RedBeard’s Curious Life

It strikes me that a majority of a normal human’s time is spent on things they’d rather not do. Sleeping, grooming, eating, commuting, working, cleaning, etc. Of course with some of these things, the line between want and need becomes fuzzy – you could sleep 4 hours or 8, eat gruel or gourmet, work part-time, get married, hire a maid.

It seems that these various aspects of daily life can be governed mostly by economic factors. For instance, a long commute might be justified by the financial or social benefits gleaned by living far from your workplace. The higher salary of a job associated with a long commute could allow you to hire a maid instead of personally spending time cleaning, or perhaps buy a nicer car so that you no longer loathe the commute. More expensive food may transform eating from a need into a want, as a comfortable bed may do for sleeping. I still consider sleeping to be a chore inherent to the human condition, and would prefer a 100% duty cycle which is currently unattainable my this mere mortal frame.

It is difficult to apply a totally objective economic analysis to all elements of a person’s day, especially the social and psychological elements. What is the net opportunity cost of adding an hour’s sleep to the 6 you normally get? Will it lengthen your life, and will you really care when you’re that old? Is a higher salary worth the psychological damage of an abusive work environment? These sort of issues are played out every day in a game of fuzzy analysis inside the heads of countless people. Perhaps a more thorough understanding of the inner workings of humans, and of the side-effects of all the activities available to us, would provide a more objective analysis. I somehow doubt that we’ll ever arrive at such capability, and so the fuzziness marches on.

Another aspect of the economic approach is the ever-growing use of credit. Currency, and the scarcity thereof, is a means to manage the budget of resources available for human consumption. Credit has long been a means for offsetting the scarcity of capital with an expectation of future availability. The money supply is increased solely through the issuance of loans and credit, with the expectation that the capital will be repaid in full plus interest. As such, the total amount of loaned money is constantly increasing, not even being printed but instead fabricated through sequences of digital bits.

As the economic desires of individuals outstrip their ability to pay off the credit used to satisfy those desires, I expect to see a delayed effect of decadance in the form of economic stratification via foreclosure. Loan consolidation, real estate equity loan, and debt management are some of the most heavily advertised services. As the economy improves and interest rates climb, those variable-rate loans will no longer be as affordable as people currently think. I expect the real estate market will rebalance itself, and those who have invested heavily in it will sustain substantional losses.

But hey, free credit for all who can sign their name! Carpe Diem, right?