{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":33,"pdf_page":41,"physical_index":41,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"ac34f97ffb393461e19a0426f77cf2aba80b48cd9f509046c5063efff6d24636"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"Scitovsky’s theory is at first glance compelling. It certainly sheds some light on certain characteristics of capitalism, such as planned obsolescence and the rapid turnover of consumer fashions. However, the theory fails to answer the question posed at the outset of this book: Why, given the costs entailed relative to the benefits gained by accumulative consumption, do consumers not switch to less object-mediated sources of stimulation, engaging in new practices rather than acquiring new objects? Behaving thusly would seem to ofer consumers a way to avoid the ennui produced by an endless cycle of commodity acquisition and disappointment. Indeed, Scitovsky himself implicitly raises this question in the solution he ofers to the problem of joyless modern materialism, which is to encourage people to cultivate engaging practices in place of endlessly acquiring commodities that can only ever be a fleeting source of stimulation. Yet given that the solution to the problem seems somewhat obvious, why does the problem persist? If, as Schwartz and Scitovsky suggest, accumulative consumption ultimately leads to disappointment, why should people choose to be disappointed repeatedly? Surely, after a while, they should conclude from experience that the combination of high income and consumption, at the expense of more free time, does not lead to happiness and so explore a diferent approach—freeing up time in which to cultivate skills in place of using it to generate funds for the acquisition of things. So what is it that makes a cycle of behavior that on reflection seems self-defeating nonetheless so compelling? Scitovsky suggests that at the root of the problem lies materialist culture. But that answer only raises the question of why that culture took root and became so entrenched. As is often the case with arguments that adduce culture as an explanation, Scitovsky’s account ultimately leaves some sense that the efort to explain has been prematurely ended.\n\nA more recent current of work in behavioral economics that might explain our puzzling pattern of work and consumption challenges the assumption that people are rational in how they think about the prospective value of rewards at diferent points in the future. It springs from experimental findings that people are inconsistent in their intertemporal preferences, often preferring very short-term rewards to substantially higher ones with more delay while not discriminating in the same way between the same two rewards (one substantially higher than the other) with equivalent temporal spacing, only placed at later points in time. So for example, when subjects are ofered a choice between \\$10 now and \\$20 in one week, they tend to choose \\$10 now, while when they are ofered \\$10 in six months or \\$20 in six months and one week, they choose \\$20. George Ainslie (1992, 2001), a key figure in work on this subject, interprets this finding as indicating that people discount utility over time in a hyperbolic manner. Hyperbolic discounters discount the value of some good very steeply for short delays but at a much lower rate for long delays. The steepness of the slope of the devaluation curve at a given time in the future is roughly proportional to how far in the future that time is.\n\nThe Puzzle\n\n33","previous_page":32,"next_page":34}