On 6/4/08, Eugene Coyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Sandwichman, > In the abstract, I agree with YOU! And I am the last person anyone would > want to plan strategy for a campaign for shorter hours. I've learned that > my skills/instincts on that front are below minimal. > > My thrust was to call attention to the learning involved in consuming and > in aspirations for consuming. This has a long history rivaling your work on > the lump-of-labor. We have Veblen, then, with a Harvard imprumater, > Duesenberry. We have Marris in The Theory of Managerial Economics, and > Pasinetti in Structural Change and Economic Growth. And more. We have > Houthakker & Taylor stressing habits of consumption in Consumer Demand in > the United States, though Taylor's later work seems to make him an > apostate, perhaps like Duesenberry overwhelmed by convention. > So, how do we learn to prefer less work? There's nothing out there > pressing on us to prefer less work, and enourmous pressure to prefer more > stuff. > > I must insist that I agree with YOU, even more than YOU agree with me, Gene!
Granted that we have to learn to want to consume, the vital question is indeed "how do we learn to prefer less work?" That is the "what is to be done" of today. Of course, I'm all in favor of learning by doing, so I do work less and thereby learn to prefer it. But what about all those John & Jane Doaks out there shopping with abandon? I don't have a ready answer other than to seek to kindle every spark. Circumstances are going to set off the sparks -- individual circumstances, historical events, social movements. What seems most important to me is to develop and make available "curriculum materials" that accelerate learning once that initial spark has occurred. -- Sandwichman
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