Staffan Burenstam Linder

How we spend our time is who we are. The author's main premise is that rising productivity has increased "yield on time", how economically valuable our time is, which has in turn created time scarcity, time poverty, and even an entire culture of time famine. These effects are documented with examples and their implications are explored. At one point Linder concedes that the only way out of the problem is to leave the economic realm and move to a lifestyle or a culture in which consumption is centered on noneconomic goods. These can include cultural pleasures, conversation, friendship, nature, etc., provided we take care that these are noneconomic or only incidentally economic. What is interesting here is that many of the observations of Thoreau and others who have sought to depart from economically defined reward systems assume quantitative form in this book.… (mehr)