ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · May 20 I'm not on board with the Good Aristocracy place he gets to at the end, but he's on to something here lol
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Counterpoint (without having read) to celebrating leisure for the top decile would be that your suppliers and your juniors and your service providers have to work frenetic hours to survive and prosper, and in the absence of fixing that, you have to match the suffering you're complicit in.
The logical endpoint of rich people claiming that they're oppressed is to cosplay being oppressed.
reminded of ole Admiral Spruance. now there's leadership bsky.app/profile/ryan...
I did a presentation years ago on the rhetoric and production of the t-shirt, making a note in there the oddity of Zuck walking around in plain grey t-shirts to signify that he was just another worker
His point about how with traditional aristocratic wealth everyone knew it was unearned so the aristocrats had an obligation to do something meaningful with it is really thought-provoking. (His spin on it is overly positive, of course.)
right? Elon Musk is the wealthiest person to ever have existed, perhaps, and yet he is profoundly unhappy, not living whatever variant of the ultimate Sybaritic lifestyle, and actively complaining about everything, to say nothing of not trying to make the world better.
I’ve been operating under the assumption that the goal of increased efficiency gains was for an increase in leisure time, not to just fill up the time saved with trying to find more work to hoard
It reminds me of Auden esp re Slootman She looked over his shoulder For vines and olive trees, Marble well-governed cities And ships upon untamed seas, But there on the shining metal His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead.