In praise of idleness

More evidence, if more were needed, that the developed world is moving inexorably to a leisure economy - Nintendo, makers of video game hardware and software, is now Japan's second most valuable company by market cap (Gamasutra).

One of the reasons sometimes given for the fondness of the pre Civil War American south for the institution of slavery was that slaveholding worked as an effective alternative status identifier in circumstances when land was so abundant as to be effectively free. Living as we do (in the west) at a time of such conspicuous plenty, how long can it be before we arrive collectively at a similar realisation, that beyond a certain level of mass affluence money just doesn't cut it as a status identifier and enough of us are already past that level? The emergence of movements like Timothy Ferriss's Four Hour Week (inspired, I assume, by the more venerable Lazy Way To Success and perhaps even The Idler) incline me to the view that we're already seeing the emergence of this trend - people giving up on money (or conspicuous consumption) as a now-ineffective badge of achievement and instead conspicuously relaxing.