes consumer goods workers to lose jobs, which makes every type of spending fall, which loops back, and so on until the entire economy tanks. Which will also, incidentally, make the world economy tank. Domestic and international political unrest ensues.
After a long (decades?) period of upheaval, yes, things would adjust. Keep in mind that it has been 5 years since the most recent recession and neither the US nor Europe have completely recovered. Over the long-term economies are self-correcting. They would self-correct sharply downwards in the sense that everyone would enjoy lower real wages.
I would be wary of indulging in economic fantasies.
[1] http://www.policymic.com/articles/15097/us-gdp-is-70-percent... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...
If we could drop it so everyone worked 30 hours but worked 75% of what they do today, many would jump at it in the higher earning echelons.
Per worker costs strongly incentivise long weeks.
Additionally, under the current sphere 'part time' workers don't usually get company benefits.
Firstly, I have more past-times than I did when I was broke. This is partly because I can afford to, and partly because I have more time. (When I was broke, I was a busy student)
Secondly, I no longer stop and think as much about goods quality. When I had no money, it made sense to spend ridiculous amounts of time carefully selecting goods to maximize "bang-for-buck". Now that my time is more valuable, I will more often opt for the best quality item.
The same carries over to food as well. Not a foodie, but eating healthy is simply more expensive than ramen.
That is exactly what I said (at my 40-hour/week job) would happen if everyone were like me.
More seriously, I've come to the same conclusion. Our entire society is built on the consumption of junk. Expensive gadgets with a built-in expiration date (either by breaking easily or technology deprecation).
It seems to me that the call to action should be building a new economy, one of free individuals guided by a truly free market, because as the article demonstrates the market is hardly free at the moment.
I find that a results oriented work environment seems to make for happier employees.
"It's amazing how much you can get done in twenty minutes if twenty minutes is all you have. But if you have all afternoon, it would probably take way longer."
I've just relearned that lesson; we have come through a very busy time at work and things just had to get done in minutes, right now. It worked and the sky did not fall.
The occasional case of high stress, high productivity periods can be good for that feeling of accomplishment once the deadline is met. It's like the climactic ending of an action movie - a lot of activity leading up to a desired goal. However once the next chapter begins, you want to go back to a sense of normalcy, when people can recover and just relish the recent accomplishment.
I know I will be happier if I work less. But I don't.
"Americans' job satisfaction falls to record low" http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2010-01-05-jo...
[1] - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corporation-Pathological-Pursuit-Pro...
Almost all of us are sheep and have a herd mentality. This makes it easy for big businesses and even government to sway our sentiments to manipulate us. From the education system to work place to media, everything is designed around big businesses generate revenues by pushing items we do not REALLY need. Material comforts and sensory pleasures do not fulfill anyone for long. How do we realize what we want will not truly satisfy us? How do we break out of this?
The hard way is to discover the source of satisfaction lies within, through meditation, questioning and experimentation. When we discover our true calling and use our talents to serve all selflessly (as much as possible), we can get a glimpse of true happiness. Till then we cannot help but be manipulated by society in its current form.
The real problem here is the yuppie lifestyle. Just think if all of those wasted financial resources could actually go to fund something important, rather than mindless waste. Keeping people exhausted and feeling they are entitled contributes greatly to the problem.
The doorman at my apartment here in Uruguay (who makes about U$ 1.000 / month) has just spent about a month's wages on some high-tech cell phone with Android (I think it's a Galaxy Note 2). He has a wife and child to feed.
The number of people living in hovels (they're called "cantegril" here in Uruguay and "villa miseria" in Argentina and "favela" in Brazil) that have LCD TVs is staggering.
There's a subculture that values Nike shoes and steals to get them.
A huge understatement, but right on: "Here in the West, a lifestyle of unnecessary spending has been deliberately cultivated and nurtured in the public by big business."
My wife and I talk about this all the time, especially in the context of TV commercials.
BTW, on the subject of 40 hour work weeks. I am in my early 60s and I have worked full time for a very small fraction of my life. Even when working for large companies in an office environment, I was just about always able to negotiate working 32 hours Tuesday-Friday. Three day weekends every week allowed me to write a lot of books and spend lots of time outdoors.
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