Keynes predicted that his grandchildren would be able to satisfy their material needs by having to work only 15 hours per week. What would we do with all that extra time on our hands? He said it would free us up to pursue rewarding interests such as art, philosophy, music, religion, family, etc. He believed that soon we'd realize a life that would be four-to-eight times richer than that of the 1930s.
On the one hand, Keynes predicted correctly, since our productivity has increased by a factor of four. On the other hand, he was wrong about working hours, as today Americans work longer hours each week than they did in the 1930s. The result is that, instead of turning to leisure, we've turned to accumulating things. We grasp for more.
What happened? One reason we still work long hours is that Keynes and other economists at the time (and over the next half century) assumed that economics is a rational science, which implies that people make rational economic decisions. That assumption has been discredited in the last few decades, as psychologists and sociologists have shown that most of our choices are anything but rational. Neuroscience confirms these findings and has added its own discoveries into the mix. From neuroscience, we now know that people's decisions are impulsive and often made subconsciously, without their even being aware of what factors led to them. The result: we are often slaves to our desires and are thus literally driven to accumulate. To do so, we seem to be willing to labor long hours to get what we want.
Keynes was not crazy, however, as there is a society that long ago learned to curb its cravings and achieve all its needs, with indeed about 15 hours of work each week: the Bushmen peoples of Namibia's Kalahari Desert region. Also called the San peoples, they have populated southern Africa for some 200,000 years as hunter-gatherers. The Bushmen had achieved Keynes's economic promised land long ago, and they did it without having any interest in labor productivity or capital accumulation.
Think about that. The Bushmen (still around today, although they're struggling with the interference of modernity into their lives) are the most successful, long-lasting human civilization in Earth's history! Their culture has prevailed for some 800 times the length of America's existence as a country and 20 times longer than the period of time since humans turned from hunter-gatherers to agriculturists (about 10,000 years ago). I will be looking at the astounding success of the simple-living Bushmen in future blogs.
[Based
on the book Affluence without Abundance: The Disappearing World of
the Bushmen, by James Suzman, 2017.]
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