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The Forum > Article Comments > In praise of idleness > Comments

In praise of idleness : Comments

By Harry Throssell, published 5/6/2008

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd seems to have forgotten his social and economic history and the philosophy of work and leisure.

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The article "Consumerism – an Historical Perspective" (2004 - http://homepage.mac.com/herinst/sbeder/consumerism.html) by Professor Sharon Beder(http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/author.asp?id=4202 http://homepage.mac.com/herinst/sbeder/home.html) may be of interest. She shows how in the 1920's when there was a prospect of working hours being reduced as a consequence of rising productivity, US corporate leaders deliberately set about, with advertising campaigns, to increase the material wants of workers so that they would prefer higher wages to shorter working hours. As Beder wrote in the concluding paragraph:

"The desire to consume is often portrayed as a natural human
characteristic that cannot be changed. However it is clear that
populations have been manipulated into being avaricious consumers.
What people really want, more than the multitude of goods on offer,
is status and history has shown that the determinants of status can
change. If we want to live in an ecologically sustainable society,
then we need to award status to those who are happy with a basic
level of comfort rather than those who accumulate possessions. If,
as a community, we admired wisdom above wealth and compassion and
cooperation above competition, we would be well on the way to
undermining the motivation to consume."
Posted by cacofonix, Saturday, 7 June 2008 7:28:01 PM
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Good points cacofonix.

The so called 'skills shortage' could easily be alleviated by reducing the demand for goods (goods we don't really need) and reducing our population.

Our obsession with immediacy or immediate gratification has also reduced our leisure time - the obscure need to be contactable and available 24/7 gratis mobile phones, blackberries and other technologies. :)
Posted by pelican, Monday, 9 June 2008 8:35:52 PM
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Thanks pelican,

I agree with you on all points.

However, I don't actually think that all the newer technologies are inherently bad, although I question the necessity of many.

The fact that we have less, rather than more leisure time and less material wealth in an objective sense(*), indicates to me that someone other than ourselves has appropriated the benefits of these technologies and/or that there must be truly staggering inefficiencies in our supposedly wonderful free-market economic system.

---

* As an example, I don't consider that if a family can now afford to buy a second car and pay for all of its running costs, that their material advantage over a family of a generation ago that could only afford a single car necessarily fully matches the additional income that has allowed them to buy that extra car. This is because it has become a necessity rather than a choice.

These families can actually be viewed as worse off, if in spite of being able to own an extra car, it takes more, rather than less effort for them to make all their necessary journeys through our crowded, congested and poorly designed cities than it did for an equivalent family with only one car a generation ago.

Similarly, a family who can afford to buy an elaborate home security system that was not necessary a generation ago is not truly better off materially even though most of today's 'free market' economists would insist that they are.

An article, "Living standards and our material prosperity" of 6 September 2007 which discusses this, is to be found at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6326&page=0
Posted by cacofonix, Tuesday, 10 June 2008 9:04:08 AM
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