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[wierd]

Reading slashdot recently, the subject of sleep (and research into sleep's requirement for good health) has come up several times recently.

Nearly every time, the discussion seems to focus on how "awesome" it would be to "get the health benefits without the sleep".

My WTF:

Why do people want to sleep less?  Are they misguidedly thinking that this will translate into more leisure time?  Do they not realize that modern consumerist society is an equilibrium, and that puncturing it in that way just eliminates the need for employers to send you home after 8 hours?  Do they think that it will somehow make them wealthier, because they will have more time to trade for a wage?  Do they not realize that labor is a commodity, and if EVERYONE slept less, it means EVERYONE is working more, and that means EVERYONE'S pay gets devalued by the increased supply?

Why the fuck do these people WANT to sleep LESS?  I just don't get it.

[Frumple]

I mean. I'd certainly rather be reading or playing video games (or hell, cleaning up around the house or some shit) instead of sleeping, yes. This isn't some kind of tricky consideration, being largely immobile and nonfunctioning for multiple hours straight is a pain in the arse made tolerable only by being unconscious during and (hopefully) rested afterwards.

I'm pretty sure it'd actually be pretty easy to get folks to collectively tell employers to go fuck themself if they tried to encroach on that extra time, too, if that's a concern. Despite all the shit involved with the degeneration of workers rights over the last while in some countries, there's a pretty serious backlash developing against 80 hour workweek bullshit. That wouldn't exactly weaken if you introduced another 8*7 hours of available time to the labor market.

E: Actually, thinking on it slightly more, if whatever solution genuinely managed to mitigate or eliminate exhaustion in the process (and was easily accessed, which would be required for major market disruption anyway), I'd just about guarantee worker mobilization would keep things in line. Two of the biggest roadblocks for low end workers is tiredness and not having enough hours in the day. Cure one with the possibility of curing the other and shit would have to go massively wrong for it to not result in a massive spike in political involvement, involvement with a slant incredibly inclined towards not continuing to put up with exploitative bullshit.

[wierd]

With increased leisure time comes increased elective spending, comes increased need to work to pay for it.

If everyone was thus afflicted, everyone would seek greater leverage of that time to make money, which then depresses the labor market.

Its misguided thinking from the outset.  At least sleep is more or less free, gives entertaining dreams, and leaves you feeling better afterward. The same is not true of other uses of that time.

[TD1]

And then there are those who have horrible nightmares, sleep paralysis, or simply can't get to sleep no matter how hard they try.

[Frumple]

Sleep might be free (barring the time cost some folks want back and the literal costs involved in having somewhere to sleep, now that I think about it...), may or may not give any dreams* (much less entertaining ones), and conditionally leaves you feeling better afterwards. Gods know half the time I sleep I only feel better afterwards relative to the prospect of not having slept., and worse than when I konked out. It's kinda' shit on the net of things, and the only major offset is biological fuckery leaving you a wreck without it.

... I'd take just guaranteeing good sleep, for what it's worth, heh. But not having to spend the time to get it, too? Shit, I'll take whatever the market consequences are. They won't be worse than having to deal with sleep.

* Though the counterpoint to that is that if you really want to spend your time hallucinating, we have other drugs for that

[Kagus]

I mean, if you could get paid without having to go to work, I'm pretty sure a number of people would hop on that opportunity even though in the bigger picture of things goods and services would theoretically get more expensive because there's a fractionally smaller productively-employed workforce.

Having most of your waking hours be related to work can be varying degrees of unpleasant, and with jobs and wages the way they are there's a high minimum amount of time you have to spend in order to secure a place to sleep. Since people don't see a way of negotiating time spent at work, they want to know if there's a way of negotiating time spent sleeping. Y'know, so they have free time where they can actively recover from all the work they're doing in order to sleep.

[Egan_BW]

Doesn't matter, we'll make human work obsolete before we make sleep obsolete.

[scriver]

What if we could like work as sleepers for other people though

[Egan_BW]

So I could just have my nice pleasant dreams 24/7 and then upload them to other people who have bad dreams? Doesn't sound bad.

[Kagus]

Look, I understand that "Foul-mouthed giant snails on motorized lawn chairs" is a niche market, but I think I've got a really good product here!

[Egan_BW]

I mean, really it sounds great. I basically just don't have nightmares so I could advertise my content as "nightmare-free or your money back".

[scriver]

I wonder if there'd be nightmare fetishists? Or people who specialise in wet dreams.

[JoshuaFH]

I wonder if there'd be nightmare fetishists? Or people who specialise in wet dreams.

"Oi! OI! This is your everyday working class blue collar Sleeper-4-hire here. We sleep for you so you don't have to. You can get so much more than 8 hours of rest however, are you a loser that only goes for the barest o' bare minimums when it comes to rest? I thought not, that's why I offer your choice of dream, and I mean any kind of dream your stupid brain can think of. Wet dreams with that girl you gotta crush on? You got it. Reliving that one moment o' glory you had in your whole boring life? Can do it a millions times no problemo. Got some kind of sick fantasy that is impossible to live out in real life? Just whisper it in my ear I ain't judgin'. And while I'm sleepin' and dreamin', you can be out there doing whatever hang-ever you want, and you still get all your bedtime delights. Really, when I put it like that, can you even afford to wait on this deal I'm offering ya? Pick up the phone now."

[IcyTea31]

I wonder if there'd be nightmare fetishists? Or people who specialise in wet dreams.

If it exists, it's somebody's fetish.
Sex sells.
These are universal axioms.

[TD1]

You imply that one may not fetish-ify something which does not exist?

My dear boy, you have not been paying attention.