Economics of Human Energy
Thoughts about how money and human energy relate
Economics of Human Energy
Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act.
Bob Black • The Abolition of Work
Sloth isn’t the default state; it’s the state that is a result of energy sucking activities.
Cost effective is the wrong way to think about value
Right now, as you read this, someone is profiting from your temporal poverty.
Not your lack of hours—you have the same 24 as everyone else. But your inability to position yourself in time the way venture capitalists do. While you execute in the present, they've already colonized the future. While you manage today's complexity, they're creating... See more
Not your lack of hours—you have the same 24 as everyone else. But your inability to position yourself in time the way venture capitalists do. While you execute in the present, they've already colonized the future. While you manage today's complexity, they're creating... See more
Leo Guinan • The Temporal Trap: How Silicon Valley Steals Your Future
Time Violence from Silicon Valley
I was unwilling to be trapped by something that looked successful on the outside, but felt like shit on the inside.
All That Remains
Alignment matters the most
- Paladin saves the world? Degrowth story.
- Barbarian masculine energy saves the world? Degrowth story.
- Enlightened sexless bureaucracy saves the world? Degrowth story.
- Nurturing feminine energy saves the world? Degrowth story.
- Unbridled technological acceleration saves the world? Degrowth story.
- Unbridled GDP growth saves the world? Degrowth story.
- Saintly
every story is a degrowth story
These I agree are degrowth stories.
I think the connection he’s making is to the book, so that the loss of complexity in society leaves people feeling lost and unvalued, and that leads to societal collapse.
What if we don’t tie society to complexity?
Workers of the world... relax!
Bob Black • The Abolition of Work
“AI will lift the ceiling, leading to more creative outputs made possible by more powerful tools; it will also lower the floor, making it easier for anyone to design and collaborate.”
Our Centaur Future - A RADAR Report
When the gap between the ceiling and flow increases, the way to prevent unrest is by adding more steps between. It’s important to see clearly how to level up to the ceiling, and not only enable people who have the ability to make the leap between the existing steps. More people being able to do something shouldn’t threaten the existence of anyone currently doing the thing.
This is the paradox of our time: the very tools designed to free us from labor are trapping us in an endless cycle of escalating work.
Tina He • Jevons Paradox: A personal perspective
Yes.
Each technology not only unlocks a new state of expanded acceleration (that will be hardcoded into our lives as the new basis for our survival), but will also be used as the basis for new technologies to continue that process. The vast majority of people do not experience this technology as ‘liberating’ them. Rather, they experience it as something... See more
Our Centaur Future - A RADAR Report
Because we don’t think about valuing the work to be done in the future, only the work to be done now, we don’t give people space to explore what the future holds. Instead, we stress people out by giving them vague possibilities of an uncertain future with no time to explore them. By giving people the time, space, and freedom to explore what the future might hold, they will find abundant futures that are bright and exciting. Those are the futures they will work to actively create.