[Johanx64]

> The masses work because they want to consume, not the other way around.

Hell, no. Masses work, because they have to.

It's not under threat of violence, it's under threat of sleeping under a bridge and starving. Which, frankly, isn't that far off.

People often spend as much as 30-40% of income on rent alone. Plus, once you stack up all the other basic necessities (which have heavily gone up under inflation), you'll have very small sliver left to allocate to "consumption" in a traditional sense of the word, where you "consoom" for sake of consooming all sorts of meaningless stuff.

Moreover, society is structured such, that you can't really partially retire - say take 5 year sabattical and come back without people perceiving as if there must be something wrong with you.

Most jobs aren't really accomodating of people who just wanna come in 2 times a week. Neither would that support basic necessities and rent except for some select few jobs.

[over_bridge]

Agreed with this. The majority would happily stop working but we never hear that message because a small percentage of nutters have tied their whole identity to their job and how hard they work. These people dominate headlines and shift the Overton window. Elon is the poster boy of this but there are plenty of others pushing extreme habits.

Most people I know just want to hit their escape number then they'll never be seen again.

I just regret the loss of the Renaissance values. They believed people should pursue many things to become broad and well adjusted. Nowadays it's just obsession about a single thing to the detriment of all other aspects of life. We've embraced one dimensional people and given them the world.

[jongjong]

> Hell, no. Masses work, because they have to.

100%. Most people can be very happy with very low consumption. What people want is not to work. The happiest time in my life was when I was earning a measily $40K per year in passive income from crypto and didn't work. It was the lowest salary I ever had, least I ever consumed and happiest I'd ever been. The purpose of consumption for most people is to soothe the pain of working. If you don't work, you don't need to consume anywhere near as much. When my wife quit her job 10 years ago, our rate of savings stayed the same because we spent less and quality of life went up significantly for both of us.

Anyone who enjoys working is delusional. What they call work is not work; they're living in a parallel reality where the economy rewards them for playing the big boss and sitting on their asses and watching their money compound... Everything they're doing is meaningless; it only serves as a narrative device to justify the handouts that they'd be getting regardless. Just look at Steve Ballmer of Microsoft; he probably made more money after he resigned from the CEO role. It's incredible really when you look at Microsoft's product offerings these days; even Bill Gates knew to dump MSFT and now has less money than Ballmer. It's like the economy punishes people for having common sense.

[Johanx64]

> The purpose of consumption for most people is to soothe the pain of working.

Yes, for a lot of people it is like this.

When I was young, I couldn't understand why people went on 1-2 week short, extremely expensive vacations where they blow multiple months worth of their savings (ie. multiple months of their income after expensives) in what is extremely short amount of time. It seemed mind-bogglingly stupid.

Now I understand. Being part of the system and doing 9-to-5 wageslavery is inescapable fact of their life.

So when they get 2 weeks off - 2 weeks to actually go and live freely, they just go all out on having a good time. Because no matter what - they are going back to 9-to-5 system.

And however wastefully they "consume" whatever is left after basic expenses, doesn't really matter in grand scheme of things and won't free them from slavery.

It's a distraction. "Whatever hours of free time I get after work, I'm gonna indulge consoom however I want"

Now software engineers are a bit different, where it's possible to retire after 10 years of work if you plan and live frugally, this is simply not an option for vast majority of people.

[kjshsh123]

Necessities count as consumption. You could survive off rice and live in an internet cafe for $15/night. I don't know what you think the traditional sense of the word "consumption" is.

[mothballed]

At the lower levels it's mostly meeting arbitrary regulatory requirements. You can live in a shack for next to no rent just fine, but the state will steal your kids 'cuz neglect, inferior shelter' and then they'll condemn your shack and dump you on the streets where it's ~illegal to be homeless.

[kjshsh123]

The person I replied to was trying to separate necessities from consumption in the "traditional sense of the word".

No doubt there's problematic regulations like exclusionary zoning laws. But you can't say that these regulations are so binding that there is no choice and no expression of preferences as opposed to needs in their choices. Lots of homes still have unmandated second floors, basements, bathrooms, and square footage.

The human brain is great at (ir)rationalizing wants as needs. If you want to live in a nice place in a high-cost of living city, that's a want, not a need.

[Johanx64]

Why are you being an obtuse "akshually" redditor?

> The masses work because they want to consume, not the other way around. Everyone wants more

If he wanted to say masses work, because they have to pay rent and meet basic necessities (ie. under threat of homelessness and starvation), he would have clearly said so.

The way this is worded very clearly refers to conspicuous consumption and consumerism - ie working as means to buying ever more funkopops and ever pokemon cards, ever larger houses to put ever more stuff in them, garage with ever more cars, a vacation house, a pool, a yacht and then a bigger one. And this being the primary motivator (rather than base survival)

Thus no matter what your productive output is per hour of labour, you will always work as much as you can, because you are - presumably - insatiably driven to always consume ever more with no end to it.

And frankly, he certainly is right, but only to an extent, as there definitely are people that operate like this, however them being majority? I don't think so.

[kjshsh123]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumption_%28economics%29?wp...

>Thus no matter what your productive output is per hour of labour, you will always work as much as you can, because you are - presumably - insatiably driven to always consume ever more with no end to it.

No, that's not how marginalism works. There's both diminishing marginal utility from consumption, and leisure.

[Johanx64]

Yup, and there you go confirming beyond sliver of doubt that you're a genuine, certified "akshually" type redditor.

Fundamentally incapable of distilling the substance of the argument, and always latching onto any opportunity to misunderstand and nitpick some irrelevant semantics instead.

Textbook.