Another capitalist ideology: “The 4-hour Workweek”
This NYT article, “Too much information? Ignore it,” is about the recent fad in Silicon Valley of a new self-help guru named Timothy Ferriss, whose book, “The 4-Hour Workweek,” offers advice for how to shorten one’s workweek by cutting out “useless information,” e.g., by reading email much less, not reading the news, and outsourcing routine tasks to low-paid workers abroad. The NYT article does a good job of highlighting Ferriss’s hypocrisy for claiming to work less while seeming to work a lot on his own self-promotion (e.g., book tours and hyping himself to the media). Yet, I find this guy to be so annoying that I think the critique needs to be taken much further. Particularly, what this guy neglects is the class privilege that enables him to live such a “light work” lifestyle. He seems ignorant of his position as a capitalist who is able to work less only because he is exploiting the labor power of other people who lack his privileges (he’s white, went to Princeton, etc.). The question left unaddressed is: who are you working for? If you’re just working for your own selfish purposes and you’ve already attained a lot of cultural and financial capital, then sure, you don’t need to work much at all, and you can outsource your capitalist administrative tasks to exploited workers (and then go enjoy yourself in a hedonistic lifestyle, as this guy seems to do: scuba diving and horseback riding, etc.). Yet, if you are working on projects for someone other than yourself, e.g., if you care about the problems that other people have in the world (and that your own capitalist lifestyle has created and is reinforcing), then it would be obscene to think that you could reduce your workweek and just enjoy yourself in hedonistic pursuits. The underlying assumption in this guy’s argument is that you are a capitalist. But why accept that definition of your subjectivity? Capitalists are selfish jerks, and this “4-hour workweek” is just another ideology to mask their exploitative behavior and make them feel better about themselves.
November 12th, 2007 17:17
This book is total, complete, crap. I read a little at the store and I was a little shocked. It really is the story of how great it is to be a) independantly wealthy and b) live on credit. He also seems to recommend all kind of great ideas for cheap things which are entirely based on global inequality (cheap vacations in the third world). He also recommends leasing a ferrari for $1200 a month. (or something like that)