How to make extra money

The time required

Here it the new tyrant, the time required and often imposed. And ‘social time, as the economist Jeremy Rifkin argues in the Wars of the time, it is increasingly separated from biological time how to make extra money.

His instrument of torture is the watch, which replaced the rooster crows and the sound of bells. The introduction of social time, which is predominantly a linear time contrast to biological time, eminently circular time, amazing progress has allowed humanity but has created new social injustices. The weather has been run by those who had the power, expertise and culture to use it: to optimize not only the present but to anticipate the future.

Numerous sociological studies confirm that one of the biggest differences between social classes concerns the its management: in fact, while the upper classes and then plan the future, inevitably, the time of others, less favored, badgered by the imperatives of survival, we can design only in the present or, at most, in the very near future. It leaves them in the same condition of the caves of our ancestors, for whom survival absorbed all the energies and prevented the planning for the future.

We live in a society ‘cronofaga’, which eats up the hours on the clock. And time will fly away, making a treasure out of reach and an obsession with learning. ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry’ seems to be the motto of many people around us, just as many white rabbits worried about being punished by the Duchess.

A metaphor for our society that gives us the incurable disease of the rush. ‘Take Back Time’ seems to be rather the cry of the millennium. It is perhaps no coincidence that Germany is dall’operosissima punctually and a signal of contrast: in Berlin was founded the Union for the slowing of time, which counts among its rules to waive the clock at least once a week.

Fast bad: the syndrome of the extraordinary

But who has imprisoned us in this society of fast?

First of all industrial production, which the late nineteenth century to today has transformed life in a large assembly line where the activity is a virtue and a requirement on time. The cities are synchronized on the opening and closing of businesses, so that satirized the writer Flaiano, ‘during peak hours has become impossible even adultery’. Time limited, so, especially that of work. And in recent years, with the specter of unemployment at the gates, the submission to the clock has become, if anything, even more complete.
Yet, Rifkin points out in his latest book, working less and less because new technologies accelerate the production time. The result was a clear bias in the labor market: on the one hand, an elite of technocrats, busy, that makes too much overtime, on the other, a growing mass of unemployed, underemployed, driven by large multinational companies, mobile workers or layoff, put out by the gradual automation of production.

So who are the slaves of the clock?

Managers, executives, professionals, and much more. A survey made at Fiat has confirmed that four out of ten ‘suffer’ work time and stop time beyond the contract. Although it causes stress and psychosomatic disorders, prevailing imperatives of ethical (you must be hardworking!) Or opportunity (the company considers the employees based on their availability and not only based on the results). At a time when unemployment is above 10 percent, then the fear of dismissal is stronger than anger at the time ‘suffered’.
This syndrome is often called ‘Japanese’, but also in New York was not joking. Recently, during a plane trip, a friend told me that the manager next morning would not only attended the breakfast meeting of 8, now institutionalized, but also a preriunione of 7, to prepare the next one! The paradox is that, despite having taken the fast Concorde, the traffic of New York has lost two of three hours earned with the supersonic plane.
In short, we seem to stereotype a first: the bad quickly.

The rampant eighties, summarized by the formula ‘fast is good’, is now relegated in management, while a growing number of people are annoyed by the target time and time lost. And there are many who seek to implement strategies to oppose the dictatorship of the time. Also new for the real rich are those who have an obsession with the clock.