Tom's book is one of my favorite books and has changed my life. I no longer feel guilt about idling. It does not matter where the modern work ethic comes from: it is mostly a cultural problem, not a political one and Tom has written about it in his book in a delightfully entertaining way. But if you do look for culprits: don't blame capitalism, blame big government. Capitalism is the only economical system that works. It's not a problem that Tom invests his own capital in a magazine and risks it that way. it would be if that capital would be tax payer's money instead, because then writers got paid anyway and wouldn't care about the quality. Tom's success with The Idler comes from having to provide value and taking risk. He proved himself that capitalism works. A gov-funded mag would suck. It's the government keeping us poor and forcing us to work long weeks. They make us pay high taxes. They print money, robbing us of wealth. And they kept interest rates low for a very long time, so that we cant have a passive income as idler. Capitalism is fine with idlers. You get paid according to your productivity. But the government prevents idlers from being hired because of minimum wage. You can't say, I'll work slower and get paid for a 4 hour day when you work 8 hours. The gov won't let you: contract says 8 hours, the law says pay minimum wage for 8 hours. Socialism means an increasingly smaller group needs to work super hard so that more and more others (including the gov itself) can stay parasitical. Disadvantages can have their own advantages however. Socialism has motivated me to become more idle so that the gov parasite doesn't take too much from me and in the best case I even take back from it instead. A libertarian paradise would be the ultimate idler's paradise. People simply would not need to work as much because the govenment would not screw up our wealth so quickly and intensely. Tom should be libertarian. He's always wanted to be left alone mostly. But where his mind has culturally found freedom, economically he still seems hopelessly stuck in Marxist dogmatism.
Tom's book is one of my favorite books and has changed my life. I no longer feel guilt about idling. It does not matter where the modern work ethic comes from: it is mostly a cultural problem, not a political one and Tom has written about it in his book in a delightfully entertaining way.
But if you do look for culprits: don't blame capitalism, blame big government. Capitalism is the only economical system that works. It's not a problem that Tom invests his own capital in a magazine and risks it that way. it would be if that capital would be tax payer's money instead, because then writers got paid anyway and wouldn't care about the quality. Tom's success with The Idler comes from having to provide value and taking risk. He proved himself that capitalism works. A gov-funded mag would suck.
It's the government keeping us poor and forcing us to work long weeks. They make us pay high taxes. They print money, robbing us of wealth. And they kept interest rates low for a very long time, so that we cant have a passive income as idler.
Capitalism is fine with idlers. You get paid according to your productivity. But the government prevents idlers from being hired because of minimum wage. You can't say, I'll work slower and get paid for a 4 hour day when you work 8 hours. The gov won't let you: contract says 8 hours, the law says pay minimum wage for 8 hours.
Socialism means an increasingly smaller group needs to work super hard so that more and more others (including the gov itself) can stay parasitical.
Disadvantages can have their own advantages however. Socialism has motivated me to become more idle so that the gov parasite doesn't take too much from me and in the best case I even take back from it instead.
A libertarian paradise would be the ultimate idler's paradise. People simply would not need to work as much because the govenment would not screw up our wealth so quickly and intensely. Tom should be libertarian. He's always wanted to be left alone mostly. But where his mind has culturally found freedom, economically he still seems hopelessly stuck in Marxist dogmatism.