Bertand Russell, ahead of his time in his socio-political musings, as with foundations of mathematics.
Although the essay begins as though he is advocating for leisure for some privileged section of the society -- and one might especially suspect his position is thus given he himself was part of the old aristocracy by birth -- he explains not only that idleness being a collective right will elevate the society but also that it can be achieved. The time to have achieved it, in my opinion, has already passed and yet we continue to be "foolish", as he puts it.
His argument is so cogent that the following lines seem completely within reach for the society and paint the idea of paradise"
>>> In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and the capacity. Men who in their professional work have become interested in some phase of economics or government will be able to develop their ideas without the academic detachment that makes the work of university economists lacking in reality. Medical men will have time to learn about the progress of medicine. Teachers will not be exasperatedly struggling to teach by routine things which they learned in their youth, which may, in the interval, have been proved to be untrue.
Personal anecdote: was going through a tough time in my life (early 20s), and was hating my major in school, dealing with a failed relationship, feeling like my peers outclassed me in every aspect, etc.
Was suicidal.
Spent some time in mental health facilities (urban Canada, free and open access for citizens). Surprised to see the diversity in the homeless/low-income population (which makes up a significant chunk of the population in mental health facilities). Former aerospace engineers, electrical engineers, teachers...and of course, students (like myself).
My mental health is another story, not relevant to the topic at hand. The mental health facilities where I had to spend time are relevant though: some of them didn't allow devices (privacy concerns for others in the facility), and there was a lot of time to kill. Time was spent ruminating, reading, and writing (yay for the public library). Incredibly productive, in large part because given where I was, I felt so far gone, that I no longer needed to worry about what I was doing/how well I was doing it/what I should be doing, etc.
I had already failed in all those judgements/metrics. Now, nothing to do, but to do.
Coming out of facilities, started to get caught up in old life (getting job offer from internship firm). Could no longer tolerate it. Was ballsy, having just literally faced death, and simply walked out of work. Ballsy because I was literally throwing away my future. How would I earn money?
Ended up bunking with my parents. That's one edge I had even when I was in the mental health facilities. Most of those homeless people I mentioned? Homeless because of lack of family support.
Sat down at home. Reached out to professors doing work in the sort of things I felt genuinely interested in. The rest has been reasonably productive history, with more on the way.
Point of this anecdote: the value of leisure time is something I feel very strongly about. It's what helped liberate me, and I only had it because of privilege (parents). I find it rather sad that there are so many people that disagree with arguments along the lines of "people are motivated by money, if they didn't have to work for money, they wouldn't do anything with their time".
And judgementalism regarding low-income/disabled/homeless individuals. Heard this from a PhD student at uni, when I was telling him about how I always worry I might end up homeless some day: "Don't worry, you won't end up homeless. Everyone here (i.e. including me) is too smart/valuable to end up homeless."
Couldn't help but laugh (internally). Remembered the Russian electrical engineer who gave me an old Russian (Soviet era? not sure) text on linear electrical circuits while I was in CAMH (Toronto). He was a patient there too. I don't think he knew that I couldn't read Russian...
He was homeless, and was helping me pass the time the way he would. I still have that book with me today.
I hope you're all okay, wherever you are. I believe in you, because I believe in the power of the human spirit. We are driven by more than survival.
Thank you for sharing. Years ago I realized most of us are either toiling away at work for something we don't care about to profit someone we don't know, or being blocked from the resources they need to tap into their unique potential (whether that's food security, education, etc). It became somewhat of an obsession. I couldn't stop thinking about how many brilliant, colorful individuals are out there with their unique talents being left off to the side, despite the productivity gains we've seen in recent centuries. We clearly have the capacity to ensure everyone has access to pursue what makes their mind light up and yearn to create, but here we still are. Structured in a way that each job I've worked is non-essential, takes almost all of my creative energy, and does not push us forward. Meanwhile, many others who are capable of great things, can't even begin to tap into that when they don't know where their next meal might come
I feel like I'm rambling a bit, but I guess I just wanted to echo similar thoughts and say your post brought me some relief knowing others see it too . It's something I don't think about as much anymore because I don't quite know what to do about it, but I hope as more of us see this isn't an efficient or healthy way to organize ourselves,we can work together and figure out how to let our true colors flourish
Excellent points, thank you. And congratulations on the results!
I’m curious how relatively content-free entertainment works into your calculus. It seems like a lot of people get sidetracked into it, and it is becoming more psychologically compelling and personalized/varied over time. (A lot of “sensational pot-boilers” are now being generated, as it were.)
> I’m curious how relatively content-free entertainment works into your calculus.
It's an issue I struggle with. My problematic relatively content-free entertainment is video games, youtube, and reddit. Two issues form the basis of the problem:
* desire for escape: becomes particularly strong when my future feels bleak, or the stresses due to life seem too much, or when I feel lonely
* addiction: wanting to completely quench "curiosity"---in quotations because I'm not sure if its the right word---basically feeling like I _need_ to "fully explore" a particular story/world/game world/game mechanic (e.g. the random crafting systems in some "action RPGs", which are basically gambling)
What helps:
* (escapism) realizing that imaginary worlds simply do not compare in depth to the real world; paying attention to how I feel once I am done binging a TV show/when I hit the limits of game mechanics/realize that there are no Wikipedia articles for learning more about some story world I am into
* (escapism) managing anxieties regarding the dangers of the real world (e.g. not being smart enough to explore the real world, going hungry, feeling that I lack discipline, etc.) by being non-judgemental, and accepting wherever I am right now, rather than worrying about the future
* (escapism) trying to systematically cultivate awareness and self-kindness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ap_-F9D5Gw) in order to be non-judgemental about who I am, and accepting of where I am in life/not try to predict the future.
* (escapism) one thing that I think could help me deal with escapism is to develop a robust social life in a setting which isn't work/research related. This is something that terrifies me, so its a project I have left for the future. I know for a fact though that a lot of my reddit binging is basically trying to fill the socialization shaped hole in my heart.
* (addiction) learning about the techniques used to foster addiction (https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-scientists-who-mak...) so that even while I am addicted, I can at least identify what is helping me be addicted---this is useful in kind of detaching myself from my addiction, and observe it in a way that gives me more control over it. On a similar note: analysis of movies presented by youtube channels like RedLetterMedia are both fun to watch, and useful in understanding the entertainment we binge on in a deeper way. Thus, when you're watching something, one ends up having occasional "detachments" which remind you that you are consuming a human-made product. This helps to ground me in reality.
* (addiction) realizing that addiction isn't a terrible thing, it's just a tool (developed by evolution) that can be misused. So, I try not to judge myself for it, and instead have ended up making a hobby out of trying to imagine how addiction can be "harnessed" into "motivation" for education (game design, thinking about what makes math fun when I do get "sucked into it", and so on. I hope one day I can earn money making products which are "addictive", in a productive way (i.e. teaching useful skills and exploring difficult/beautiful things which require a sequential build-up of concepts over a period of time).
* (overall) being willing to forgive myself for my daily failures, in order to move beyond self-pity and helplessness. In fact, being addicted/struggling with escapism has had some positives: it has motivated me to learn about how to make products which harness these feelings in a useful way! Silver lining? Not sure.
* (overall) It's worth noting that we are discussing the value of idleness, without judging how productive that idle time is.
Also, regarding non-judgementalness of self and others: there is some great info in this thread too. In particular CTRL+F for "Thaler".
Funny. That other famous philosopher, Karl Marx, had a similar take on free time and its effect on people in Fundamentals of Criticism of Political Economy. Only heard that second hand though.
And similarly on the specialisation of labour and having to do one thing eight hours a day monotonously:
“For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”
Heinlein had the same idea!
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
Looks like this is an idea that resonates with people here! A cheering antidote to many other "Sell your whole life away working and working on businessy nonsense to make rich people richer and maybe, maybe get rich yourself" strains of posts popular here.
I'm reminded of the saying, "Only the hungry man knows the taste of bread." Many of us in HN are used to working long and arduous hours, and we've also been told that it's a virtue to do so. To me it's no wonder the subject resonates.
One of my favorite facts about Bertrand Russell is that he invented type theory in the context of math, and in that way contributed indirectly to computer science.
This or simply more vacation( I would prefer more vacation but it's probably harder to implement).
My controversial opinion is that half of the work is unnecessary (there's surplus of labor that has many negative consequenes for society at large - in short a lot of effort is pointless/missdirected as competition due to surplus locks many people in slavery(serving others more than themselves)).
It could be easily solved by people working simply half of a year. Lack of monopoly(all year round) on certain roles would benefit most enterprises and people would have time for exploration/education.
My hope is that external pressure such as rising asia will give some room for such progresive ideas in the west. They might even end up more competitive in a world that rewards creativity(derivarive of leisure) and education.
I love the idea of a 4 hour day, but it seems to be something that can only be obtained by going freelance, consulting etc.
I wonder if a company could offer a stable income at a decent rate, but for only 4 hour days or 4 day weeks, or have a mandatory 60 days vacation policy. I'd be curious if such an offer would draw the best people from the talent pool?
Seems to me that working 40-50 hours a week for 10-15 years at high pay is a more reasonable situation. Then have a big enough nest egg to do what you like, a la mrmoneymustache.
Except life is now and cancer sucks. Also assumes you were able to achieve a high paying career and not some dead end job that only pays enough to keep you alive.
the problem is that it's never enough. One day you have kids and your expenses go way up, another day you buy a bigger house with a bigger mortgage, next thing you know 15 years is 40.
I propose working only for half a year. More inline with humanity roots.
This also will rise price of labor so rich clueless speculators won't have resources to waste other people lives on futile endeavours, will incentivise more automation, sharing(think OSS) and less burocracy without social disorder from people losing "jobs".
This writing reminds me of Keynes who predicted in rhe 1930 that a 15 hour work-week will be our future and many will suffer from boredom. This as well as Russels musings didn't come true.
I blame marketing for inducing needs we wouldn't have otherwise and
the internet economy which prolongs an otherwise unsustainable lending system in that goods can be traded which need not be made of tangible ressources.
There's also that people quite like working on the whole. I mean you've got about 112 waking hours per week and if you only spend 15 working you've got a lot left to fill with TV, HN or whatever.
> I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous ...
That's a privileged position. I benefited from a work ethic of a grandfather that knew poverty and hunger, via a father that grew up in the depression. They would both be known as workaholics in this age, as they frequently, or usually, worked from pre dawn to post dusk for the necessities. My father stood in awe of his father's capacity for work, and I'm in awe of my father's.
My own child, if I had one, would be less impressed with his father's work ethic, as I also grew up in a privileged position, without poverty or hunger, due to my father's work. It would be better for a child to inherit my father's work ethic than mine. Not for any virtue other than its capacity to promote thriving and survival in an unstable future.
The article posits that the "privileged position" should be the common position: that poverty and hunger can and should be eliminated, and then from a position where everyone is so privileged to not starve to death, good work that advances the human race may arise from those people who still work despite it not being required to survive.
I wonder if it would be possible to cut everyone working hours and just hire more people. Its possibly less efficient to have 2 people working on what would be 1 persons task but it would hopefully make things more equal for everyone.
To be a little less tongue-in-cheek it seems to me that it is less a problem of scarcity and more a problem of distribution. Food, for example, is this way. Land, by and large, is also.
I am being purposefully hyperbolic in response to the parent's hyperbolic sarcasm, but for example Somalia, Burundi, and Madagascar together have an estimated GDP of about 40 billion dollars. Forbes billionaire list contains 19 people with a net worth north of $40 billion.
You realize that GDP is a flux right - it has units of $/year, while wealth has units of $? It's textbook economic illiteracy to compare wealth to GDP.
Personality type has a big role to play here. Certain personality types can't become workaholics.
Let them go find their own path, and while they do that, some tolerance for whatever work-in-progress philosophy they might spout, is not a bad thing.
Nobel winner Richard Thaler -
"I would never deny being lazy, but did Danny(Daniel Kahneman) thinks that my laziness was my single best quality? To this day, Danny insists it is. My laziness, he claims, means I only work on questions that are intriguing enough to overcome this default tendency of avoiding work.'
"thriving and survival in an unstable future" doesn't mean following just one route. Nature shows us there are a whole bunch of routes. From the cactii to the banyan tree you can find value in all of them or what best suits you.
"From the beginning of civilization until the industrial revolution a man could, as a rule, produce by hard work little more than was required for the subsistence of himself and his family [..] Much that we take for granted about the desirability of work is derived from this system"
Lord Russell is praising the kind of hard work your father and grandfather did, that work is the cause of everyone considering work a virtue in itself. Rather, it is the system where millionaires and billionaires, oil barons and railway tycoons, landlords and ladies sail over the 'depression' untouched, when tractors and factory engines were boosting productivity, and still the working classes were working dawn to dusk for basic survival, much of the value of their work accruing to others and supporting government arms, and them being told it was all OK because of the inherent virtue of 'work', he criticises.
"and, being pre-industrial, is not adapted to the modern world. Modern technic has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community."
He admits leisure is a perogative of privileged classes, while you criticise his essay on the grounds that he is privileged; but he argues that it shouldn't be a privileged position, it should be everybody's chance to benefit from industrialisation and automation, and not have to work dawn to dusk when others don't have to.
> I benefited from a work ethic of a grandfather that knew poverty and hunger...
I am not sure who these virtues serve in an economy maximizing extraction from the people contributing the work. The working class will always be pushed as much as possible, to the point of breaking, with no benefit to the workers themselves.
> It would be better for a child to inherit my father's work ethic than mine.
It may be good for them, but only if they work in a scenario where the work adds value for them.
Currently someone who knows to define boundaries and not destroy their own life and health in order to let more be extracted from their effort, is a better option.
> > I benefited from a work ethic of a grandfather that knew poverty and hunger...
> I am not sure who these virtues serve in an economy maximizing extraction from the people contributing the work. The working class will always be pushed as much as possible, to the point of breaking, with no benefit to the workers themselves.
I call a bit of baloney on the last quoted sentence. You are significantly overstating your case. (You have one, but you're overstating it.)
Still you have a bit of a point, from the point of view of the workers as a class. From the point of view of an individual worker and his/her family, though, hard work leaves them better off than they would be in the absence of the hard work. That leaves the worker and the family in a better position then they otherwise would be. Hence, "I benefited..."
hard work by definition is hard on the person performing it. When there’s no return on it, it’s just being hard on oneself for no benefit.
creating the habit to assess the benefits is more important than blindly working hard. Otherwise it’s just getting sick, exhausted, and having no life for no rational reason.
>When there’s no return on it, it’s just being hard on oneself for no benefit.
If I didn't work hard every day I'd have no home, no food, I wouldn't be able to respond to this comment because I'm using a phone with internet I pay for with my work, I wouldn't be sitting on a ferry right now on my way from visiting family because I paid for the fare with money from my work. I'm not sure I understand the logic behind no returns. Sure it doesn't make me rich, but it stops me from being homeless and starving and provides me with what I need to love comfortably and not worry most of the time.
Do you think that hard-working grandfather was salaried? Salaried people have already made it, at least to some degree.
Uncompensated work wasn't at all in the scope of hirundo's comment. You injected that idea. Honestly, you come across like a guy with a one-size-fits-all villain, who is just looking for an excuse to unleash a rant against it.
That's the thing, I don't work for free. If I'm working i expect to be paid. If an employer wanted me to answer emails or do other things outside the time I'm at work it'd get added to the hours. I've done consulting work, I'm fairly good at tracking hours and i've told employers that have asked me this before, fairly bluntly, that I'm being paid for it or not doing it and it's always either been I don't do it or they pay me.
Here's the problem though: units of work aren't independent. You are in a privileged position to say no to unpaid overtime, but most people on the planet, upon doing so, would likely not just lose the overtime, but also the paid time as well.
It's you (and perhaps your choice of employer) who choose it measure work in hours. I choose to measure it in some combination of effort and results, depending on the circumstances.
> Not for any virtue other than its capacity to promote thriving and survival in an unstable future.
It does not have this capacity. The overconsumption fetish (and its close ally, overwork) has brought the world's ecosystems to the brink of collapse. They have made the future critically unstable.
If we had cultivated instead a cultural ethic of sufficiency, with so-called 'productivity' gains invested in increased leisure and sociality rather than multiplying raids on complex sustainable evolved systems to build crude unsustainable technological ones, we'd be in much better shape now.
This is a lovely sentiment. I’m in awe of my own father’s capacity for work. He grew up in a village in Bangladesh and raised us in privilege in America.
Russell I should add, was born into aristocracy, and was a romantic and communist sympathizer.
> Russell expressed great hope in "the Communist experiment." However, when he visited the Soviet Union and met Vladimir Lenin in 1920, he was unimpressed with the system in place. On his return he wrote a critical tract, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism. He was "infinitely unhappy in this atmosphere—stifled by its utilitarianism, its indifference to love and beauty and the life of impulse." Although critical of its implementation in Soviet Russia, he still believed "that Communism is necessary to the world."
The world has tremendous labor to be done. Billions of people yearn to live the kind of comfortable life Russell lived. That won’t come to pass through idleness.
Is that so? There's already enough housing for everyone, with more empty houses than homeless people. Hunter-gatherer societies worked half or less as much as we do today, and they didn't have the benefit of industrialization. Production gets more and more efficient, but the workweek never gets shorter. Is this reasonable?
> Billions of people yearn to live the kind of comfortable life Russell lived. That won’t come to pass through idleness.
Idleness is the kind of comfortable life Russell lived. The alternative of working your fingers to the bone for your employer is a tragic waste of human potential.
> Idleness is the kind of comfortable life Russell lived.
Russell was born into a wealthy British family. He grew up in the household of a former prime minister and inherited an earldom. He was able to enjoy idleness due to the labor of other British (not to mention the labor of Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis who enriched the British empire).
Maybe one day we’ll invent replicators and be able to provide everyone—not only in Britain but in India/Bangladesh/Pakistan—with the comfort of Russell’s idle existence. Until then there is much labor to be done!
Compared with Russell's day, we have those magic replicators. Agricultural technology today is such that one farmer can feed thousands of people. We're off in an asymptote where we gets closer and closer to zero cost for basic needs, but the workweek never gets shorter. Clearly it would be ridiculous if one single farmer were able to support the needs of all of humanity but we still had to work the same as when each pre-industrial farmer only supported about 4 people. So at what point do we start seeing the benefits of this "replicator" (in the limit) technology?
> So at what point do we start seeing the benefits of this "replicator" (in the limit) technology?
When we stop consuming more and more. For the most part I could work a single day work week (at 1/5th of my comfy developer salary) and live a lifestyle better than Russell's, that easily covers all basic needs (including modern ones like internet access) with two exceptions.
The first is the sin taxes (cigarettes and alcohol), these are avoidable but the latter is the sort of thing that makes life worthwhile. These are easy enough for society to eliminate if we want to decrease work hours.
The second is housing costs, this is extremely complicated but suffice to say that we aren't at the optimum of what society can achieve, as evidenced by the fact that we've gone backwards in many ways.
If you minimize pointless consumption, live modestly and as a society eliminate those two problems then an 8 hour work week seems achievable.
I'm in Australia not the US and sin taxes aren't spread out evenly, especially with cigarettes (not that this is a bad thing). For perspective $50 a week is a doable food budget for an individual, a pack of 40 cigarettes is $50 and a pint of beer can be more than $10. So a weekly budget can look like Food: $50, Cigarettes: $200, Drinking: $100. And that would be a quiet week.
This is pure fantasy. GDP per capita in the U.S. is $60,000 annually, with a 40-hour work week. Cut that to 8 hours, and we're looking at $12,000 per year. That's about the level of Tunisia. How much "pointless consumption" can we eliminate so that we can live what an American would consider a comfortable life within $12,000 per year? Does that include things like heroic medical care for end-of-live issues, nursing care for the elderly, etc?
I was speaking from my perspective with a comfy developer salary which would be roughly double that and yes that should be more than enough for a reasonable standard of living.
> Does that include things like heroic medical care for end-of-live issues, nursing care for the elderly, etc?
It seems like a good trade to sacrifice a few low quality years of our waning lives to get 4/5ths of our youthful high quality life back.
> Agricultural technology today is such that one farmer can feed thousands of people.
Closer to ~100 people. There are about 1 million farm workers who are U.S. citizens, and another 1-3 million undocumented workers. That's just direct farm labor. Related industries (distribution, restaurants, etc.) employ over 20 million people.
> We're off in an asymptote where we gets closer and closer to zero cost for basic needs, but the workweek never gets shorter.
Except we're nowhere close to that asymptote, especially outside the U.S. Countries like the U.K. use a formula called QALY to ration medical treatment. That's the direct byproduct of scarcity of labor (specifically trained medical labor).
Moreover, a society that starts working less is never going to develop the level of wealth and technology that will make things like replicators and space travel possible.
We then perhaps should talk about bullshit jobs, because it seems to me that a good chunk of the population (and a good chunk of our industry) is working on things of dubious usefulness to the society at large. The most charitable way of viewing this I can come up with is that bullshit jobs are really burning human labor to keep the economic engine from stalling. We ought to be able to do better.
Oh, right, you think you know the answer already. Coincidentally, in the collection of essays "In Praise of Idleness" the fourth one is called, "The Modern Midas", written in 1932. You might enjoy it.
Although the essay begins as though he is advocating for leisure for some privileged section of the society -- and one might especially suspect his position is thus given he himself was part of the old aristocracy by birth -- he explains not only that idleness being a collective right will elevate the society but also that it can be achieved. The time to have achieved it, in my opinion, has already passed and yet we continue to be "foolish", as he puts it.
His argument is so cogent that the following lines seem completely within reach for the society and paint the idea of paradise"
>>> In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will have lost the taste and the capacity. Men who in their professional work have become interested in some phase of economics or government will be able to develop their ideas without the academic detachment that makes the work of university economists lacking in reality. Medical men will have time to learn about the progress of medicine. Teachers will not be exasperatedly struggling to teach by routine things which they learned in their youth, which may, in the interval, have been proved to be untrue.