Capitalism Is Making You Lonely

austin101123 · 2021-09-03T08:11:36+00:00

40hrs work weeks, hours spent commuting. Men spend more time doing both. Gotta eat, gotta sleep, take care of kids, chores. Where's the time?

We need reduced work weeks. We set the 40hr week a hundred years ago. We produce so much more and more yet we work the same hours? Subsistence farmers worked less. Where's the 30hr week? Where's the earlier retirement age? Where's the reduces commute times with better city building structures, or commute counting into work hours, or other solutions?

Not uuuuh sure it's entirely capitalism causing this though, a lot of it will be consumerism and advertising and other pressures which can occur under a mixed or socialist economy too.

Mahameghabahana · 2021-09-03T08:30:26+00:00

That's why mixed economic system is the best system. Not compromising with growth, development and welfare.

BreakThings99 · 2021-09-03T09:36:43+00:00

Is anyone surprised? Father goes home late and exhausted. How can he have time to connect to his family? He's fucking exhausted. Schooling forces parents to judge their kids by how good they are at math, pushing a wedge between parents and kids. Capitalism insists that you, as a men, are worthless unless you're rich as fuck. So no one wants to connect with you.

Stop shoving me shit about 'growth' or whatever. Capitalism is incompatible with human nature.

Talik1978 · 2021-09-03T15:11:15+00:00

From the article:

In a capitalist system, many people don’t have time to see family and maintain existing friendships – let alone create and nurture new ones. It is difficult to make time to see people when you are, for example, working multiple jobs (often with irregular shift times), commuting, caring for children and family members, and doing basic tasks like cooking, going to the grocery store, and doing laundry, sometimes all at once. Social time often necessarily gets bumped to the bottom of the to-do list.

For this to be an example of capitalism problems, 2 things need to be true.

1) the time sinks listed (time spent working, commutes, caring for family, cooking, obtaining food and basic supplies, doing laundry) would need to be more time consuming than under other systems. I dont feel this is true for many of those above.

2) the time savings from (1) is not offset by other time sinks under those other systems.

This boils down to "we don't have time to be social because capitalism". I am sure capitalism has its downsides (just as it has its positives), but I don't think this article competently illustrates that the reason we don't have time is capitalism.

BloomingBrains · 2021-09-03T21:23:46+00:00

In a 2015 study, psychologist Juliana Holt-Lunstad found that loneliness is a risk factor for high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, stroke, and depression. An oft-repeated fact from the study holds that loneliness is as bad for you as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.

I wonder if the research makes a distinction between what we might call "platonic loneliness" (I have no friends) and romantic loneliness (I don't have any romantic partner). Because I for one feel satisfied with my friendships currently even though I have 40 hour work week. (Although, I am an introvert, so take that with a grain of salt). I do, however, have feelings of loneliness that relate specifically to romantic desire...so is that just as deadly?

Title	Capitalism Is Making You Lonely
Author	austin101123
Upvotes	11
Comments	22
Date	September 3, 2021 8:09 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/ph0u9a/capitalism_is_making_you_lonely/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/capitalism-is-making-you-lonely.1067163 https://theredarchive.com/post/1067163

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