Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.

The headline does make a joke of it, but consider the mission: “If we want to live in a society that consumes less energy, wastes fewer resources, [the constant success spiral] is not the right system of values,” Professor von Borries told Germany’s Deutsche Welle broadcaster.

Some successes certainly are worth wasting resources on, and I'm sure no oncologists will get approved for this scholarship. There is a great deal of busy and redundant work out there though. No one should be stuck doing that...

"Researchers" is perhaps saying a bit much. It is an art school that is doing this, so it probably counts more as an art project.

I am willing to spend in a cabin overlooking a lake, perhaps more of a pond.

To get the scholarship the applicant has to explain what they will stop doing and how it might improve their life or the environment around them. So it's not really money for nothing...

Sounds like work.

unless you've thought about all the eternalized effects of your job.

Is anyone intentionally idle?

People that are considered idle have as many hopes, dreams and desires as the most productive. Things get in the way like procrastination, depression, malaise etc.

As it is, Germany’s permissive culture can turn a bachelor’s degree into a five-year fully paid for party.

What do you mean? You're not paid as a student, you still have to get some income from somewhere.

Huh, if i take that scholarship, i will end up dead by the end of the week. Suicide.

Really putting the "scholar" in scholarship I see.

"The institution of a leisure class is found in its best development at the higher stages of the barbarian culture..."

According to Veblen, “saying, ‘I have time to dream … meet friends, put up my feet – I have time to do nothing?’” has been and is the way to gain social prestige.

> "But the whole of the life of the gentleman of leisure is not spent before the eyes of the spectators who are to be impressed with that spectacle of honorific leisure which in the ideal scheme makes up his life. For some part of the time his life is perforce withdrawn from the public eye, and of this portion which is spent in private the gentleman of leisure should, for the sake of his good name, be able to give a convincing account. He should find some means of putting in evidence the leisure that is not spent in the sight of the spectators."

is no longer a problem in the age of the cell phone.

A couple thousand for some data collection. How much money gets spent every minute by companies to collect data they will never use?

Yes but that's my point. So many facets of society just have this rotting sword of Damocles hanging over them. Academia, the private sector - at this point is there any real difference?

I guess that's a good argument for corruption at any scale: there are always bigger cases of wasted money somewhere.