The Poor Waste More Time On Digital Entertainment

New submitter polyphydont writes "Children of parents with low social status are less able to resist the temptations of technological entertainment, a fact that impedes their education and adds to the obstacles such children face in obtaining financial comfort later in life. As explained in the article, poor parents and their children often waste both their time and money on heavily marketed entertainment systems. Such families often accumulate PCs, gaming consoles and smart phones, but use them only for nonconstructive activities."

Re:Shocking

[MalachiK]

Isn't that one of the key characterisrics of the middle class? Deferred gratification leading to inter generational wealth transfer is the reason why some of my friends have had houses bought for them by their parents. I don't think this story has anything to do with technology - just the different attitudes to money that exist at various levels of society. On the other hand, this is a huge generalisation. I also have friends who are far less well off than I am who are carrying a fraction of what I am in unsecured debt due to their traditional working class aversion to borrowing money.

Re:How DARE they!

[Karmashock]

You've confused libertarians with anarchists. They're not the same thing.

I've heard a lot of ignorant people say that the libertarian utoptia is in Somalia. Again, this is someone that has confused anarchy with libertarianism.

The basic premise is that that the government should exist to stop people from using force on each other. It can use force to stop force.

So non-consensual violence of any kind would be met with police, judges, and prisons. However, any situation where all relevant parties are consenting to the action would be permitted.

I'm not a die hard libertarian myself. I'm somewhat jaded by the weaknesses of all philosophies. That said, if you're going to level a criticism at least know what you're talking about.

Are libertarians often utopians? Many are... and they tend to not understand that force is required even by the definition of their own philosophy. But corporate slavery is a meaningless charge. What are you implying? Slavery is a form of force and under no libertarian system would slavery of any kind be permitted. If you mean the corporations would be powerful and be able to dictate terms then that is true but no one would be forced to accept those contracts. Most corporate monopolies tend to be government sponsored and under a libertarian system the corporations couldn't form such ties. Ultimately, the corporations could collude to trap people but that's probably not in the interest of all corporations. So long as there are a few that don't have it in their interest to do that there will be some corporations that will make a lot of money offering a better deal.

It's extremely complicated of course and I won't claim any of these systems are perfect. The really wild eyed utopians will tell you their system is the best and no system can ever be better. That's silly. But to deride the whole philosophy especially on false terms is unfair.

Re:And...

[Fwipp]

I couldn't find the study earlier, but here is a pretty good writeup of the effect:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]

"Willpower turned out to be more than a folk concept or a metaphor. It really was a form of mental energy that could be exhausted. The experiments confirmed the 19th-century notion of willpower being like a muscle that was fatigued with use, a force that could be conserved by avoiding temptation."

I don't disagree that regular exercise of willpower can have positive effects, though.

Re:How DARE they!

[samoanbiscuit]

You need to read up on old concepts like "company towns" and "indentured labour". I know unions are all unfashionable now, but during the industrial revolution, their formation lead to the improvement of quality of life for workers everywhere, rather than just those who "owned the means of production", as they say. What Libertarians don't realize (because it has become uncommon in their lifetimes) is that when a corporation has enough power to effectively BE the government in a local area, things can only get worse. The "invisible hand" that they cherish so much only works in certain market conditions. Conditions that any self respecting corporation will seek to prevent as soon as they gain enough power.