Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed

“But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.”

This is an older post (based on the date in the url) but it's still quite relevant. And it brings up something I've been thinking about a lot with all the talk of shifting how people work post pandemic and so many people taking breaks and looking to change their work lives, but what happens if we all decide to make less so we can't spend as much and therefore we aren't helping to prop up this system? Personally, I'm spending a lot less, as I slow down for a bit, and I can't help but wonder how our system keeps going if a lot more people do that.