{"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":35,"pdf_page":43,"physical_index":43,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"2335be57a7d4b5742ece4420d1080881d2d5ea77bc7bc28cf899fa7d16d90d99"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"Ainslie (2001), rather strongly, asserts that “people’s natural discount curve is . . . specifically hyperbolic” (p. 31), suggesting further that this preference is commonplace in nature and can be explained as a product of natural selection. In line with a general tendency among behavioral economists to embrace naturalistic explanations, Ainslie interprets economic behavior as expressing a struggle in the brain between an ancient, reptilian part, impulsive and incapable of planning, and a more advanced, rational part, endowed with a capacity to reason about long-term consequences for welfare.47 To the degree that people discount hyperbolically, so the argument goes, this reflects the influence exerted by the primordial parts of the brain. The short-term propensity for people to consume, which might not be easily explicable in terms of rational utility maximization, is then, from this perspective, a result of the residual power in humans of drives that are a legacy of their animal ancestry. These instill in them an urge to seek maximum pleasure immediately—satisfying instant, first-order desires at the expense of the well-being of their future selves.\n\nIf Ainslie’s account is right, this suggests that modern, accumulative habits of consumption may simply be a consequence of a congenital human tendency toward myopic hedonism (an adaptive trait in a state of nature characterized by a profoundly uncertain future) when combined with industrial powers of production. However, while hyperbolic discounting might account for a consumerist tendency to spend rather than save, it does not explain the apparent willingness of people to push for higher wages to fund more consumption, rather than for more free time. For it is not at all clear why a hyperbolic discounter should attach more expected utility to acquiring things than to working less. Assuming that work tends to be a source of disutility, working less would seem to ofer a quite immediate kind of gratification—more so perhaps than acquiring some commodity. Moreover, the model of the hyperbolic discounter still assumes that where shortterm consumption involves the acquisition of commodities, it is motivated by the net utility produced by those commodities. This means that, for the hyperbolic discounter, short-term wage-funded consumption must produce a quantity of utility suficient to compensate for the disutility of the work required in order to earn a wage. Consequently, even if people are hyperbolic discounters, there are still good reasons why we should expect them to, beyond a point, demand time over things, so that their acquisitions can be put to use suficiently to yield their expected utility. And yet the demand for free time under conditions of afluence has been eclipsed by the demand for more consumption. Hyperbolic discounting thus fails to solve our puzzle.\n\nThe Puzzle\n\n35","previous_page":34,"next_page":36}