The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture of this sort is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the normal lifestyle. Under these working conditions people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends. This arrangement makes us naturally more inclined to spend heavily on entertainment and conveniences because our free time is so scarce. I’ve only been back at work for a few days, but already I’m noticing that the more wholesome activities are quickly dropping out of my life: walking, exercising, reading, meditating, and extra writing.
Saved by Mo Brewer and
The unbridled reign of this individualist ethos, fueled by the demands of the market economy, has overwhelmed our traditional ways of organizing time, meaning that the hours in which we rest, work, and socialize are becoming ever more uncoordinated.
Looking back over the past fifty years, the U.S. experience raises troubling questions. We have more than doubled our productive potential, as a result of rising productivity. Had we channeled this “productivity dividend” into leisure time, Americans would have already reached the twenty hour week. But instead we used all of our economic progress
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