
Labor Supply and the Attention Tax - hunglee2
http://kortina.nyc/essays/kinky-labor-supply-and-the-attention-tax/
======
CamTin
"No one would support a policy that required them to buy this time back from
the state in the form of a tax."

America's puritan relationship with work, and it's toxic interaction with
free-market economics has reached it's ultimate conclusion in an economics
that calmly and rationally lays out an argument that the working class, who:

1) for perhaps the first time in history have their essential needs met
without spending most of their lives at toil, and

2) who indeed are happier than similar cohorts have been in the past, should

3) have their leisure time taxed in order to encourage them to go back to work
for capital earning wages they don't want, instead of spending their time as
they please.

This article really lays bare the grim reality of our world order: the owners
want us working, even if there's nothing for us to gain from it. Indeed, any
potential surplus which might under a rational system result in leisure, will
instead be sucked up by an owner-controlled state through confiscatory taxes
which are designed solely to get us back into the mines lest we enjoy
ourselves too much playing Overwatch, being with our families, or just
generally not wasting our lives in low-paying retail and service jobs.

~~~
walshemj
I remember reading some of the arguments against limiting the working week to
5 days - on similar lines "those feckless working class brutes will just
fritter he time away and are to subhuman to actually experience or value the
finer things n life"

------
Animats
This is by a co-founder of Venmo, right? Bought out by PayPal. This guy worked
for a few years after college, then retired. Interesting that he's proposing
coercive methods of making people work harder.

~~~
tw1010
Everyone is happier if everyone works harder. It doesn't necessarily have to
be that he's nefarious or hypocritical. Sure, in the short term people will be
happier if they work less (assuming they dislike their jobs). But arguably he
might be looking out for everyones wellness function (not trying to find ways
for the country to work hard while he's retired), since people working hard
and America growing will yield greater individual happiness than everyone
taking it easy. (Not to mention the fact that the US is in an inescapable
economic arms race with China and other nations, which will make things even
worse in the even longer term if stagnation continues.)

------
GCA10
The other end of the age curve is just as interesting - and deserves more
attention. People aged 65 and older are sticking around in the workforce a lot
more than they used to. The author claims this is because they need $$$ to
cover healthcare costs, but the universal availability of over age-65 Medicare
makes that doubtful.

From everything I see, people over age 65 want to stay in the game. Many of
them are surprisingly healthy, and with the general collapse of factory work,
most of the available jobs tend to be physically manageable service-sector
work that provides a lot of interesting social interaction and affirmation of
personal worth. Plus extra spending cash!

The head clerk at my local hardware store is 82 years old and knows everything
about hardware! He doesn't move much from the cash register, and much younger
folks stock the shelves. But he's the go-to guy when it comes to advice about
acrylic vs. latex paint, etc. He likes to teach and we're grateful for it.

Same story among school crossing guards, which is a prime part-time job for
the over 65-set.

My uncle kept picking up consulting income way into his 70s. Same basic story.
Non-U.S. healthcare systems can get his input via PDFs, emails and video
conferencing. No need to leave his Arizona condo unless he wants to.

For older people in frail health with limited skills, these options aren't
open. But the role of the voluntarily working elderly is an overlooked bright
spot.

~~~
cimmanom
Maybe it's not to cover healthcare costs but to cover other living costs. With
climbing life expectancy; the decline of pensions; the 2008 market crash; and
other factors such as the exorbitant costs of end of life care, today's
healthy seniors are looking at running out of money to pay for the essentials
before they die.

~~~
GCA10
Social Security keeps chugging along just fine. You can't live large on those
checks, but I've got relatives in small-town Connecticut who pay all the bills
that way and even save a little.

Work (in appropriate doses) brings a sense of usefulness for seniors that
staring at the TV all day does not.

------
colechristensen
This is the epitome of late stage capitalism and a sign of the post-scarcity
economy. "The economy" should serve human needs, not the other way around. The
power to tax is the power to destroy, and the proposal here is to destroy
leisure availability here... why?

As automation progresses we are going to have a lot more people who don't want
or need to work. This would be much further along if the economy of capital
inequality wasn't so distorted.

Young men apparently don't have to work full time to survive, don't want to,
and are free to do things they want. This is being painted as a bad thing
either because they should be working because work > leisure or assuming that
work is inaccessible rather than undesired (probably both, definitely not just
one)

I, personally, would like to work a lot less. The reason I can't are two fold.
1) it's uncommon for employers to hire highly skilled workers in part time
roles and 2) the cost of living ballooned up to eat any excess income by rent
seekers.

>The chief aim of their constitution and government is that, whenever public
needs permit, all citizens should be free, so far as possible, to withdraw
their time and energy from the service of the body, and devote themselves to
the freedom and culture of the mind. For that, they think, is the real
happiness of life.

~~~
wycs
I don’t think you finished the essay. It is very clear they don’t believe the
policy proposed can be implemented and it is only slightly less clear that
they think it is undesirable.

~~~
colechristensen
That's true, I did read quickly and skip parts. The bulk of the essay remains
about one thing while the conclusion negates it, to a degree. It is difficult
to come away with a conclusion of what the authors believe because they spend
most of the article advocating for one position and reverse in the end.

------
att-throw
At first read, this article says something like: non-top-tier men lack access
to social belonging, partly because social media creates a status signaling
arms race unattainable by many, therefore they play video games instead of
working to achieve status, therefore we should tax their video games.

This seemed like dealing with the effects rather than the causes of the
problem. _But_ if you include social media like Instagram in the tax, and not
just Xbox FPSes, you could disincentivize the status broadcasting that,
according to the authors, leads the men to say "f it" and stop working in the
first place.

I think you would have to tax a lot more than is obvious to discourage use of
digital media -- like at least $3 or $4 an hour. Taxing status signaling is
harder; you'd probably have to factor in the number of followers. I would
welcome the chance to read more books, but this thought experiment is never
going to happen.

------
crdoconnor
I find it amusing that he posits that poor young men stay at home playing
video games because the 1% have rendered status signaling worthless and then
suggests, rather than a tax on yachts and private jets that we tax video
games.

He then unsurprisingly posits that it would be pointless/a bad idea to raise
wages coincidentally mirroring the opinion of just about every other member of
the share owning 1%.

~~~
rland
Well, his position makes perfect sense: he is a co-founder of Venmo, which was
acquired in 2012 for 26 million dollars.

[http://kortina.nyc/work/](http://kortina.nyc/work/)

~~~
crdoconnor
lol. his cut of that probably just about gives him about enough to play video
games for the rest of his life, but not enough for any serious status
signaling.

------
_nalply
I find this piece jarring because it doesn't mention that many people have
precarious employment situations as if this doesn't matter at all.

~~~
stephengillie
I stopped reading when they started blaming video games. It's such a tired
excuse. Sure, a few would rather play games than work, but most play games to
escape their lack of real-world opportunities.

~~~
walshemj
Yes the my rightwing sensor was screaming before I finished that sentence.

~~~
dasmoth
I’d argue that the “work is good in and of itself” idea is quite prevalent on
the left too. You can certainly find left-wing advocates of “job
guarantee”-type setups.

------
lgleason
I'm sure I will get down voted for this but....

In times past, most parents would have kicked them out of the house and told
them to get a job. Now we regularly have parents that let their kids live at
home, even when they have high paying jobs (which used to be frowned upon).

There are two issues here:

First supply and demand in the economy. Many jobs that young men used to do
have either been exported to other countries or are being done by cheap
undocumented labor.

Second, parents that have enabled this behavior. As much as it isn't pleasant,
the fear of not having a roof over your head, or being able to eat is a
powerful motivator for people to get off the game console and to find a job,
even if it is cleaning toilets with a toothbrush. But when you have parents
you can coast and play video games, while living relatively stress free life.

The problem is that a leisure economy is not sustainable long term. If the
current generation has less wealth, they won't have the luxury of letting
their kids stay at home to play video games. As much as technology will
eliminate some jobs, it creates others, and the issue is not really a lowered
demand for labor. It's that people looking for a larger profit are trying
juice the labor markets in the US by increasing the supply of labor to lower
the price by exporting production to places with cheaper labor and bringing in
more labor competition......and we are seeing the effects of it.

Explanations like this article are akin to being on a ship with a large hole
in the front. It is causing it to lean forward but instead of fixing the hole
they are re-arranging the furniture on the deck to try to fix the tilt.

~~~
Retric
Relatively recently it was fairly common to see 3+ generations living in the
same house. The norm of young people moving out really had more to do with
selling more homes and urbanization than any long term cultural norm.

Lower male participation in the workforce is a separate though 60+ year trend
and has a wide range of causes. More education, more stay at home dads,
automation, etc.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001)

~~~
lgleason
That is a fair point, though it was a different dynamic. For example in rural
farming areas they were an extra set of hands to work on the family farm etc..

~~~
Retric
Not just farms, large companies like Walmart have killed off a lot of
multigenerational family business. At the same time people are changing jobs
far more fequently so working for 40 years without any unemployment has become
unusual.

------
stefanpl
"One view of the status quo is that media companies are aggregating human
attention and selling it at a discount–far below minimum wage–to advertisers
in a massive arbitrage on human capital."

Interesting idea. I've never thought of attention in this manner before.

~~~
colechristensen
This is a strange sentiment because what is happening with the type of person
is moving further from having attention sold to advertisers.

I am not unique and advertisers have a really hard time getting any of my
attention. I have ad blockers installed, I don't have an antenna for broadcast
television or a cable subscription, I watch television through netflix or
purchased seasons/episodes/movies either digital or physical, I play video
games, and I buy books at bookstores or on an ereader. The most advertisement
I experience is for more media on the same medium. Astroturfing reddit and
email are the closest I get to consuming ads.

This isn't unique or special and it's certainly growing. I find being forced
to watch advertisements intolerable having been away from it for so long and
it's easy to keep away.

~~~
att-throw
What do you mean by "what is happening"? I definitely agree that there's a
type of person or group of people further from having attention sold to
advertisers, but I don't know what they would be like.

I had a similar thought listening to the radio yesterday: there are some
lyrics and themes on public airwaves (like lauding adultery, cooking crack
cocaine, etc.) that would have at least generated a little outrage even 15
years ago. But my guess is that many of the people who normally would have
gotten on Parents Television Council and written angry letters to the FTC have
now just stopped consuming mainstream media broadcasting altogether.

Anything with a non-transparent recommender system (including most digital
stores) is still vulnerable to tracking, attention harvesting and paid
placements, even if you aren't seeing straight up soap ads. For example, how
do you know that the TV producer isn't paying Vudu or whoever to put shows on
your front page because you watched show X?

~~~
colechristensen
"One view of the status quo is that media companies are aggregating human
attention and selling it at a discount–far below minimum wage–to advertisers
in a massive arbitrage on human capital."

When I say "what is happening" I am referring to the status quo stated here.

The view stated is that media companies are "buying" human attention with
cheap entertainment and selling it to advertisers (the portion not taken up by
the content).

The contradiction I am putting forward is that the people seemingly most
susceptible to withdrawing some of their time from the workforce to pursue
leisure and media are also consuming far fewer advertisement-hours in an
absolute sense and as a proportion of time of multimedia consumed.

\---

As for the lack of outrage, that's a cultural shift not a media access shift
(primarily at least). It's true that 15 years ago people were generally
consuming a much more homogeneous set of media, but the driving factor of
outrage is every age group was born 15 years later. Things aren't so shocking
when you grew up with them. Fifteen years ago it was also a lot more
outrageous to be gay; the extremely diminished outrage reaction to that isn't
just because people are consuming different media.

------
naveen99
Wow, I don’t think it’s that hard to find things to spend money on beyond
entertainment and status symbols. There’s comfort, food, travel, cooks, maids,
education, research, business ideas, children, health...

------
rumcajz
The article asserts that the the conspicuous consumption in Veblen's sense is
over. I've tried to find some research to verify that. I've found this, but
it's just a blog post, presumably based on research, but I haven't found the
research itself:

[http://blog.press.princeton.edu/2017/06/09/elizabeth-
currid-...](http://blog.press.princeton.edu/2017/06/09/elizabeth-currid-
halkett-conspicuous-consumption-is-over-its-all-about-intangibles-now/)

------
arandr0x
The article's assumption that the core demographics (of men 20-34 let's say)
are not foregoing their basic needs is flawed -- not only are most of them
living in much smaller spaces than they were before, they are also less likely
to have children to support(which is a basic need for most people) for a bunch
of reasons most of which have nothing to do with either video games or the
preference of young men.

Largely, young men need less money even for their basic everyday consumption
(and so they have more time to spend on leisure). This is to a lesser extent
true of young women (which are not discussed in the article even though their
participation is also lowered -- are they playing video games too? Maybe those
mobile games? Are there Facebook games still today?).

------
jmunsch
Minimum wage paid for human capital, inflating the cost of collecting
attention/info sold by media companies. Reminds me a bit of brave and
attention tokens. It feels like a comparison between libertarian policy and
state policy.

Interesting idea, but who would pay a 12% tax for writing a blog post, or
leaving a review. I think it would pass the costs onto the consumers, raising
the barrier of entry to information liquidity.

------
UncleEntity
> _Disutility of labor_ is the discomfort, uneasiness, inconvenience or pain
> inherent in human effort. Because of this quality men regard labor as a
> burden and prefer leisure to toil or labor.

Until they "solve" this then taxing leisure -- which is actually a good,
economically speaking -- will merely cause people to spend their leisure time
on some other untaxed activity instead of video games/netflix.

Or tax the 78% of women to make the 20th percentile males less desirable on
the Tinder so those other slackers will get out and work harder...don't
actually know how Tinder works so just spitballing here.

