Economics of Human Energy
Thoughts about how money and human energy relate
Economics of Human Energy
Our Centaur Future - A RADAR Report
When you think about the future, you spend a little energy now to optimize what will come later
Where we invest our time also has a Return on Energy (ROE).
Return on Energy
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.
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.
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…
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.
Work is a waste of my time. The things that I’m best at, that I get the most benefit from, and see the most big-picture results from, don’t feel like work.
Nicholas Goodey • Resistance and Embracing Your Nature
“Work” is wasting energy, because energy goes down. But the truly valuable things make energy go up.
Forty percent of the workforce are white-collar workers, most of whom have some of the most tedious and idiotic jobs ever concocted.
Bob Black • The Abolition of Work
We are always telling stories, whether we realize it or not. We might as well get good at it. Good stories win people over. They provoke and inspire and inflame the human spirit. It’s a tremendous source of power.
visakan veerasamy • a matryoshka of possibilities
Stories → Power