Economics of Human Energy
Thoughts about how money and human energy relate
Economics of Human Energy
Workers of the world... relax!
Bob Black • The Abolition of Work
a community is more than just a group of like-minded people. it requires a shared emotional energy.
Case in point: communities share energy, companies share time
On the other hand—and I think this the crux of the matter and the revolutionary new departure—we have to take what useful work remains and transform it into a pleasing variety of game-like and craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other pleasurable pastimes except that they happen to yield useful end-products.
Bob Black • The Abolition of Work
Keeping a good thing going is hard, and if you have the skills to do it, it kinda makes sense to focus your use of those skills in domains that are more rewarding. This creates “missing markets” that are only served by thankless volunteers who are suckers for pain.
writing a facebook status in 2024
This feels extremely profound. We end up creating broken systems sustained by masochists.
“Wotan, the All-Father, understood that violence without wisdom leads to destruction, while wisdom without violence remains impotent. To gain true knowledge, he sacrificed himself to himself, hanging from the World Tree, Yggdrasil, for nine days and nights, wounded by his own spear. Only through this voluntary suffering, this self-inflicted wound,
... See moreAt least now I know what I did.
I like the term economism . It describes how economic thinking and practice have become ingrained into all sorts of aspects of our lives, even non-economic ones. In today’s world governed by economism , everything seems to need to be measured by economic logic: am I using my time efficiently?
Rabbit Holes 🕳️ #78
Haven’t heard this term before, but I think it follows from the collapse of things into measurements. We started with measuring money as a collapse of information, and that led to collapses of other aspects of the world as a proxy for money where money isn’t available to measure 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
Where we invest our time also has a Return on Energy (ROE).
Return on Energy
Finally, we must do away with far and away the largest occupation, the one with the longest hours, the lowest pay and some of the most tedious tasks around. I refer to housewives doing housework and child-rearing. By abolishing wage-labor and achieving full unemployment we undermine the sexual division of labor. The nuclear family as we know it is... See more
Bob Black • The Abolition of Work
Damn…