Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (2010)
> <i>But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours... but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, ... We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence...  Western economies, particularly that of the United States, have been built in a very calculated manner on gratification, addiction...</i><p>This makes it sound like there's some kind of a conspiracy, like robber barons or The Man all got together to plan this out. It's a lot easier to invent scapegoats like this, but that doesn't make it true.<p>> <i>Can you imagine what would happen if all of America stopped buying so much unnecessary fluff that doesn’t add a lot of lasting value to our lives? The economy would collapse and never recover.</i><p>Again, any kind of research to back up such a bold and incredibly controversial statement? That's just unsubstantiated fluff, without demonstrating any knowledge of actual economics.<p>The truth is much more prosaic. People buy what they want, and companies make money doing their best to give it to them. In fact, we <i>celebrate</i> companies that do a better job at this, like Apple inventing the iPhone. People like buying things, and decide on their own that they want to work harder to buy those things.<p>Of course, most people don't have the degree of self-awareness or reflection to realize what really makes them happy in the long-term -- but companies that provide short-term gratification are under no obligation to educate their consumers, and it's not like they have any better idea what makes you happier long-term either, since everyone's different.<p>We have a 40-hour workweek because most people <i>prefer</i> work twice as much and be paid twice as much as a 20-hour workweek. Sure, there are people who would prefer 20 hours and half (or less) salary, but they're in the vast minority, so that's not what companies build their workforces around.<p>To rebut the title: yes, your lifestyle has already been "designed", but it isn't intelligent design. No <i>person</i> designed it. It's just what cultural evolution has arrived at so far.