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A Brief History of Consumer Culture (mitpress.mit.edu)
67 points by anarbadalov on Jan 11, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 9 comments



> It would be feasible to reduce hours of work and release workers for the pleasurable activities of free time with families and communities, but business did not support such a trajectory.

This may be an explanation for the failure of John Maynard Keynes' prediction in 1930 that the working week might drop to 15 hours a week, with people choose more leisure as their basic material needs were satisfied.


More leasure also brings the opportunity to spend time on fabricating things yourself... that's quite dangerous!


Watch "The Century of the self" by Adam Curtis.


It's on YT: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa1LiBedgAciIiHqBAWEo7Q/vid...

Also if you're a fan of his work watch 'The Loving Trap' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg

Enjoy.


+100! So good, it’s crazy! PR is propaganda rebranded.


now in the queue; thx for the tip!


> In 2008, a similar unraveling began; its implications still remain unknown.

When was this written? The post date indicates today, but are these people really working along such long time horizons that we can't work out the consequences of 2008 twelve years later?


The article references:

> Galbraith, who had just published “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/11/100-best-nonfi..." target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The Affluent Society</a>

Which would indicate recently (post-2016).

Edit: I'm also seriously annoyed by articles that don't display the published date.

Edit2: But I believe it references the quantitative easing, "printing money to boost the economy", which has been done ever since 2009, and which so far seems to have been working, but there's uncertainty as to whether it's sustainable or will lead to a collapse of the whole economy.


The article is an excerpt from the book here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/collision-course which appears to have been published in 2014.




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