the once and future fangirl

Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed  (via ratak-monodosico)

Hogwash. You start out with a leisure:labor trade-off mix that you prefer and try to achieve an income based on the amount of labor you’re willing to dispense. Some people would like more labor (i.e. they don’t demand as much leisure, their wage reflects their lower marginal product so they need to produce more hours instead of being able to produce more per hour). Some people would like less labor (i.e. moms with part-time jobs, those who actively dislike labor more than the average person) . Big business does not set the working hours for government or non-profits, and those groups also follow an eight-hour workday. Many business do not follow an eight-hour workday (e.g. nightclubs). The eight-hour workday is the standard partly due to coordination (between businesses, between journalists and governments, etc.) and partly due to path dependence (we’ve been doing it a long time - not forever, but in living memory). It’s not a vast conspiracy by businesses because - keep in mind - those businesses are run by people who are consumers too, and executives usually work much longer than an eight-hour day. If you’re an executive however, chances are you have a lower preference for leisure than most people do, or a lower dislike of labor. 

The fact is, we live in a world with scarcity, and always will. We’re humans with unlimited wants and desires facing a world with scarce resources, so you’re never going to be completely sated, unless you’re a theoretical person in a mathematical model. Something is missing, something has always been missing, and something will always be missing. That doesn’t preclude you maximizing your utility and enjoying what you have.