The Great Keynesian Error

In 1930, famous economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that we would eventually have a 15-hour work week. Technology would become so efficient at generating GDP and wealth, he believed, that we simply would no longer need to do much. Our machines would do most tasks for us.

What a horrible miscalculation that proved to be!

Fast forward to 2023. One recent study found that 41% of Americans in “white collar” professions reported feeling extreme stress and burnout.

It’s estimated that more than half of American workers do not have the time to take a proper lunch.

Another estimated 31% of American workers are working on weekends.

Americans are leaving millions of unused vacation hours behind every year.

Indeed, Americans self-report being overworked, overstressed, and underslept. And these are all contributors to obesity, anxiety, depression, and cardiovascular disease. A lack of sleep is believed to play an especially significant factor in cognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s and dementia.

There’s a recent award-winning film titled Everything Everwhere All At Once. I can’t help but think that this aptly describes the mindset of our modern hustle culture. “I have to do everything and be everywhere, all at once, in order to be successful.”

That is a chase that ends with a decrepit body, a cabinet of meds, and a retirement package to pay for your nurses during your final years spent in inertia.

True bravery means going against the grain. I don’t applaud those who “work overtime” for the sake of a good performance review. That’s just running with the herd. I respect the person willing to slow things down and prioritize himself or herself in spite of the nagging botherers of the world who call this “slacking.”

It seems too often, in my opinion, that the quest for self-optimization is a quest to be what is essentially a soulless machine. It is why we surround ourselves with increasingly more machines: we yearn to be them. The chase for the best nutritional supplements and skincare products, the constant seeking of better pay and better fitness via gyms and watches… one would think we’d have evolved into an entirely new species from all of this chasing. And yet we’re arguably less healthy than ever, thanks to this modern religion that is “hustle culture.”

Keynes was wrong primarily because he didn’t account for the human tendency to always want more. Coupled with the Protestant work ethic espoused by corporate white collar management, this means that self-improvement can only mean finding the capability of doing more in what little time you have. What place does self-satisfaction have in hustle culture? The answer is none.

The ultimate irony is that the more you try to do, the more life you lose. Time ironically slows dramatically, and therefore becomes more favorable, when every hour isn’t spent cranking out standard operating procedures while frantically checking emails. One of the worst sins of all is ubiquitous: coffee is slurped but not tasted.

In this quest for more, there is a nightmarish eternal ladder climb in which every attempt at the top rung finds one lower than he or she was at the start.

Get some good sleep and enjoy the taste of your coffee, I say.

Reversion to the Mean

“Reversion to the mean” is chiefly a stock market theory. It postulates that stock index growth has a long-term average; wild deviations from this average eventually revert the other direction in order to maintain the average.

If the historic market average is 10% and one has been riding gains upwards of 20% for several years, the likelihood of upcoming losses will be greatly increased.

Those who constantly seek to outperform the market average via enhanced risk are therefore punished more severely in difficult times. “Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered.” Those who play the market too conservatively end up underperforming in prosperous times. “Without risk there is no reward.”

Those willing to ride the average while incurring the most minimal brokerage fees reap the largest rewards over the long-term. Ironically, the greatest gains come from those least likely to “seek performance.”

I suspect that “reversion to the mean” applies to the human psyche as well.

We each have a base level of happiness. We may think that a vast accumulation of wealth will significantly elevate this base level. It will for a time, but eventually the effect will peter off. We will eventually return to our base level, having become accustomed to our expanded manors. We will find new things to need and new reasons why we are lacking. We will obsess over the same clothing stains that we once paid no mind to. We will invent new problems for ourselves, new anxieties, and new chases. We once never thought of owning “the best suit or dress at the wedding.” Suddenly we are comparing our garments to those around us.

Nomads do not escape their problems by moving to new places (their problems follow them). Similarly, we often do not escape ourselves by elevating our own economic class.

We think that a significant loss will permanently lower our base level of happiness, and it will for a time. Eventually, though, the loss will normalize, and we will become accustomed to living with what we lack.

There is a quote by LaFargue that bring to my mind this idea and our penchant for reverting to our mean:

“The working man, enduring hardships from childhood and knocking about the street and the shops, is accustomed to enduring the troubles of life; the intellectual, brought up in a hot-house, has the life bleached out of him by the shadow of the college walls, his nervous system is over-developed and takes on an unhealthy impression ability. What the working man endures thoughtlessly is to him a painful shock.”

Applying this “reversion to the mean” theory to zen philosophy, it seems apparent that those who are apt to feel their spirits skyrocket from the simplest material pleasure are also apt to crash from the slightest pain. Those who most eagerly crave wealth therefore have some of the weakest spirits, and are the most susceptible to pain. These are the types who are often the most easily corruptible; their souls can be bought cheap because they are eternally fretful of their losses. There is good reason why religions de-emphasize the importance of wealth (and some classify wealth as a sin).

It is for these reasons that I do not wish to race “higher” or “lower,” but rather to ride my own “average” with a smile, and accept my own natural ebb and flow.

Velociraptors

The velociraptor seems to universally captivate kids in ways that not even the mighty tyrannosaurus rex cannot.

I think it’s because the velociraptor’s hunting style seems to most closely resemble the hunting techniques of ancient humans. Yet the velociraptors are vastly superior to the human with their massive talons and incredible speed. And worse yet! They’re intelligent to boot.

The velociraptor reminds me of the movie Predator, in which the imperial American soldiers find themselves hunted by a superior alien being… something faster, smarter, and stronger than themselves. The only thing that could scare these military men is a being that’s exactly like them, but more powerful (this is when the hunters become the hunted).

The Tyrannosaurus Rex is pure and raw power, the Goliath to the velociraptor’s David. But unlike David, the Velociraptors come equipped with teeth capable of piercing bone and claws capable of tearing through cinder blocks.

The first soccer team I joined as a kid allowed the team to decide the team name. We unanimously wanted to be called the “Running Raptors”. Unconsciously, we may have been looking to the past, our evolution embedded with our desires to be the greatest possible entity. We humans learned to hunt via the run, after all, and there, the velociraptor, was the greatest of hunters.

A corny team name, but cool!

When I taught in China, I used to talk before and after class with one of the 4th grade boys. His English name was Tony. With his limited English, we focused on discussing the things that mattered in life: dinosaurs. Jurassic Park was his favorite film (it’s on my list too) and he’d use his passion for dinosaurs to communicate why the velociraptor was his favorite.

”They are so smart, fast, and they work together when they hunt.” (Whether they actually worked in packs is subject to debate). So they were us, but better. Could such a thing exist?

I hope Tony didn’t watch Jurassic Park 2. It’s a very crappy film. So is part 3. So are all of them except the first, which managed to accurately capture the park through the eyes of a child and convey that same sense of wonder.

I have this picture that Tony drew me. It’s a reminder that you can still see velociraptors every day. Go outside and look at the birds. You live in Jurassic Park.

It’s also a reminder that you can choose to be happy today. You don’t have to wait for it to hit you.