15hr Work Week | How to QUIT being a Slave

The celebrated economist, John Maynard Keynes wrote a seminal essay predicting a fifteen hour work week by 2030. Today we ask, why aren’t we there yet?

Part 2: https://youtu.be/MM_48hr4hPk

Sources and Further Reading:
Keynes’ essay, “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”:
http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf
Revisiting Keynes, Lorenzo Pecchi and Gustavo Piga (eds.), 2010
How Much is Enough? Skidelsky and Skidelsky, 2012
The End of Poverty, Jeffrey Sachs, 2005
Utopia for Realists, Rutger Bregman, 2014

Transcript:
In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that the workweek would shrink to 15 hours by the year 2030, and this was based on a purely mathematical equation, that if things continued as they were, because of steadily compounding growth, prosperity would reach all within the century, and as they say, the numbers don't lie. So what changed? Why are we still working 50-hour work weeks?
What happened in the interim is that modern marketing has a hella fine job propping up the economic system - conspicuous, consumer capitalism - by manufacturing needs out of wants.
If, we only worked to feed out essential needs we would indeed be working a 15-hour work week and have the rest of the time free to crochet.
We have placed ourselves in indentured servitude, when the Buddhists said that we're slaves to our wants and attachments they could not have been more true, with the help of marketing moguls, exasperating human insecurities, we are all in gilded chains.
This is fact: You do not need to update your wardrobe for every new fashion season, your gear from last summer looks just fine, and will probably come back in fashion if u wait long enough.
You do not need to upgrade your car to the newer model, it’s driving just fine, and if it's really old consider it vintage.
You do not need to pay thru your nose for private education, anything you'll ever want to learn is available, for free, online, right now.
You do not need to live in the death-race of real-estate, shackling yourself to a few arbitrary square meters, so close to neighbors you can hear them breath, drenched in noise and air pollution at all hours, leave the city, move a little closer to nature, stretch your legs, watch a sunset followed by a million stars, breathe fresh air and read a book while commuting, (if need be).
You do not need to buy a diamond ring, take the time to write a poem expressing your love with precious, exquisite words instead of dollars.
Need I go on?
Take your life back, live it, go fishing, read a book, learn an instrument, paint an easel, go camping and hiking, make love, learn to cook, go stargazing and bird watching, meditate, clean up a beach, row out on a lake, get into theoretical physics, knit a blanket, fix an old engine, go volunteering, go surfing, take a course in massaging, make a batch of wine, drink it, you get the drift.
Stop being a slave to the system of our own making.
“Ideas shape the course of history” Kains said, “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”

Tags:
Keynes
UBI
Universal basic income
FIRE movement
retire by 30
early retirement
frugal living
economic freedom
financial liberation
andrew yang

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