[badpun]

You've skipped the part where gadgets ("stuff") are a massive increase in quality of life - that's mostly why people get them - even though there are costs associated with them, the benefits far outshine the cost, making stuff a net benefit.

For example, my mother still remembers how it was to do laundry before washing mashines. Washing sheets generally took most of the day and was filled with manual labor. That's how women spend every third or fourth Sunday back then (had to be Sunday, because they were working in a job on the other six days of the week), before they could finally afford a washing machine.

[WarOnPrivacy]

No parts were skipped.

You're discussing gadget-derived, quality of life improvements. Those are time savings, as you exampled.

     >For example, my mother still remembers how it was to do laundry before washing machines. Washing sheets generally took most of the day and was filled with manual labor.

I discussed how time savings don't translate into more leisure time but into more obligations to fill that time. My delivery was a bit lecture-y, but I did address the point.

Anyway, along with no net gains in discretionary time there are tremendous increases in complexity to ordinary living. We've wound up being far more taxed than we were before.

If we focus exclusively on the gain=n without including the inevitable cost=n2, we get an unhelpful overview of what we're up against.

[ffgjgf1]

> We've wound up being far more taxed than we were before.

While also receiving a lot more (sometime massively more) services from the state.