
Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep - mgunes
http://www.newstatesman.com/business/2013/07/late-capitalism-and-ends-sleep-jonathan-crary-sleep-standing-affront-capitalism
======
pnathan
I find it interesting that there's this continual barrage of articles and
thinkers taking swings at capitalism; often they offer some vaguely Marxist-
sounding critique ( _not_ that I'm up on Marx or his intellectual
descendants).

Isn't there any other economic critiques of the current Way Of Things outside
of using the anti-capitalist bogeyman?

~~~
karmajunkie
Are you sure that it isn't just that most people are conditioned to consider
anything anti-capitalist to be Marxist in nature?

~~~
gnarbarian
well what else is there? We tend to think of economic systems as falling
somewhere along the one dimensional axis between Marxism (no private property
allowed) and Capitalism (everything is private property). What other axis are
you suggesting?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_system)

~~~
gvr
The way I think about economic systems is

\- Level of business regulation. From left wing Marx style central production
control to pure capitalism.

\- Level of redistribution of wealth. From high taxation with redistribution
of wealth and strong infrastructure for all citizens (think Sweden or Denmark)
to low taxation.

I believe some form of capitalism mixed with somewhat aggressive
redistribution of wealth would yield the highest productivity and the most
humane society. This is basically how Sweden operates.

~~~
gnarbarian
"\- Level of business regulation. From left wing Marx style central production
control to pure capitalism."

This is about private property. Marxists deny the right for individuals or
companies to own the "means of production".

"\- Level of redistribution of wealth. From high taxation with redistribution
of wealth and strong infrastructure for all citizens (think Sweden or Denmark)
to low taxation."

This is also about private property because aggressive redistribution of
wealth is by definition impinging on the right to accrue private property.

"I believe some form of capitalism mixed with somewhat aggressive
redistribution of wealth would yield the highest productivity and the most
humane society. This is basically how Sweden operates."

This is socialism which sits in the middle of the one dimensional spectrum of
economic systems.

Also how do you define productivity? Because I assure you that a sweatshop is
more productive per dollar than any shoe factory in Sweden.

Unless you mean maximizing the sum productivity and humanity at the expense of
one or the other. But humanity is a little harder to quantify eh? :)

~~~
gvr
No matter how high taxes are, if you let people in a first world country work
with whatever they want, you're not going to end up with university educated
professionals in a shoe sweat shop. If they work in a sweatshop in Sweden, it
will be one of clothing design, software engineering, or some other line of
work producing many orders of magnitude more value per hour where they can
make some solid money for themselves while paying a significant amount of
taxes.

And yes, of course I believe that productivity and happiness are two different
things and that they need to be balanced. I don't believe in trickle down
economics, or that they are two different facets of the same variable on a
linear axis that somehow move in unison as you slide left/right up/down.

You can probably quantify humanity (like the Gross National Happiness people
are trying to do) somehow, but it's of course not going to resemble true
science. I do think there are some basic markers of a civilized society that I
have a hard time understanding how some people disagree with though. These
include public access to nature and beaches, good education for everyone, good
healthcare for everyone, etc. To me, this is a separate _economical_ issue
from how much the government meddles in the work life of its citizens. If it's
easy for you to think of these issues on one axis be my guest, but it is not a
mental model that works well for me.

Cheers!

------
kyllo
The really important thing this touches on, IMO, is that people who are
"poor," are not just cash poor or asset-poor, but also time-poor, and as a
result they are increasingly sleep-poor. Because a unit of a poor person's
time is worth very little money, they have to sell so much of it just to pay
the bills, that it encroaches upon the time they have available for sleep.
Being sleep-deprived drains a person's energy, causing them to work less
efficiently, which helps perpetuate the vicious cycle of poverty.

~~~
zenogais
I think that even more important is that this provides an explanation for the
obsession with getting less sleep that seems particularly pernicious in start-
up culture, but is noticeable elsewhere as well. It goes beyond merely
worrying about the health consequences. It is human biology representing an
affront to longer working days and increased productivity.

------
tedks
Interesting first comment:

>This caused conflicts with those who had the idea work consisted of doing as
little as possible for the most finanical reward. Liberals.

The idea of a "work ethic" (a contradiction in terms if there ever was one!)
is so pervasive in most people's minds that they label people who have
appropriate capitalist values (i.e., work is a competition between the boss
and worker; each attempts to maximize value for minimal cost) by their
political enemies.

~~~
blaze33
Of course there's going to be conflicts when people have "appropriate" values
while their "enemies" have "pervasive" ones.

~~~
tedks
Pervasive means "common". I'm not sure if this is what you meant (it does
sound like "perverse" and if you're not a native english speaker I can see how
the mistake could be made).

But of course your statement is correct either way. Interesting how both sides
see themselves as lone warriors against a sea of villainy.

------
erdle
Highly recommend reading this book. It's actually a fairly quick read and is a
bit of a departure from his other works and areas of interest.

Also not mentioned in the article, Crary co-heads one of the best independent
publishers, Zone Books. And every book is beautifully and minimally designed
by the legendary studio of Bruce Mau.

Disclosure: author is my wife's grad school advisor.

------
chippy
As I write, another article on the front page of Hacker News is entitled:
"This is what Tesla owners are doing while you sleep"

[http://blog.opower.com/2014/07/this-is-what-tesla-owners-
are...](http://blog.opower.com/2014/07/this-is-what-tesla-owners-are-doing-
while-you-sleep/)

"While you are in bed dreaming about how some day you too might own an
electric car, many EV owners are doing something dramatic; something
unusual..."

~~~
wmf
If sleep is a luxury, it stands to reason that Tesla owners are getting
plenty.

------
veganarchocap
Well for a start, by definition we don't have Capitalism, so any article
referring to 'current day Capitalism' has missed what Capitalism in its true
essence is about. The simple act of free trade, property rights and self-
ownership is what Capitalism is. What people refer to now as Capitalism, is in
fact Corporatism, which of course has its own set of deeply serious problems.

The trouble with everyone bashing 'Capitalism' now is that people draw a false
parallel between 'Capitalism' and 'Corporatism' and run a mile in the opposite
direction and adopt quite predictable Marxist views.

If we're going to get into Marxism, this was a man who never had a real job...
he mooched off of his factory owning friends (so a complete hypocrite) and
took advantage of a maid working in his families service and brought about a
child of whom he never cared for. He isn't a good role model, and couldn't
even live by his own views.

------
waps
What does this article have to do with capitalism ? When you go right down to
it communism, socialism, even mercantilism are all trying to maximize
productivity and consumption. I think it's probably the one thing all economic
systems agree on. Hell, even natural selection agrees on that.

So is sleep an affront to them all ?

~~~
crpatino
> What does this article have to do with capitalism ? When you go right down
> to it communism, socialism, even mercantilism are all trying to maximize
> productivity and consumption.

Yes, a hundred times yes!!!

> I think it's probably the one thing all economic systems agree on.

There I will have to disagree. The three examples you provided are modern
(post Enlightenment) economic systems. I am sure there are more examples along
the world history, but it is far fetched to say it is common to _all_ systems.

> Hell, even natural selection agrees on that.

Strongly disagree. Every instance of rapid growth in nature either finds a
balance with the larger ecosystem or self destroys (by causing severe, though
not necessarily terminal, damage to the larger ecosystem). Think cancer. Think
the introduction of exotic species into isolated ecosystems. Think the
depopulation of the Americas during the XV and XVI century due to European
diseases.

> So is sleep an affront to them all ?

In a way, yes. At the end of the day, power means access to limited resources.
Besides the obvious cases (access to actual raw materials), time is a limited
resource for every human being. But you can expand in a way your life span by
having other people do what you want instead of what they want. Ultimately,
there is a hard limit on how much this vicarious life extension is available:
Num_people_under_your_control * 24_hrs_per_day / biological_needs_factor.
Given than people usually need in the ballpark or 8 hrs of sleep per day, this
is the single largest component of biological_needs_factor.

Be it a capitalist robber baron, a communist dictator, or a mercantilist king,
they get more power by having their people sleep less and work more... up to a
point.

~~~
waps
> There I will have to disagree. The three examples you provided are modern
> (post Enlightenment) economic systems. I am sure there are more examples
> along the world history, but it is far fetched to say it is common to all
> systems.

I'd like to know a few examples of that. You know, a long time ago I visited
one of the interior countries in Africa, and got an up-close experience of
what's probably the closest thing to original human settlements I'm going to
see in my lifetime. They know about the modern world, and they've got some
kids that left for the city and learned French. So you can talk to them.

When you look at these people, you would swear that "laid back lifestyle"
doesn't quite cover it. They do the bare minimum necessary to survive, and a
little bit to get comfortable. As the locals say, they will never amount to
anything. And, frankly, these people are right. They will never build
(granted, maybe not never ever, but ...).

So you might think. No economy ... no pressure, right ? Wrong.

You see, they are acutely aware of the land's carrying capacity. So they have
a choice :

1) don't have kids (or not more than their group can take). Result :
neighbouring tribe that didn't see the light comes over, kills all the men,
and uses the women and children to expand. Besides, you may have noticed, sex
is fun. Kids are fun. And I guarantee that any argument for abstinence will
fall on deaf ears.

2) Have kids, and while they don't know the math behind it, they are aware
that they'll exceed the carrying capacity of their land in a matter of time
(incidentally, you may want to avoid visiting tribes that are close to this
limit, don't worry, they'll place markers at the edge of their territory and
tell you. Don't ignore them, and if you suddenly see a number of people appear
on a ridge, turn fucking back).

BTW: the problem with option 2 is that destructive behaviour can delay the
point where they do run out of resources, at a great cost. You see, when the
land can't normally support them anymore, they can burn it, which gives them
access to a great amount of meat. It's simple : you burn a piece of forest
(surprisingly, doing this well takes a surprising amount of skill). You have
archers cover the sides of it. Animals who are normally unreachable either try
to escape, taking their chances with the archers, or they burn. In both cases
: Food ! Of course, at some point, everything is burned. The next step : war
(if successful : the tribe splits up, because social structures don't last
when groups are 50+ kilometres apart, if unsuccessful, well, we all know what
happens in that case).

So truth be told, that system is absolutely trying to maximize productivity
and consumption.

> Strongly disagree. Every instance of rapid growth in nature either finds a
> balance with the larger ecosystem or self destroys (by causing severe,
> though not necessarily terminal, damage to the larger ecosystem). Think
> cancer. Think the introduction of exotic species into isolated ecosystems.
> Think the depopulation of the Americas during the XV and XVI century due to
> European diseases.

This is not true. You forget how natural selection works. There's lots of
different tactics. Take rabbits for example. No biologist ever is going to
call any rabbit population anywhere on the planet balanced. And you do have a
point, rabbit populations breed themselves into extinction daily. Cats do the
same. In theory the whole thing should end in a "natural balance", somehow it
never does.

The way life survives is simple. Natural selection :

1) multiply, and use it to try a million new things

2) 99.99% of them die off

3) use the remaining 0.01% to GOTO 1

So the purpose of natural selection most definitely is to use bubbles to their
maximum advantage. Yes, some species have a slowdown factor built in, but not
a very big one.

The reason nature uses bubbles ? If you don't someone else will. And then, you
get to deal with all the after effects of strip-mining the bubble, yet you did
not get the advantages during the strip-mining that could have allowed you to
expand into areas that aren't so heavily effected by the after-effects of the
bubble.

