Sorry to hear about your tragedy Noah best wishes to you and your family.
This reminds me of Iain M Banks Culture ships. The Minds that effectively ran the Culture would have help from humans in assembling new ships. It was only at a basic level, the humans would manoeuvre pre-built building blocks of ship substrate around a low-gravity shipbuilding bay; if ships build themselves they'd do it way faster and more efficiently, but the Minds encouraged it because it gave the Culture humans purpose. It was sort of like a 4 year old helping in the kitchen (holding the wooden spoon - "I'm helping!") - but in an optional and endearing way.
It's a shame he's no longer with us I would loved to have heard his take on *waves hands*. Man, if humanity ends up looking like the Culture we could do a lot worse (dystopian sci-horror elements aside!)
I have implicitly held this mindset my entire life. I have always regarded working as some annoying thing that I have to do so that I can afford to do the things that actually matter to me. Even in school the reason I excelled at school work was that being good at it let me get it done fast so the teacher would leave me alone and let me read.
I think overall this attitude has steered me right more than it has steered me wrong. How happy I am in life has been fairly unmoored from my career success. My therapist told me once that this was because I had a very strongly formed identity and didn't need work to give me an identity like other people did. I have led a very happy and meaningful life, for the most part.
The one thing I do occasionally wonder about is if my attitude led me to be too conservative when job-seeking. I decided early on that aiming for a job that I might find fun and meaningful was a bad gamble, such jobs were rare and competition for them is cutthroat. Maybe if I had been more proactive I would have a more fun or meaningful career. But on the other hand, maybe aiming high would have just led to failure and frustration. It's hard to know.
Well, in fact I have been keeping track (and have written about it). But A) people who already have tenure are not, in general, having their tenure revoked, and B) please not my use of the phrase "even if" in my comment about tenure.
' . . . as countries grow richer, they become more individualistic'. I think it's probably the other way round: societies which value the individual more highly tend to be richer. The hidden causal step is that individuals are more valued in less familial cultures and less familial cultures are higher trust - i.e. they have greater ability to form political and economic institutions made up of unrelated individuals. It's true that as a society gets richer, the latent individualism of non-familial cultures gets expressed more. But I'm not sure that familial cultures like Saudi Arabia become more individualistic as they get richer, or at least not noticeably so.
1. Noah writes that “Your decision of what to produce is not fully your own; the market gets to decide”, but you can substitute “consume” for “produce” in that sentence and it would be no less true. The market is quite powerful in deciding both what we produce and what we consume.
2. A society whose members value production over consumption seems to me as (economically) healthier than the converse. The first is characterized by surpluses and a general sense of “wealth”; the second by scarcity.
It’s possible I’m oversimplifying, and I’m aware that my #2 doesn’t consider mental health.
"you can substitute “consume” for “produce” in that sentence and it would be no less true. The market is quite powerful in deciding both what we produce and what we consume." <-- That's not true. Consumption decisions are made at the individual level. The market does NOT get to decide what you consume. You do.
"A society whose members value production over consumption seems to me as (economically) healthier than the converse." <-- Why?
"Consumption decisions are made at the individual level. The market does NOT get to decide what you consume. You do."
While the final 'decision' might rest with you (in most liberal capitalistic economies) it is highly influenced by the market for establishing desirability, availability, price, urgency etc. In end you will have a certain amount of surplus income beyond basic needs (and even those can have highly variable costs). How you spend it will be a 'free' choice but one steered a lot by marketing, peer groups, signalling to others your status etc. If you don't believe that you can ask the question 'would I want this product if I lived alone on a island'. Alternatively there are some 'products' that government or markets don't (legally) provide despite obvious demands from consumer side - illegal drugs, sexual 'services' etc
Conversely the argument that the production side is determined by the market is true but not the whole picture as clearly people make sub-optimal economic decisions about what career or job to take based on their preferences - up to a point.
A society that values consumption over production won't be full of scarcity if its members exercise basic prudence. If you produce a lot of wealth, you can afford to buy more goods and services to consume.
I imagine that many people who despise consumption (and specially the "consumption society") split "consumption" and "play" (the implicit difference between the two things is probably the ration money/time that an activity requires), and say exactly that one of the problems of "consumption" is that you end up with less time to "play" (both because the time you spent in "consumption", and because to buy things you have to earn more money, then more time you need to spent working, then less time to play). But much of your post is treating "consumption" and "play" as more or less synonymous.
Now, how we identify more with your job than with our spending habits? Look for the movies that are usually champions of sales (even if not of prizes) - most are action movies; is an indication that compulsion of human nature is to DO things, to use our physical and mental skills to achieve a goal (and that we feel realized doing things, or at least watching people pretending that they are doing things); or look for schoolchildren at a recess - if they have enough time, most will do something that reassembles "work" - play some game, build some pseudo-fortification, etc.
And, ofc, most of your own examples of "consumption" are hobbies, who are in many ways a kind of quasi-work (there are also activities where you use your sills to achieve goals
These ideas have been fiddled about for a long time. Prevailing opinion shifts with other changes to society. Here is Burnet on pre-Socratic values among Greek speaking people:
“In this life, there are three kinds of men, just as there are three sorts of people who come to the Olympic Games. The lowest class is made up of those who come to buy and sell, the next above them are those who compete. Best of all, however, are those who come simply to look on.”
Wild for a typical modern American to imagine, say, professional athletes to be less admirable than the spectators!
Sorry to hear about your tragedy. Sending you lots of positive vibes.
Your comment about movies doesn’t land. What people do for work is not usually at the center focus of movies. Yes - ER dramas, police procedurals and the like. But how do you explain “Predator vs Alien”? I would argue the main characters are more consumption oriented.
Herman Daly addressed your question 30 years ago by proposing that there is a hierarchy of different kinds of capital that give value, power and even meaning to our lives, a far wider framework than simply what we consume. And that various media transform these kinds of capital to higher and higher levels of value. While most of us revolve around what kind of Human and Social Capital we can acquire (goods, skills, leisure pursuits, travel bucket list, etc) in a hospice few mention this in their last days. Their questions revolve around harmony, identity, fulfillment, etc. So this is not something fixed. People move up and down this framework as life demands, but most of us aim for the top. I can share an image that shows the entire framework if you want.
From what I have seen over my life, what people most need is to feel useful and important to others.
Which others? That is somewhat malleable. Family. Country. Organization. Romantic partner.
For most people, most of the time, the path of least resistance is getting a job, bringing home a paycheck. And very possibly developing a workplace expertise.
Or, similarly, joining the military.
I am not saying that human beings SHOULD be wired this way, but in my experience, they usually are. They want belonging, and they want the security that comes from knowing what they did to gain that belonging, and they want recognition within the group for what they contributed.
Consumption, I agree, gives far more options for self expression. But there are problems here.
First, as much as self expression is good, I question whether it can ever take the place of feeling useful and important to others. Not without a lot of medication, anyway.
Second, although you cite criticism of advertising for getting us to consume things we don't need, I think the real problem is that advertising has a long history of tying everyday consumer products to deeper human needs. Like camaraderie and belonging. People may or may not believe that product X will bring them love or popularity or respect or adventure, but over tens of thousands of ad repetitions, they do come to believe that purchased products in general are the normal route to achieving these highly desirable things. Which -- horribly -- undercuts motivation to come up with more likely strategies for actually achieving these things.
Your personal experience has a clear and identifiable cultural bias. I have travelled over 50 countries and I can categorically state that there are countries where this works utterly differently.
Especially the link between Belonging and Contribution. In many cultures you simply belong period. There is nothing you could do about it even if you wanted to.
The distinction between production and consumption is an artifactual one. It’s all consumption- just of different service flows. The carpenter consumes the services of a hammer no less than the writer consumes the services of a light bulb. Just because the carpenter works at a factory or you at home does not make consumption any less. It’s still consumption just under a different context. So the latter is what makes all the difference? Just as devouring that cheese platter on your own versus sharing it with friends.
Many people spend a large part of their working (producing) time doing activities they don't enjoy, actively resent or even feel repulsed by in some cases.
Then there is the issue is what you consume - broadly material goods or experiences. Much of the earlier part of article seems to frame consumption the former. For sure there isn't a completely clear cut separation but generally if you are spending a large amount of time focussed on possessions then this might not be much compensation. It also tends to be an area where the 'tyranny of choice' problem kicks in - spending 10 mins deciding what brand of peanut butter to buy etc. Much of my objection to advertising is that it's often generates a lot of noise/distraction for these very marginal decisions.
Personally the most satisfying activities are where I'm both producer and consumer. For example cooking a meal for my family, or at larger scale when I took a sabbatical to build a house. Some of these decisions are sub-optimal economically but again the ability to make that kind of choice is true freedom in my view.
Time will tell but if we can end up either making or buying products made like this Japanese guys shoes then it will be pretty nice:
Interesting article. I was leaning towards interesting but impractical or at least a party killer. At least when you exchange job information there might be overlap you can discuss in a non work way, and mutual acquaintances, gripes etc. interactions where one guy says I like rabbits and one woman says I collect old fountain pens will quickly run out of steam. But you are mostly right, that worked in college. The only sleight of hand there is you waived away the fact that everyone is at the same college. So asking about your major or complaining about your Econ professor is the college equivalent of adults asking what do you do. But you’re right there was a whole lot more discussion of non school interests too.
The problem is that the hobbies / consumption are probably only fine if they are occurring with your work supporting you. American society's judgement on someone , for example, who's a super anime fan but on welfare will be harsh. And it's not like trust fund babies are viewed particularly well, either.
"A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions." John Kenneth Galbraith
Sorry to hear about your tragedy Noah best wishes to you and your family.
This reminds me of Iain M Banks Culture ships. The Minds that effectively ran the Culture would have help from humans in assembling new ships. It was only at a basic level, the humans would manoeuvre pre-built building blocks of ship substrate around a low-gravity shipbuilding bay; if ships build themselves they'd do it way faster and more efficiently, but the Minds encouraged it because it gave the Culture humans purpose. It was sort of like a 4 year old helping in the kitchen (holding the wooden spoon - "I'm helping!") - but in an optional and endearing way.
Banks was quite prescient...
It's a shame he's no longer with us I would loved to have heard his take on *waves hands*. Man, if humanity ends up looking like the Culture we could do a lot worse (dystopian sci-horror elements aside!)
I have implicitly held this mindset my entire life. I have always regarded working as some annoying thing that I have to do so that I can afford to do the things that actually matter to me. Even in school the reason I excelled at school work was that being good at it let me get it done fast so the teacher would leave me alone and let me read.
I think overall this attitude has steered me right more than it has steered me wrong. How happy I am in life has been fairly unmoored from my career success. My therapist told me once that this was because I had a very strongly formed identity and didn't need work to give me an identity like other people did. I have led a very happy and meaningful life, for the most part.
The one thing I do occasionally wonder about is if my attitude led me to be too conservative when job-seeking. I decided early on that aiming for a job that I might find fun and meaningful was a bad gamble, such jobs were rare and competition for them is cutthroat. Maybe if I had been more proactive I would have a more fun or meaningful career. But on the other hand, maybe aiming high would have just led to failure and frustration. It's hard to know.
The comment about tenure reveals that you haven't been keeping track of what is actually happening with academic hiring for the past 30 years.
Well, in fact I have been keeping track (and have written about it). But A) people who already have tenure are not, in general, having their tenure revoked, and B) please not my use of the phrase "even if" in my comment about tenure.
Thanks!
' . . . as countries grow richer, they become more individualistic'. I think it's probably the other way round: societies which value the individual more highly tend to be richer. The hidden causal step is that individuals are more valued in less familial cultures and less familial cultures are higher trust - i.e. they have greater ability to form political and economic institutions made up of unrelated individuals. It's true that as a society gets richer, the latent individualism of non-familial cultures gets expressed more. But I'm not sure that familial cultures like Saudi Arabia become more individualistic as they get richer, or at least not noticeably so.
Two quick thoughts:
1. Noah writes that “Your decision of what to produce is not fully your own; the market gets to decide”, but you can substitute “consume” for “produce” in that sentence and it would be no less true. The market is quite powerful in deciding both what we produce and what we consume.
2. A society whose members value production over consumption seems to me as (economically) healthier than the converse. The first is characterized by surpluses and a general sense of “wealth”; the second by scarcity.
It’s possible I’m oversimplifying, and I’m aware that my #2 doesn’t consider mental health.
"you can substitute “consume” for “produce” in that sentence and it would be no less true. The market is quite powerful in deciding both what we produce and what we consume." <-- That's not true. Consumption decisions are made at the individual level. The market does NOT get to decide what you consume. You do.
"A society whose members value production over consumption seems to me as (economically) healthier than the converse." <-- Why?
"Consumption decisions are made at the individual level. The market does NOT get to decide what you consume. You do."
While the final 'decision' might rest with you (in most liberal capitalistic economies) it is highly influenced by the market for establishing desirability, availability, price, urgency etc. In end you will have a certain amount of surplus income beyond basic needs (and even those can have highly variable costs). How you spend it will be a 'free' choice but one steered a lot by marketing, peer groups, signalling to others your status etc. If you don't believe that you can ask the question 'would I want this product if I lived alone on a island'. Alternatively there are some 'products' that government or markets don't (legally) provide despite obvious demands from consumer side - illegal drugs, sexual 'services' etc
Conversely the argument that the production side is determined by the market is true but not the whole picture as clearly people make sub-optimal economic decisions about what career or job to take based on their preferences - up to a point.
A society that values consumption over production won't be full of scarcity if its members exercise basic prudence. If you produce a lot of wealth, you can afford to buy more goods and services to consume.
I imagine that many people who despise consumption (and specially the "consumption society") split "consumption" and "play" (the implicit difference between the two things is probably the ration money/time that an activity requires), and say exactly that one of the problems of "consumption" is that you end up with less time to "play" (both because the time you spent in "consumption", and because to buy things you have to earn more money, then more time you need to spent working, then less time to play). But much of your post is treating "consumption" and "play" as more or less synonymous.
Now, how we identify more with your job than with our spending habits? Look for the movies that are usually champions of sales (even if not of prizes) - most are action movies; is an indication that compulsion of human nature is to DO things, to use our physical and mental skills to achieve a goal (and that we feel realized doing things, or at least watching people pretending that they are doing things); or look for schoolchildren at a recess - if they have enough time, most will do something that reassembles "work" - play some game, build some pseudo-fortification, etc.
And, ofc, most of your own examples of "consumption" are hobbies, who are in many ways a kind of quasi-work (there are also activities where you use your sills to achieve goals
These ideas have been fiddled about for a long time. Prevailing opinion shifts with other changes to society. Here is Burnet on pre-Socratic values among Greek speaking people:
“In this life, there are three kinds of men, just as there are three sorts of people who come to the Olympic Games. The lowest class is made up of those who come to buy and sell, the next above them are those who compete. Best of all, however, are those who come simply to look on.”
Wild for a typical modern American to imagine, say, professional athletes to be less admirable than the spectators!
If the past is a guide, the society we create with AI will be one that rewards capital at the expense of labor.
Sorry to hear about your tragedy. Sending you lots of positive vibes.
Your comment about movies doesn’t land. What people do for work is not usually at the center focus of movies. Yes - ER dramas, police procedurals and the like. But how do you explain “Predator vs Alien”? I would argue the main characters are more consumption oriented.
Herman Daly addressed your question 30 years ago by proposing that there is a hierarchy of different kinds of capital that give value, power and even meaning to our lives, a far wider framework than simply what we consume. And that various media transform these kinds of capital to higher and higher levels of value. While most of us revolve around what kind of Human and Social Capital we can acquire (goods, skills, leisure pursuits, travel bucket list, etc) in a hospice few mention this in their last days. Their questions revolve around harmony, identity, fulfillment, etc. So this is not something fixed. People move up and down this framework as life demands, but most of us aim for the top. I can share an image that shows the entire framework if you want.
I think you are on the wrong track here, Noah.
From what I have seen over my life, what people most need is to feel useful and important to others.
Which others? That is somewhat malleable. Family. Country. Organization. Romantic partner.
For most people, most of the time, the path of least resistance is getting a job, bringing home a paycheck. And very possibly developing a workplace expertise.
Or, similarly, joining the military.
I am not saying that human beings SHOULD be wired this way, but in my experience, they usually are. They want belonging, and they want the security that comes from knowing what they did to gain that belonging, and they want recognition within the group for what they contributed.
Consumption, I agree, gives far more options for self expression. But there are problems here.
First, as much as self expression is good, I question whether it can ever take the place of feeling useful and important to others. Not without a lot of medication, anyway.
Second, although you cite criticism of advertising for getting us to consume things we don't need, I think the real problem is that advertising has a long history of tying everyday consumer products to deeper human needs. Like camaraderie and belonging. People may or may not believe that product X will bring them love or popularity or respect or adventure, but over tens of thousands of ad repetitions, they do come to believe that purchased products in general are the normal route to achieving these highly desirable things. Which -- horribly -- undercuts motivation to come up with more likely strategies for actually achieving these things.
Your personal experience has a clear and identifiable cultural bias. I have travelled over 50 countries and I can categorically state that there are countries where this works utterly differently.
Especially the link between Belonging and Contribution. In many cultures you simply belong period. There is nothing you could do about it even if you wanted to.
The distinction between production and consumption is an artifactual one. It’s all consumption- just of different service flows. The carpenter consumes the services of a hammer no less than the writer consumes the services of a light bulb. Just because the carpenter works at a factory or you at home does not make consumption any less. It’s still consumption just under a different context. So the latter is what makes all the difference? Just as devouring that cheese platter on your own versus sharing it with friends.
Many people spend a large part of their working (producing) time doing activities they don't enjoy, actively resent or even feel repulsed by in some cases.
Then there is the issue is what you consume - broadly material goods or experiences. Much of the earlier part of article seems to frame consumption the former. For sure there isn't a completely clear cut separation but generally if you are spending a large amount of time focussed on possessions then this might not be much compensation. It also tends to be an area where the 'tyranny of choice' problem kicks in - spending 10 mins deciding what brand of peanut butter to buy etc. Much of my objection to advertising is that it's often generates a lot of noise/distraction for these very marginal decisions.
Personally the most satisfying activities are where I'm both producer and consumer. For example cooking a meal for my family, or at larger scale when I took a sabbatical to build a house. Some of these decisions are sub-optimal economically but again the ability to make that kind of choice is true freedom in my view.
Time will tell but if we can end up either making or buying products made like this Japanese guys shoes then it will be pretty nice:
https://www.youtube.com/@ken.kataoka/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=2
Interesting article. I was leaning towards interesting but impractical or at least a party killer. At least when you exchange job information there might be overlap you can discuss in a non work way, and mutual acquaintances, gripes etc. interactions where one guy says I like rabbits and one woman says I collect old fountain pens will quickly run out of steam. But you are mostly right, that worked in college. The only sleight of hand there is you waived away the fact that everyone is at the same college. So asking about your major or complaining about your Econ professor is the college equivalent of adults asking what do you do. But you’re right there was a whole lot more discussion of non school interests too.
The problem is that the hobbies / consumption are probably only fine if they are occurring with your work supporting you. American society's judgement on someone , for example, who's a super anime fan but on welfare will be harsh. And it's not like trust fund babies are viewed particularly well, either.