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Re:Don't Waste the Good Days by dragonwriter on Friday December 31, 2021 @10:23PM (#29755199)
> When you're young and unencumbered by responsibility and family, when your cognitive abilities are at their peak, when your energy is endless, when your body is strong and healthy, when your knees work, and your fingers can type without arthritis: that's the optimal time to

...capture the value of those ephemeral capacities directly yourself, whether in recreation or otherwise, rather than yield them to the capitalist capturing the surplus value of your labor.

Re:Don't Waste the Good Days by gruez on Saturday January 01, 2022 @12:04AM (#29755696)
That sounds about right? I get from the structure of your comment you're trying to imply that "capture the value of those ephemeral capacities directly yourself" is better than "rather than yield them to the capitalist capturing the surplus value of your labor", presumably because 100% for the former is bigger (and therefore better) than some fraction less than 100% for the latter. The flaw in that analysis is that in entirely ignores the compounding effect of returns that the parent poster mentions, which allows you to spend more time on yourself later on. Whether the trade-off is worth it depends on a variety of factors, but it's not as simple as "recreation good, capitalists bad".
Re:Don't Waste the Good Days by dragonwriter on Saturday January 01, 2022 @04:58AM (#29757050)
> I get from the structure of your comment you’re trying to imply that “capture the value of those ephemeral capacities directly yourself” is better than “rather than yield them to the capitalist capturing the surplus value of your labor”, presumably because 100% for the former is bigger (and therefore better) than some fraction less than 100% for the latter. The flaw in that analysis is that in entirely ignores the compounding effect of returns that the parent poster mentions,

No, it doesn’t.

Weighing potential compounding of deferred gratification forms of capture when compared to recreational capture against nearly guaranteed degradation in some of the capacities to actually enjoy things and the risk of gambler’s ruin is an issue, sure, which the upthread paean to deferred gratification ignores the latter side of, but “capture for yourself, recreationally or otherwise” includes capture for deferred gratification that doesn’t yield the lion’s share of the value to a remote capitalist via wage labor.

Re:Don't Waste the Good Days by gruez on Saturday January 01, 2022 @11:47AM (#29760111)
>but “capture for yourself, recreationally or otherwise” includes capture for deferred gratification that doesn’t yield the lion’s share of the value to a remote capitalist via wage labor.

Okay, so it's the same "100% good, some fraction less than 100% bad" argument from before, but instead of being applied to your time, it's being applied to your potential earnings? That line of thinking is also flawed, because even though you theoretically capture 100% of the value when you work for yourself, the value you generate might be less than the value you generate when working for someone else. For instance, working on your own SaaS startup might allow you to capture 100% of the profits of the company, but you also have to take on a bunch of unrelated responsibilities (marketing, sales, accounting, legal, etc.) that you're not good at. For someone who's core competency is just programming, it's plausible that they make more working for themselves than trying to strike out on their own. Not to mention, the risk profiles of "working at MANGA" is entirely different than "working on your own SaaS".

Re:Don't Waste the Good Days by chii on Friday December 31, 2021 @11:43PM (#29755592)
> rather than yield them to the capitalist capturing the surplus value of your labor.

why would someone give you recreational leisure if you don't have the equivalent money to pay? Who will grow the food you eat, produce the electricity and water you consume etc?

Re:Don't Waste the Good Days by dragonwriter on Saturday January 01, 2022 @04:49AM (#29757008)
> why would someone give you recreational leisure if you don’t have the equivalent money to pay?

Where did I refer to anyone giving you anything? I referred to immediate capture of the value of your own present and non-durable capacities.