There’s truth there: every hour spent working is an hour not spent socializing with family, friends, and neighbors.
I have to ask though, would people nowadays actually volunteer to socialize like this with their free time? It seems like any socialization happening is digital, and I can't imagine anyone under the age of 60 actually reaching out in a IRL way like that. Not to say that that's a good thing, just wondering.
“Veblen effects,” named for sociologist Thorstein Veblen’s writings on consumption and social status and referring to pressure to keep up with the lifestyles of those on the higher rungs.
This does make sense, especially in a capitalist society where wealth gain is so heavily pushed as a sign of, or maybe even the biggest sign of success.
People rationalize their refusal to appreciate the present by appealing to the strong association between hard work and virtue.
This is a very sensitive debate for me, and one I have mixed feelings about. On one hand I do truly feel that work gives me purpose, or at least helps give me purpose, it's just that the work I'm doing, the work that the market has pushed me into, is not the work I want to do. I want to research and write about issues that interest me, but instead my research and writing abilities are used by a company that I don't appreciate. But is the answer to totally ignore that relationship between working hard on something and feeling accomplished? I feel like that is a trap that liberals too easily fall into when having this debate with conservatives, this perspective can be seen as advocating not for a society where people WORK HARD on what they want to do most, which should still produce a productive, innovative society, and a society where that isn't emphasized, the result of which would probably just be a lot of stagnation, overconsumption, and regression.
The love of money would finally be recognized as a “disgusting morbidity,” even a mental illness requiring the intervention of specialists.
How does less time to work=less reliance on money? I assume they mean that if you got paid more for less work, or if you were given a UBI that technological gains paid for, that you wouldn't strive for money as much, but I see that as not a guarantee.
“the good life”
is this a phrase that's getting used more in journalist and theory sources? I just saw it used multiple times in an article in NOEMA magazine, kinda odd.