Yeah! A lot of this comes from a lack of agency in your daily life. You have to do all sorts of things just to stay afloat, leaving little to no time for yourself, so you take revenge at bedtime. The classic argument that salary and hours are no longer tied to productivity applies here; working less for more money reduces the need to spend your sleeping hours finding satisfaction.
I wouldn’t say this is a uniquely capitalistic problem, though. Capitalism is just a huge factor in the reduction of individual agency (unless you’re a capitalist and actually have agency) and it’s the most common setup we have currently. You could have the same lack of agency in another setup and see the same problem.
So you would say a change within the system (whatever the system might be) is more necessary than a change of the system, because it could be a problem within any system?
I think that’s a really good and very deep question. I think there are some changes within the system we could try. Universal basic income, for example, has a lot of promise in terms of getting people beyond the basics to what they can be passionate about. A four day (eight hours each) work week could reduce the need for revenge by giving back a lot of the time we should have. I think there’s good data for both of those things that shows an increase in agency.
I don’t even know how to approach a change in the system. I would be concerned with just these changes because I am deeply cynical of capitalists and their lack of interest in sharing agency with the working class.
Could you tell me why Capitalism specifically plays a role in it?
Not arguing, just curious
Yeah! A lot of this comes from a lack of agency in your daily life. You have to do all sorts of things just to stay afloat, leaving little to no time for yourself, so you take revenge at bedtime. The classic argument that salary and hours are no longer tied to productivity applies here; working less for more money reduces the need to spend your sleeping hours finding satisfaction.
I wouldn’t say this is a uniquely capitalistic problem, though. Capitalism is just a huge factor in the reduction of individual agency (unless you’re a capitalist and actually have agency) and it’s the most common setup we have currently. You could have the same lack of agency in another setup and see the same problem.
So you would say a change within the system (whatever the system might be) is more necessary than a change of the system, because it could be a problem within any system?
I think that’s a really good and very deep question. I think there are some changes within the system we could try. Universal basic income, for example, has a lot of promise in terms of getting people beyond the basics to what they can be passionate about. A four day (eight hours each) work week could reduce the need for revenge by giving back a lot of the time we should have. I think there’s good data for both of those things that shows an increase in agency.
I don’t even know how to approach a change in the system. I would be concerned with just these changes because I am deeply cynical of capitalists and their lack of interest in sharing agency with the working class.