
In Praise of Idleness (1932) - hemapani
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
======
howeyc
I always like the idea Bertrand Russel raised where if a company realizes it
needs half its staff that it would be best to instead reduce all staff to
half-hours worked then previous.

Not sure if this is the essay or not. Sorry for the off-topic if it's not this
essay.

Too bad with the current additional requirements on employers it's not that
simple (health insurance, social security, etc...). Plus the fact that I'm
sure some people would prefer not to have 3 places of employment to fill
X-hours per week of pay and would rather have 1 employer (simplicity, less
commuting, etc). Still, a nice idea in theory.

Maybe if most work was able to be done remotely, and work was done on a
contract basis?

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Implement basic income and universal healthcare, via taxes. Remove pensions
for retirement and unemployment (obsoleted by basic income). With this, and
taking into account that a minimum wage is not needed with basic income
either, you take away all the overheads of hiring a worker. Want to hire
someone to work 1 hour a day for $30? Fine, as long as they agree. You then
pay taxes for your earnings, and not for hiring people.

~~~
mamon
Main problem with introducing basic income is that you are effectively
punishing hard-working people for their effort (with taxes) and reward people
that don't want to work with the free money. Unless you have millions of
slaves or immigrants (or, futuristically thinking, robots) at your disposal
this will make your country go bankrupt very quickly. Which is a common
problem with socialism, but made exponentially worse.

~~~
drcube
Basic income is for everyone, workers and the unemployed, rich and poor alike.
Or at least it should be. Every dollar you earn should be a bonus, on top of
basic income, or else like you said, you create disincentives to work. If
you're referring to the "fairness" of the distributed tax burden, that's a
problem with or without basic income.

~~~
mamon
I see your point, but think about one thing: how many people are stuck in a
jobs they hate just because they have to pay the bills? If you give them basic
income that covers all their basic needs then first thing they will do is they
will quit their jobs. Also, I can imagine that many women would leave their
jobs to stay at home with their children (or to finally give birth to one).
That's at least few millions of people that would immediately loose incentive
to work.

Fairness of taxes is mainly theoretical exercise because this world isn't and
never will be fair. So we need to deal with the fact that people don't like
paying taxes and will do many things to avoid it, including quitting their
jobs.

~~~
perfunctory
I am sorry to say that but your view of the basic income sounds rather
shallow. I would encourage you to read up on the subject.

~~~
mamon
Actually, the part about mothers working less to spend more time with their
children was actually noticed [1] And that was just an experiment, where
participants knew it won't last forever. In real life effect might be
stronger.

What really is shallow is the understanding of how economy works by proponents
of basic income. As I wrote earlier: to make it possible you need either
robots or slaves, because most consumer goods don't grow on trees and even the
ones that do grow on trees still need some manual labor to be done before they
can be bought with your basic income money. Disincentivising work will make
them less available and therefore more expensive.

The last large scale implementation of unconditional basic income was in
ancient Rome, and see how that ended for them :)

[1][http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/ssrgai.htm#Disposable](http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/ssrgai.htm#Disposable)

~~~
DonaldFisk
If people's disposable income drops to basic income level because they quit
their jobs, there will be less demand for non-essential consumer goods. The
idea that people will voluntarily starve themselves to death because they're
too lazy to work while fruit rots on or under trees is ludicrous.

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tuix
Some interesting comments from the past:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9015092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9015092)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1396167](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1396167)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187681](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1187681)

------
saintx
Although it's a pleasant read, it doesn't take into account opportunity cost.
Everything I do every day requires me not to do something else. There are
valuable jobs that aren't urgent that never get done until I automate my way
out of my current role. Russell always did treat economics as a zero sum game,
when in reality it's quite expansive.

There are also jobs that need doing today and are physically possible to do,
but nobody is doing them because we haven't invented them or realized they are
possible yet. The Romans could have employed scientists to photograph the
surface of Pluto. Physics haven't fundamentally changed since then. Only our
understanding of what is possible has changed. A thousand years from now,
people will marvel at all the jobs we in the early 21st century could have
been doing to advance the quality of life for people around the world (and
indeed all life on Earth), had we only known those things were possible.

------
capisce
I love this essay by Bertrand Russell. It's just a shame it remains a utopia
for the typical person.

~~~
perfunctory
probably for a typical person (whatever that means) but definitely not for a
typical HN reader.

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arstin
This is a great essay. And obviously pertinent!

