Don't make time to untangle. Stay untangled. Live your life. Enjoy it. Have fun. If you have any time left after that, then may be do some of that inconsequential stuff like earning money or achievements. These are nice, if you enjoy doing them, but are not important. Unlike what you've been brainwashed to believe, your life does not depend on those things. Your well-being does not depend on those things. The well-being of your family and children does not depend on those things. It's the other way around.
Yes, I have passed many more than two days without any money in my pocket. As any human being, I've had my highs and lows. I've decided that I like the highs better and money is quite handy in that regard. What I'm saying is - it tends to come to you easier once you stop freaking out about it. As do all things. Struggle is always counterproductive and it is never worth sacrificing your health for money.
The article doesn't really answer the question. It says adults are busy because they have too much stuff to do (duh..) But "why" is still a good question, and it remains unanswered.
The answer is that, as we grow up, we tend to develop the belief that our well-being needs to be justified somehow. In other words, we start to believe that we are not by default worthy of living a good, joyful, care-free, abundant life.. unless it is "deserved". And the way to justify, or "earn" our well-being, we are told, is by action. By doing things. So we become obsessed with doing things, as a way of seeking approval and justifying our well-being.
Of course, as any child knows... this is ridiculous. Action is not a means to an end. Action itself is one of the ways to enjoy life.
Having grown up in the UK I've always felt guilty about not doing anything in my free time. Partly because everyone else seems to be living such a busy and rewarding existence (or so they would have me believe).
Now, living in Spain, I feel it's OK not to do anything. Just sitting in the shade for 6 hours watching the world go by doesn't make me a weirdo, like it does back home.
Heh, I've noticed that Western culture does put a different emphasis on work ethics. After moving to Russia, I've just noticed a different approach to how work is perceived, and my partner and her mom have often cited this proverb at me:
Работа не волк - в лес не убежит.
Work is not a wolf, it will not run to the forest.
Basically, the idea is work isn't going anywhere, so no need to worry that much about it. At my last job in the US, I couldn't understand why people were so adamant about how busy they were when most of the time people were doing what they could to look busy. It's not that they were actually burdened with work, it was that they wanted to appear like they had no time. My employees would frequently get into arguments over who had the busier and more difficult schedule. My family does the same (one of my brothers prides himself on how little free time he had)
I guess it's just this perception that important people are busy and the inverse of that is if you're not busy you're not important. Just speculation, of course, but it's my experience that once you get away from the US, you lose this mindset.
Edit: I guess in fairness I should note that I did have genuinely busy coworkers - our under-staffed programming team were constantly under pressure and in constant repair mode due to not having the time or resources to move out of a crisis state. This is a true "always busy" scenario in my mind.
>Having grown up in the UK I've always felt guilty about not doing anything in my free time. Partly because everyone else seems to be living such a busy and rewarding existence
There are certainly area of the UK where this is true, but not all. I guess it can seem that way because we have dense areas of population where the good and bad parts are so close together?
True, I believe some of the the Northern regions can be relatively temperate? It is easy to forget that Spain is such a big country sometimes, especially compared to the UK.
I'm in Sevilla for several weeks and was told by locals to come in September rather than August, due to the heat letting up. So far, it's been 40-45C every single day (save for the past few), and that leaves me couped up in the apt.
I'm missing Lisbon, where I usually live (over 300 days of sun yet it never really gets unbearably hot). I can't imagine being in Andalucia during the entire summer, though I hear Granada isn't as bad (probably due to being 30 min to the mountains and 30 min to the beach).
I find the vocabulary isn't that hard to learn as you pick up new words each day and eventually they stick. The grammar required to put those words together is another matter though.
It really does depend on your situation though. I have one to one lessons twice a week but it's not really enough as I manage to get by without having to speak that much during the week.
However, I know people who have picked it up fairly quickly because they are working in a public facing environment where they really have to learn fast.
The grammar required to put those words together is another matter though.
I wrote down a grammar card with all the verb conjugations (-AR, -IR, -ER verbs) and carried it in my pocket everywhere. When I couldn't remember, I (as soon as practical) pulled it out of my pocket and double-checked.
The most difficult one for me was getting la/el correct. Although by that point I knew the correct gender of each noun, it didn't come out correctly when speaking quickly.
The original author's distribution of time over responsibilities is not identical to mine, but it's similar enough to make me wonder where you're getting those 6 hours from. I'm not saying it's "weird," in fact I think it sounds lovely. But I doubt I could find six contiguous free hours in the next six months, except maybe if I spend my holidays with my in-laws.
I'm OK with not really doing anything, but I try to draw a line between totally squandering time (e.g. scrolling endlessly through facebook, or watching a show you don't enjoy, purely to kill time) and calm, idle time reading a book or watching nature. I haven't figured out how to describe it well yet.
> we start to believe that we are not by default worthy of living a good, joyful, care-free, abundant life.. unless it is "deserved".
That may be your own personal motivation, but it is far from a generalization or even shared by many people.
For instance, people do work to make a living. For some people, making a living means paying the rent and put food on the table. For others, it means affording luxuries and materialist goals. Most people do need to work to cover these expenses, and the higher they cost the harder they need to work for them. This is the norm.
Then there are also other motivations. Some people decide to become entrepreneurs not because they seek riches, but because they believe they are able to create something new, something that no one else can provide, and believe that they have an obligation to be a source of progress and push the world forward in their own personal way.
> It says adults are busy because they have too much stuff to do (duh..) But "why" is still a good question,
The article says that adults work, commute, clean, cook, take care of their dependent and so on... they don't do that to justify their existence but because it has to be done, unless you're rich enough to find other people doing these things for you...
Not every adult needs to cook in order for all the people to be fed.
Shared homes, or shared meals, would reduce the need cook so often. And reduce resource usage.
We've moved to a social system where all adults are expected to work. This leaves less time for social cohesion, domestic management, childrearing, and such. We've lost a lot in no longer having half of all parents not encumbered by paid work.
> We've lost a lot in no longer having half of all parents not encumbered by paid work.
We've also lost the ability to financially survive in a one-worker household, overall. Inflation adjusted household wages have long stagnated, and that's when factoring in women entering the workforce! Twice the workers for the same pay...
> In other words, we start to believe that we are not by default worthy of living a good, joyful, care-free, abundant life.. unless it is "deserved".
It's not about being "deserved". There is no merit, morality or legitimacy concern here. Just plain pragmatism : good things will not come to you if you just sit on your couch all day.
Take for instance item 4 in OP's list: cleaning. Well, I can assure you that if I don't clean my apartment, nobody is going to show up magically and do it for me.
> Of course, as any child knows...
Well yeah, because children have their parents do stuff for them. That's precisely OP's point.
There absolutely is a 'morality' (in the socially enforced sense) of cleaning. It's not quite as bad as it used to be, but your level of cleanliness isn't entirely a free choice because it affects how people judge you. And, unless you're extremely independent-minded, how you judge yourself.
Similarly there is a 'morality' of leisure: Protestant work ethic and all that. Note that one of the sibling comments talks about feeling a lot more comfortable relaxing in (Catholic) Spain.
> Take for instance item 4 in OP's list: cleaning. Well, I can assure you that if I don't clean my apartment, nobody is going to show up magically and do it for me.
Maybe it should be like this. Our bodies clean themselves.
I keep wondering, how's the research in self-maintaining and self-cleaning materials going. Surely, getting rid of the need to constantly clean your house will require a lot of small breakthroughs, but it is a worthy goal given the time we all collectively waste.
(Personally I view all maintenance as waste - you have to pay your dues and not skimp on it, but you should at the same time minimize the cost as much as possible.)
Maybe because the people with means and influence don't really worry about this problem: they pay someone to do menial tasks like cleaning for them. I know in the country I live manual labour is so cheap I have a maid and a gardener that do that for me. It's so cheap I probably wouldn't bother automating it even if I could. The furthest I go is packing a dishwasher. Just because I don't like dirty dishes standing around on the days that the maid isn't there.
> Well, I can assure you that if I don't clean my apartment, nobody is going to show up magically and do it for me.
The roomba and our cleaning lady are magical?
It's very simple: I get paid x/hr, the roomba as time advances effectively approaches a cost of 0/hr of work (same goes for the clothes and dishwasher) and the 1 hour the cleaning lady spends here is cheaper than what either of us earn during an hour. Why would we possibly spend our valuable time doing that when we can outsource it to a person and a robot for much less?
And yet people in certain European countries and tons of other parts in the world with different work attitudes can have tons of free time, despite having children et al.
Which ones are those? I'm from an European country and one of the biggest sources of internal stress for me is just noticing how much of my life gets wasted by having to have a job.
>Which ones are those? I'm from an European country and one of the biggest sources of internal stress for me is just noticing how much of my life gets wasted by having to have a job.
Check out most small towns (200K or less) and villages in places like France, Italy, Spain, Greece, etc -- the one's I know off.
>Didn't mean to imply that. I was just whining about my own life ;).
Heh, I added that part to refer to the original parent's question.
From what I've seen (and lived myself) in such places, work is mostly something you do, quite casually, for 8 hours or so, and then (or even in between work, e.g. with "siesta" etc) there's lot of socializing, slower everyday pace, etc. And everybody knows everyone else. People are not "ambitious" in the stereotypical "make it big" US idea.
That said, this also holds in "smalltown USA" too -- well, except for the unfortunate souls who work as employees in nationwide firms like Walmart, et al. But for those with own businesses, farms, etc, it's mostly like that.
Of course in larger cities you can easily work 14 hour days for shit pay.
they have more free time in small towns because usually your grandparents and parents and in-laws live close by and will help with babysitting (often people these days are only children, so plenty of parents/grandparents available to help), cleaning and cooking, not to mention that in general you live within ~10 minutes commute of your workplace.
North America is a lot more "everybody fends for themselves" than Europe, I mean, here parents will charge rent to their kids and nobody bats an eye, so forget about free babysitting and/or your mom coming over to clean your place and leaving your fridge stocked with leftovers. Not to mention living in sprawly cities with huge commutes in general...
Well, they have free time for "everything else" too.
E.g. kids can just go out and play or go to afternoon classes themselves, they don't have to be constantly supervised by their parents or be driven everywhere, so they get more freedom, and parents gets more self time, for one example.
It's more practical than that. If you want things, you have to make them happen.
You don't clean and cook because you need to justify your existence but because you want to eat a decent meal on a clean plate. Many actions are definitely means to an end.
> ... But "why" is still a good question, and it remains unanswered
Mr. Clayton Christensen says its because adults like to invest their effort in stuff that gives them the most immediate sense of achievement - and that turns out to be their careers; spending your time with the kids (or doing other thing that might make more sense) doesn't give you this kick, often its a long term investment that gets neglected.
Actually our physiology, may constrain us to this type of behaviour, throught the inner reward system that releases certain dopamine and other "feel good" neurotransmitters only after a certain level of effort / stress has beed detected, that is after high levels of cortisol, which is connected to stress .
This is of course a very simplistic description and by no means explains the result but it may play an important role.
This is a mechanism evolved since our existence in the wilderness and may have very different/negative results in our modern lives if not filtered through higher level mental functions. But anyway giving the fact that it's such a low level mechanism is hard to control it totally..
If you ask that "why" question like a 3-year-old - i.e. keep asking it repeatedly until you get to the reason behind the reason behind the reason, the answer you'll arrive at is entropy. You can surrender to it or work against it. How much order you want, determines how much work you'll have to do. Western society has a certain baseline level of order that takes a fair amount of work to maintain.
Or you know, you have responsibilities. I know where my free time went, it got soaked up by the kids. Get up, go to work, go home, kid time, bed time, now I have maybe an hour or two to cram in everything that makes me not a dull automaton, but half of that is spent fixing stuff or I'm too exhausted to do anything. You don't even get weekends, there's always stuff going on.
And I'm far from the busiest parent I know. One of the neighbors has a kid in competitive swim so she's up at 4AM every morning for swim class, then sending the kid to school, then sending the other kid to school, then a brief window to get stuff done during the day (at least she has that, with 3 year olds you don't get the school break), then bus pickup, then bus pickup, dinner, homework, then bedtime. Weekends are swim meets--every weekend. Often several hours away, plus whatever the other kid is doing.
Keeping a schedule like that up perpetually is exhausting, and there's basically no opportunity for adult activities. Nothing to talk about except swim meets.
My thoughts exactly. The question is a very good one. But the article does not really answer it.
To add to your observation, I think there is also a social aspect to it. I have often felt that being "not busy" is not socially acceptable. Or in other words being busy is somehow more respectable. So we tend to brag about being busy, and helps to perpetuate this point of view.
I think reading The Little Prince should be required approximately every five years from college graduation until end of life. It's far too easy to fall into a "daily grind", where one operates in a zombie-like mode executing a lot of minute tasks that are mostly devoid of any legitimate impact.
To decondition oneself out of all of the social conditioning naturally involves giving up both cynicism[1] and pride[2] (they are socialized feelings).
[1] Urban Dictionary defines "Tell me more" as an expression of put-down: "When someone say something stupid or simple. It's used to annoy people by asking them to tell you more when the statement is final." http://tell-me-more.urbanup.com/6108370 And it takes the simple naïveté of childhood to dislodge the sophisticated cynicism of adulthood.
Ha, I should have been more careful, there was no hidden tone in my previous message. I genuinely wanted to know more about how to, and what are the limits (losing condition is probably not childhood regression either).
Do you consider asian philosophy (like buddhism I believe) that takes a contemplative approach on existence, to be childlike (from memories, I used to spend a lot of time contemplating things, lots of things are amazing when you're a kid, stone, river, rain, sky, ..)
ps: interesting interpretation of the nature of pride and cynicism. I'm not so sure about the social roots of pride, even though I agree that it's often socially distorded, but pride is also felt when doing something you feel about as beautiful, loving and right. For instance the other day instead of killing some annoying insect I took a step to tame my instinct and carefully move them out my room. This is also something I'd call "pride" even though it's far less social, but I agree it's not unrelated either)
pps: also not that I said 'your brain' as I believe it's a part of nature and evolution in our maturation from child to adult. As a child you enjoy asking things from others; a lot less later on though.
I find the word 'marvelling' more fitting to describe the childhood experiencing of "lots of things are amazing when you're a kid, stone, river, rain, sky, .." than 'contemplating' because the contemplation of Buddhism is a whole new ball game entirely (I find nothing childlike--much less naive--in withdrawing from the world of senses into a detached reality that forms the essence of meditative practices).
I think this is a wholly narcissistic point of view .. moreso, I believe that the reason adults are so busy is that they realize that none of the luxuries they've gained can be attained without the help of other people working for them and so in order to maintain a fair life, adults work just as hard as others need to - on average - in order to maintain civilized life.
Where civilized life is defined in the regions between childhood and adulthood.
This is not a realisation, it's a belief. And it's a very boring one. I quite enjoy my narcissistic views and have absolutely no interest in trading them in for your moralism ("fairness", "equality", "justice" and other socialist bullshit). Live your own hell all you want, just don't inflict it on others. Since you're a believer in "fairness", I'll cut you a fair deal: I'll keep my luxuries to myself and you keep your "responsibilities" to yourself. Deal?
I'm okay with your statement, its your right after all, but lets see if you have the same views in 5, 10, 20 years time from now. I wager not, but thats entirely up to you. Responsibility for ones social existence is one thing; calling it 'socialist bullshit' is another thing entirely. There is nothing in this statement of belief, that we are all very dependent on each other, that makes it a socialist ideal. Even the most rabid totalitarian-authoritarian imperialists have to admit, they can't make all the good shit themselves...
I used to believe this, now a little bit less, at a certain age I'd say our brain takes pride/comfort into being a fair social agent (not a child anymore). You try to be independant while collaborating with others and satisfy your needs mutually. Society just amplified that trait.
> I see it more as people wanting to experience everything they can.
I call this the buffet approach to life. Some people seem to want to cram a tiny bit of every thing onto their plate, nibbling at everything there is to offer. The alternative being a full course dinner with superbly executed dishes that compliment each other. Or you could just eat steak, whatever you prefer.
A "why" I'll give that doesn't violate Ockhams Razor or elaborately explain social signalling without mentioning the term is I'm an introvert and I'm massively recharging when I'm standing in front of my stove chilling out to my favorite podcast while tasting amazing flavors from a new recipe, just basically loving life, just soaking up the good feels. I'll probably need them later at work or something. Standing alone in front of a stove is one of many extrovert hells but, not being an extrovert it is extremely recharging for me. In fact just sitting here writing this I'm daydreaming of an interesting mushroom and potatoe vegetarian casserole I'm excited to try cooking this Saturday, I'm really looking forward to the experience.
And to get that kind of recharging experience without hurting feelings sometimes you have to tell other adults, well, sure I'd "love" to sit in a two hour traffic jam to get to some sportsball game (I don't care about sports), or I'd "love" to sit in a smokey (I don't smoke) bar full of obnoxious drunks (I rarely drink) all night (I rarely stay up all night or up late), but woe is me I gotta do yardwork or the HOA will ticket me (actually I don't have a HOA where I live), woe is me woe is me, you guys go on bravely without me, adults are just soooo busy what a shame it truly is. And everyone leaves happy.
Its important to note there's doing laundry as per the mom in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory all exhausted and sweaty and drudgery and heavy manual labor for a 16 hour working day, but lets face it, my "2 hours per week" from the insane article is less than 5 minutes of moving stuff from baskets to machines and more than 1:55 of reading an exciting new book or playing in my workshop or playing video games or goofing off online. Again see above paragraphs, I'm sure doing laundry is some circle of hell for an extrovert but I've got my headphones on and I am totally rocking it and having a great time, maybe the best time of my week.
If you think its ridiculous for extroverts to "extrovert" in some of the article activities individually, imagine how crazy my actual life is for an extrovert when I double dip. If you're not sweating you're not cleaning hard enough, so I count cleaning time as exercise time, and why not do that while the clothes are in the dryer, that's triple dipping? That's not extrovert compatible lifestyle, somehow I don't envision hearing "hey bros come on over for beers and sweaty toilet scrubbing party!" Yet weird as it sounds with the right music or right podcast blasting, cleaning the bathroom isn't the worst part of the week.
Its not socially acceptable in general to be an introvert or admit to it, but I'm old enough to have accumulated enough F-you points to get away with that kind of behavior.
Try explaining rent to kids. We have to pay to exist? We have to pay how much? And they are right! I don't have a problem doing nothing. I don't care what others think. But I have to work far more than necessary because of the labour skiming rentiers. They are living off my back.
I'm sure it's different in different markets, different countries, etc.
That said, I know several people who own multiple homes and lease them out. They often barely break even with mortgage payments, maintenance, dealing with deadbeat tenants, etc. Sure, once a house is paid off, they have a nice source of income, but they're taking a decent amount of risk having so much of their money tied up in such a limited number of investments. Some of them are still under water on rental property mortgages after the 2008 crash.
They're not skimming labour off of their tenants. They're providing a service for a fee.
And if you're talking about large apartment complexes, that's not some landlord "rentier" class. That's a corporation, just like any other.
You don't have to pay to exist; just ask any homeless person. If you want to live in a home or any type of shelter, you have to make it yourself or obtain access to one that has been built. It has always been so. There are various ways to obtain access: squat, pay rent, perform services in exchange, couchsurf, join a commune, convince friends or family to accept you, buy, etc.
> They often barely break even with mortgage payments, maintenance, dealing with deadbeat tenants, etc. Sure, once a house is paid off, they have a nice source of income
So they get several hundred K for very little work that anyone could do.
There is no risk with the central bank land ramping. In urban areas they are limiting supply, forcing up prices and taking labour.
If someone does very little work and gets several hundred K that comes from somewhere.
Why is it necessarily exploiting people to charge a market rate for a good or service?
That makes no sense, unless you just don't believe in private property – which is a different argument and not one I'm super interested in having.
And honestly, if you think it's so easy to be a landlord, you should try it. It's not. It can be fairly easy, until you have:
- a tenant who won't pay but also refuses to leave, necessitating legal action to evict, which is doubly expensive due to the legal fees and lost income
- a tenant who wrecks the property, e.g., letting their cat pee all over the wood floor, but refuses to provide any additional money to remedy
- a tenant who falls in the yard and initiates a frivolous lawsuit against you
- squatters who refuse to leave and require police action
- a roof that needs replacing, new HVAC, new appliances, etc.
Investing in rental properties often performs no better than just investing in the general stock market. Is that exploiting people? Is it exploiting people to have a savings account that pays interest? Anybody can do that and gets free money.
I still don't understand. Just because a bank will lend someone money to buy a home, why is it exploitative to offer someone else the chance of living in that home?
I wish we could sit down over coffee or whatevs and discuss this. I feel like we must have fundamentally different views of the world, and I would like to understand yours better. I rarely meet people whose views I don't understand, even if I disagree – especially people to the "left" of me.
I rented for as long as I've now been a homeowner. I never felt like I was being exploited as a renter. I was essentially paying the same in rent as a mortgage, but as a renter, I got a ton of advantages. For example, I didn't have to pay for maintenance of the home, I got access to nice amenities, and I got the flexibility to easily move somewhere else at the end of the year. For a fee, I got to offload a huge amount of stress onto someone else – the property owner.
I know someone who owns two homes and rents them out. Meanwhile, she lives in a small rented townhouse shared with 2 other housemates. She does this, because she's very handy and can do most of the maintenance herself. And she feels she understands the real estate market better than the stock/bond market. So, these homes are basically her retirement savings. She's not forcing anyone to live in them, and she can't afford to have them sit vacant very long. So, she must price them at a rate that will attract renters. I just don't see the exploitation in that scenario.
That's just how the world is, you know. Back in prehistoric times, you didn't just happen to find a free shack and live in it - you needed to build it and maintain it. Right now, landlords take care of that for you - for a price.
Try building it in the forest though - it is most likely illegal due to some rentier (or government) already owning it. I think the grandparent has some truth to their words.
Existing outside the dwelling is illegal. Dwellings are owned by the elite rentier class, so you need some money just to exist (unless you are a rentier).
It's called "land enclosure". There is no common land and you must pay someone to stand anywhere.
I don't expect to exist for free given all the services the state supplies, such as healthcare, policing, roads etc. I also don't expect someone to own some land forever and derive rent from it as the workers pay taxes to build up infrastructure which augments the land value.
Yeah, the land is not free, but, outside of metro areas, the land can be dirt cheap. You certainly don't have to toil for years to buy a piece of it. Plus, in places like Siberia or Northern Canada perhaps, you can live for decades in a public forest without anyone noticing.
In all fairness, you can't build a shack or pitch a tent just anywhere and live off the land. (Though, in practice, there's a lot of empty space in Western US and unimproved land can be very cheap. On the other hand, I don't suppose the parent poster would seriously live in a shack with no utilities, transportation, food supply, etc.)
The land is the price. Maintenance is not much. They exploit the system, no way do most add the value they derive. They are parasites forcing up costs.
Ok, so we do away with private property ownership... How do you determine who gets to live where? Can I just build my house wherever I want? Can I block your doorway with a house I build right in front of yours?
When it comes to kids, we often call it sharing. Billy has a toy truck you want to play with. You have a action figure he wants to play with. If you each share what you have, then everyone is happy.
That is all rent is. Billy has a house, you have cash. He wants to play with cash, and you want play house. If you each share what you have with each other, everyone is happy. Pretty simple.
Why aren't you getting your money back? The only reason why you would want to occupy someone else's space is precisely because you see an opportunity to get all your money back.
Also rent is a proxy for labour. You are labouring and then handing it over via a medium of exchange to your landlord who does very little work. He doesn't have to because our banks and govt allow exploitation through land.
You're right. If we're explaining this to adults, it is even simpler: Create something of value and you can exchange it for things other people have created of value.
The landlord either created the house, or the landlord created someone else of value and traded it for the house that someone else created. Houses don't appear out of thin air.
Credit is just sharing value that was already created. Credit has to be repaid with value that will be created in the future.
> Also the house is often worth far less than the land.
While that can be true, it is only true if someone has created value around it, or has exchanged the value that they created elsewhere for it.
It is not like land itself is all that valuable. A quick look at the real estate listings showed me all kinds of vacant lots for just $2,000. It takes more than dirt to derive value. Something has to be created.
The state confers value through infra and planning permission. Credit is created from nothing and then repaid with real labour, it is not value already created. Banks rent money they create. The people add value through taxes, the landlord waits.
You also have to pay for the bounded, mappable area around that dwelling, unless you live in a ship on international waters or a perpetually-aloft aircraft in uncontrolled airspace.
In many places, homelessness, squatting, and camping without explicit permission are illegal. You might not have to continuously pay for the spot on which you stand, but if you stay on it for too long, eventually someone will come to collect or make you move on.
While raw "existence" is free, a sheltered existence is most certainly not. In many areas it is illegal to live in a tent or in a car, for example. It is also illegal to camp in a national forest for longer than 2 weeks.
> While raw "existence" is free, a sheltered existence is most certainly not.
I was replying to "We have to pay to exist?", not "We have to pay for a shelter?".
Being free to do something does not mean the means to accomplish it should be free of charge. I know lots of people think otherwise and therefore believe things like food, healthcare or accommodation should be given to them somehow for free, fortunately most people don't agree.
And we can't afford it because fiat money issuance by the banks is unconstrained and therefore trends towards saturation of all excess labour above basic needs such as food and clothing.
And the banks and the landlords mop it all up using the state to guard their property whilst the workers pay the taxes.
Easy. "Kids, it's time you started paying me rent. Got no money? No problem. I got a lot of chores: cleaning the house, dishwashing, laundry, cooking, etc. Mummy and Daddy are off to catch some Pokemon or whatever."
Nope, totally wrong. The service you deliver to your children will far outweigh that rendered by them, at least in their youth. Inverse for renter / landlord.
All landlords reap far less than they sow. They are rentiers, they do not create wealth rather they exploit our regressive property laws to extract labour.
Oh, and other countries' intelligence services would never think of violating any laws, heaven forbid...
You know how your government keeps convincing you of the supremacy of the "rule of law" and how "nobody is above the law", etc., etc... I think it's beyond obvious to anyone with half a brain that these are boogie-monster fairy tales.
When most people speak of law, what they mean is "rules that everyone must follow". When the lawmakers speak of law, they mean "rules we've been told to make everyone follow". Of course, the people and entities that these laws come from are above the law almost by definition. The amount of hypocrisy surrounding "justice" systems around the world is tremendous - it has always been. But people mostly like it this way - it's worked for a few thousands of years and is likely to work for a few thousand more.
You're taking the concept of, "knowledge," and the concept of, "government" and mixing them together into a very swirly, confused, nihilistic statement. Are laws written down on paper simply that they will be broken by the government, but not by the people? While that may almost inevitably happen over the decades and centuries of a republic existence, that is certainly not the intent of laws, at least in a western republic such as Germany or the US. Governments breaking laws is not, "above the law," - it is actually, by definition, breaking the law, when the Government breaks the law, which is the opposite of what you're saying. You're saying that everyone knew when those laws were written, that they would actually be breakable by the government. That's not true. The lawyers who bring and win cases against the Government don't know that...in fact, they know the opposite to be true. Now, as to the question of the conduct of individual politicians who believe they can break the law, that is a third question - is it OK for politicians to break the law to achieve a certain end? Well...sometimes yes, sometimes no...you can't just make a blanket statement saying that 100% of the time every time a politician has broken a law that it has been morally corrupt. There is a such thing as bad laws. Overall, I think your heart is in the right place in terms of wanting better moral conduct, but you are very confused on what Governments are, and you should perhaps consider delving further into historical literature on the subject.
There are two sets of laws. One for lawmakers, the ultra-wealthy, politicians, judges, military, and cops (the protected class who can carry weapons); and another one for you and I.
Almost nobody has been indicted from a Senate hearing, whether they were high level bureaucrats like Clapper or ordinary private citizens, and there have been lies and half-truths in almost all of them. In this case, Clapper admitted his mistake answering this question which he likened to many similar questions about whether the NSA was intercepting Americans' communications and creating dossiers on them, which it was not.
I disagree. These are not fairy tales. These are what we shall tend for, even if we live in an imperfect world.
Stating that the constitution is bogus does not imply that we shall throw it out, but that we shall fix it. the NSA should not violate the law to make its job. Maybe the law shall be fixed, maybe behavior of the NSA shall change, probably both.
Had to look this up as it isn’t my core competency. According to current knowledge our sun is too small for a supernova explosion. It might become a red giant (5 to 6 billion years) and then a white dwarf.
Sad faith - get super bloated, kill all the live in vicinity, then shrink to a shadow of former self for the remainder of the life time of the universe.
NO, supernova would be so much more spectacular. At least it might give a standard candle for others observing this galaxy, become a measuring stick for the universe, and spill some heavier elements for whatever comes next.
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Should privacy laws end where atmosphere of our planet ends?
If the Outer Space take of Bundesnachrichtendienst is true, we would be for an overhaul of quite few laws once more humans get beyond law earth orbit.
We need too make a obelisk, engraved upon which stands:
"Stealing other systems gas-giants and feeding them to your own sun is okay. I spilled some resources at the start."
God
Same different: the inability of our sun to go supernova "works", as does the wilful miscomprehension of my point - the question again is, towards what end.
Just about everyone in IT. The (software) factories are thriving the world over and despite what StartUp people and various other revolutionists will tell you, hardly anyone is even trying to disrupt this. Because people (both employers and staff) are mostly happy with the status quo. You'll hear a lot of talk about reduced office hours, flexible office hours, working 4 days a week, "commuter revolution", etc, etc... those things are statistical outliers that haven't really affected the large picture. Leaving your job to build a business is probably the _least_ statistically significant factor in all of this.
So yea, factories (and factory working hours) are here to stay for the foreseeable future.
There's no good excuse for ANY website or platform these days to not be able to handle this amount of traffic with absolute minimal effort. In fact, handling 10x more should be trivial (and cheap).
You can design it to be light and fast, but you wouldn't know unless you test it right? Good to know that a cheap droplet can at least handle rendering the landing page though.
Ireland's entire strategy when it comes to attracting foreign businesses to domicile there depends on being both 1) in the EU, but 2) lower-tax than most of the rest of the EU (excluding a few micronations). They're selling a tax arbitrage within the EU common market, which doesn't work if they aren't in it! Ireland's domestic market in itself isn't large enough to really attract major international companies to set up European headquarters there.
> Ireland's entire strategy when it comes to attracting foreign businesses to domicile there depends on being both 1) in the EU, but 2) lower-tax than most of the rest of the EU...
This seems like the right way to look at it. If the EU wants to scare off multinationals and signal that this tax haven's days are numbered, why punish Ireland? Its unnecessary.
My general response to companies (or agencies) offering "market rate" compensation has been along the lines of "I don't do market rate. I do 10x market rate. Find someone else."
Yes, I don't. Because when you say "act ethical" you mean "do what pleases me". This is why you can't put forth a definition, because if you did, it would expose your hypocrisy.
And I'm not one bit interested in doing what pleases you. I'm only interested in doing what pleases ME (as is every other person on Earth, although most will never admit it out of cowardice).
So no, I don't have ANY obligation at all towards you.
Now, is it in my best interest to treat you nice and contribute to your well-being? Yes, in most circumstances I'd have to admit that it is.
"Pleasing" deals with emotions, so we can drop the facade of hyper-rationality right there. Cooperation is beneficial for an itdividuums' survival, as you rightfully state. It is indeed of such importance that the standards of cooperation have been internalized long ago – for non-sociopaths, altruism is an end in itself and creates positive feelings.
And if you insist on your way of looking at it you actually stopped half-way: what "pleases you" is /also/ just a useful heuristic to maximize you reproductive success. The warm feeling you get from winning the lottery is no more or less real than the warm feeling (other) people get when they see someone happily getting married.
For this whole system the borders between the individual and the group are fluid. While certainly, all else being equal, the individual's need usually trumps the group's, it is anything but clear-cut in most real scenarios. You may be willing to sacrifice someones life to save your own, but that can change if the other person is you daughter, when you get to old age or when it's not a 1:1 sacrifice but merely an assumption of a non-zero risk of death.
Calculated actions that take emotions into consideration seem pretty "hyper-rational" - you acknowledged as much with examples.
> ... but that can change if the other person is you daughter ... old age ...
It isn't as complicated as you're making it out to be, the decision made by the individual depends on the maximization of their goals. So that depends on the weight they assign to the importance of genetic immortality, reproductive years remaining, justice in an afterlife, etc. Sure, not everybody is a perfectly rational actor applying game theory in their daily interactions, but individuals are much more self interested than you're describing - even with family.
I don't really disagree that all human actions have self-interest as the core motive. I'm just saying that in an interdependent social environment, a phenomenon best described as altruism naturally emerges, either because instincts initially developed for self-serving purposes develop a life of their own, or because the still-existing individual benefits are obscured (i. e. a sort of game-theoretic justification for a middle class person to support welfare).
I'm mostly taking offense with the characterization of such "feelings" as "not real" or of lesser value than the "pure" thought of rational egoism:
1. If we take altruism as a highly developed extension of egoism, it's worth to consider it an invaluable heuristic trained over thousands of generations to intuitively make good decisions. Where a cold analysis may tell you that giving money to a poor person is wasteful, I'd say that the warm fuzzy feeling we get from giving is an encoding of results gained over millennia of experience.
This also touches another point: I'd suspect that most altruistic behaviors are actually net-negative for the individual but, when practiced by large parts of the population are beneficial for everyone. Here, emotions serve as a prehistoric solution to the tragedy of the commons. It's an idée fixe in some circles, most notably libertarians and the Ayn Rand crowd to replace this with a system of contracts or simply force but that disregards (amongst other things) that almost no idea in psychology has more empirical support than the beneficial effects of helping.
2. If we consider altruism as an emergent behavior, a sort of instinctual moral code, it should be revered as one of the highest achievements of humanity on a level with art or science.
> ... "feelings" as "not real" or of lesser value ...
Well without getting into value judgement, you seem to be on board with the idea that emotions are a much higher level of abstraction above the cold logic of genetic survival. I'd welcome an emotional appeal in a public policy discussion as much as I'd welcome a javascript based boot loader. There is a time and place for everything, but emotion is given far too much weight.
Altruism is by definition a net negative for the individual, and I agree that it is very likely deeply rooted in our gene pool. But I certainly wouldn't hold it up as any kind of great achievement, especially considering how frequently it is exploited as a weakness by those in power ("think of the children"). I don't know if we'll ever get to the point where it can be considered a vestigial adaptation, in the same way we have unused muscles for controlling the orientation of our ears, but I hope that one day we'll be able to survive without the genetic compulsion to self-sacrifice.
It has been a long time since I gave Ayn Rand any thought, but your characterization seems pretty far off the mark to me. Have you read her books? She hated libertarians, the use of force, and she didn't want to replace altruism - she wanted it gone. Her reasoning is pretty well founded, as history is full of well intended and ill-conceived calls for sacrifice - the road to hell is paved with good intentions, etc. As far as contracts... I'd love for the world to have that level of clarity. That is why the US is such an attractive setting for business vs many other well developed economies (Mexico for instance), businesses hate uncertainty.
> I'm only interested in doing what pleases ME (as is every other person on Earth, although most will never admit it out of cowardice).
This simply isn't true. Humans engage in many self sacrificing behaviors for a variety of reasons. We're a social species with complex instincts and tendencies in how we form groups and collaborate. People who understand humanity is not a cartoon of individual self interest are not cowards.
Pretty much right, you don't need a religion or code of conduct to tell you not to be a dick. With the NSA, and many other agencies and organizations, a culture of ends justifying means is highly contagious. Human nature and our reasons for being decent moral persons and speaking the truth instead of a lie, always has some threshold defined by our world view and beliefs. When you deal with scumbags all day, those pesky rules and rights are just in the way of justice some times.
I lived in the US for 5 years - I went there as an exchange student when I was 17, finished high school then went to university. One day, just before completing my CS & Math degree, I was arrested, imprisoned and (after 3 months of being bounced around various detention facilities in 3 different states, without any explanation) I was deported for violating my student visa (because I had to work to pay tuition).
Have not set foot there since 2012 and don't intend to, even though my wife really wants to visit NYC. Frankly, right now I feel I would be safer visiting North Korea or Syria or Yemen, than the US. I'm absolutely terrified by just about anything that has to do with the USofA.
I have also come to distrust Americans more than any other group of people.
[For context, I'm a white, middle-class entrepreneur / software engineer, originally from east Europe, now living in the UK]
Being deported for a visa violation seems like a fair application of the law, although from what I know about you solely based on this post, America's loss is the UK's gain.
Please, Please, please, pretty please-with-extra-sugar-and-rainbow-sprinkles-and-chocolate-chips on top, do not visit North Korea, Yemen, Syria or even Dubai or Abu Dhabi either.
Already been to Dubai and Abu Dhabi multiple times, for both pleasure and business. Have taken my family a few times too. We love it there (although I am not at all oblivious to the way they treat Asian workers).
And for Yemen - I have been dying to visit Sana'a, such a deeply beautiful place. And I'm devastated that this seems like an impossible dream now, after the US/Saudi invasion.
Well, if you had done that in Singapore, heck, not even worked, just overstayed your visa, you would have both gone to prison and been caned.
Visa laws for countries can be very, very serious. Violating them can get you in a lot of trouble - certainly not unique to the United States. In comparison to a lot of other countries, the United States isn't even particularly harsh if you overstay your visa - certainly no caning.
