Idleness: Reward or Condemn?

I found myself this morning like few other lucky people, un-occupied.

An idle individual is not who has nothing to do but on the contrary. The person free from commitments could have more to do than the person who woke up trying to cross out as many items in their eternal to-do list. In other words, free time is not the same for the employed and the unemployed. Idleness could be the cause of a skill-labor mismatch for which they would need to work on investing even more time developing skills, creating networks, looking for answers.

Therefore peaceful mornings, when you cook a slow breakfast as you smell coffee roasting and listen to the Youtube French morning playlist, are those that few lucky people have. Lucky employed people. Or at least, people with a stable income source. People who are unbothered by the 5% increase in the price of eggs that day, a carton of eggs was awaiting in the kitchen already. If lucky employed people were invited out on their peaceful morning, we would reject the invitation. Un-occupation is what we have worked so very hard for the whole week.

Free time for people who are always busy will result in naps, lots and lots of naps in the beginning at least. Then things they enjoy doing, maybe learning something new, talking back to old friends, scrolling social media updates.

-“Very interesting.” I have an idea of how I want to spend my idle time and the search throws exactly what my next research question will be about.

I came across this documentary by DW:

"What is changed is that we have now an awareness that globalization is not... Globalization and its virtues are not accessible to everybody in the world in the same way" -Hernando de Soto, Economist and Politician. In my traveling experience talking to people from Asia, Latin America, Africa, Middle East and Europe there is no one who has not pointed out labor, trade or politics as a key driver for employment. I think we all understand, that our hectic to-do list is matched with a larger picture, a frame that is never steady, one that involves millions and millions of other occupied and not-so-occupied entities.

But are we understanding the impact of different industries in income for low-skilled and high-skilled laborers? Is that the kind of questions you get when you are idle?

References: DW. 2023. Globalization: Winners and losers in world trade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoZiTCz_wYA