He lives more in the same amount of time.

From On Losing the Cold War by Severian.  Long, rambling, in a style I am not enthusiastic about.  But with several worthwhile insights.

Where Marx really went wrong was — and I know this sounds flip, but I’m as serious as cancer — being born in 1818. He lived his entire miserable life in a world where “labor” really was a physical thing. The richest robber baron of the Gilded Age lived a far different life, materially, than the poorest serf-in-all-but-name working in his factories…

…but the robber baron knew he needed the serfs. Their relationship was purely dialectical. Without his factory hands, no robber baron. And in a strange but very real way, the higher up the food chain your Gilded Age robber baron went, the more he was dependent on his serfs for his lifestyle. J.P. Morgan is usually credited as being the first guy to become a Robber Baron purely through finance. Carnegie, Rockefeller, all those guys had most of their wealth in financial instruments, of course, but those financial instruments rested on control of a physical product — Carnegie Steel, Standard Oil.

I’m probably being unfair to Jay Cooke, the Michael Milken of his day, but since more people have heard of J.P. Morgan let’s roll with it. Even though Morgan’s wealth was entirely on paper — he was nothing but a securities trader — his lifestyle utterly depended on a battalion of servants. In a very real way, you yourself, right now, live much better than J.P. Morgan did in his heyday. And not just because you have aspirin, antibiotics, and air conditioning, three taken-for-granted things ol’ J.P. would’ve given half his kingdom for. But because you have more time. If you’re hungry, you can open the fridge or the microwave and have all the food you need in a matter of minutes.

J.P. couldn’t. J.P. had to deploy an army of servants every time he wanted a snack, and those servants were constrained by things like “availability of ice” and “when is the fishmonger at his stall.” You’re hungry at 2am, you jump in your car and get some Taco Bell. It takes ten minutes. J.P.’s hungry at 2am and it’s tough titty, J.P., your ass is going hungry. Because even though you’re the richest man in the world and have legions of manservants at your beck and call, Taco Bell just isn’t there. Even if someone had had the brilliant idea to create a Gilded Age Taco Bell, it still would’ve taken hours:

Wake up the manservant. Wake up the groom and stableboy. Hell, wake up the horse, then saddle the horse, ride to the drive thru window… which in this case means “the house of the guy who runs Gilded Age Taco Bell.” At which point he has to fire up the oven, start pounding the tortillas, send his own legion of valets and stableboys and whatnot out to get the refried beans…

And that’s the other thing, J.P. — you’d best not pull that shit too often, because those people know where you live. Not only do they know where you live, they live with you. Literally under the same roof. You want to sleep easy? You’d best not beat the servants too often, buddy.

There’s only so much “class consciousness” one can develop in that world. Oh yeah, J.P. thought of himself as one of the Masters of the Universe, there’s no denying that. But J.P. lived in what was still a brutally physical world, in a way we PoMo people really can’t grasp. If you can’t imagine what it would take to get some Gilded Age Taco Bell, maybe geography will do the trick. Ever seen Gangs of New York? Even if you haven’t, you’ve probably heard the name “Five Points.” The worst slum in America in the 19th century, and 19th century American slums were world class….

That was right down the street from Wall Street. Literally. I am not in any way joking, and if I’m exaggerating a little for effect when I say “J.P. could’ve hit Five Points with a five iron from his swanky digs on Central Park West,” I promise you I’m not exaggerating much. You can look it up for yourself. The main reason the Union rushed troops straight from the Gettysburg battlefield, and no-shit shelled parts of the city with gunboats, during the Draft Riots was because Five Points (et al) was right fucking there, and they might’ve gotten it into their heads to lynch a few Masters of the Universe. Rich man’s war, poor man’s fight, right? Let’s see how you like it, you bankster bastards…

The PoMo “information economy” removes all that. The other day I joked about colleges like Bennington and Goucher. I cracked some jokes, yeah, but I wasn’t really joking. Those places aren’t for us. Wall Street is still a physical location, but it might as well be on the dark side of the moon for all any of us have access to it. J.P. couldn’t beat the servants too hard, or too often. The modern equivalent of J.P. isn’t even aware that he has servants. He just clicks on a website, and stuff appears at his door. Like magic. Hell, it IS magic for all he knows, and he surely doesn’t care, because all that shit is his by right. He went to Bennington, after all. He has achieved full class consciousness.

I like the point that our modern systemic efficiency and effectiveness makes everyone dramatically better off than almost everyone way back when (up until recent times such as even a decade or two ago.)

Not just the normal points regarding technology and medical sophistication and longevity - all good points.  People can, if they wish, live more than Morgan could.  More intensely and with more time.  

I am always struck by this in historical accounts even into the first half of the 20th century.  During the October 1929 Crash and subsequent depression, when the President summoned the owner of the biggest bank on the West Coast, it was a four day train ride from San Francisco to Washington, D.C.  When Britain dispatched troops and a new leadership team to South Africa to deal with the Boer War, it was a five week steamship journey to arrive - with no radio communication in the duration.

Time wasn't wasted on those long journeys, but it was also certainly not optimally used.

Not only does everyone now live longer than even fifty years ago, but everyone lives more in the time that they have.  

All of that ties into another idea which has been floating around in my head for some reason in the past day.

It is well established that people with high general intelligence (IQ) have, on average, better desirable life outcomes along the standard sociological outcomes (education attainment, longevity, morbidity, income, marriage rates and stability, etc.)  

There are many reasons for the correlation and one which I do not see much discussed but which I suspect is a significant one is time efficiency.

High IQ generally allows better estimation of what is likely to happen in the near future.  High IQ is a form of reading the future and acting on that future in the present to better optimize time and resources.

A simple example.

You approach a door that will need to be unlocked.  High IQ John anticipates this and has the key out and ready as he approaches the door.  Low IQ Jack does not anticipate this and waits till he is at the door to get the keys from his pocket.  

It is a minor time savings.  Maybe 10 seconds saved by John over Jack.  But repeat that 10 second saving dozens or hundreds of time during the day and it adds up.  Not only adds up, but compounds.  And lets not get distracted by the greater range of opportunities opened up through that saved time.  Let's just focus on the time.

If John gets a half hour more done in the work day than does Jack simply through having the capacity to hold multiple future scenarios in mind, assess the probabilities of those scenarios and then act on the most likely scenario, that implies that John lives/works/enjoys two and a half hours more a week, 130 more hours a year.  On an eight hour day, High IQ John "lives" 16 1/4 more days a year than Jack.

The JP Morgan issue elaborated by Severian and the High IQ John example here revolve around the efficiency and effectiveness of time utilization.  Do you want to be JP Morgan with his massive wealth but in a system of low personal productivity (and poor health, etc.) or you want to be the average person today whose personal efficiency and effectiveness in the modern system can be so much dramatically greater?

It is a variant of the hoary conundrum - do you want to be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond.  

High IQ John gets the best of both worlds - he optimizes personal efficiency and effectiveness in a system which is already geared towards enabling and rewarding efficiency and effectiveness.  Plus, he lives more in the same amount of time.