Reply #40: It's funny that you bring up the issue of free time

[IrateCitizen]

As I recall from my reading of some of Marx's earlier manuscripts (while he was still a humanist), his biggest complaint against unrestrained capitalism coming from the industrial revolution was that none of the gains of productivity went to the workers -- rather, they were still expected to work 12, 14, 16 hours a day or more to earn profits for the idle rich. He thought that the workers should gain the benefits of this productivity in LESS HOURS SPENT AT WORK, so that they could devote more time to family, art, communing with nature, etc.

In our current system, you can go into almost any inner city setting and find people, born into poverty, who are condemned to a life of working three jobs just to be broke at the end of the week. Please tell me how the perpetuation (and entrenchment) of such a phenomenon is helping to provide potential geniuses from their ranks with the time needed for study.

I notice also that you didn't touch the Einstein example. Care to comment on it, as to how he was able to develop his theories while working in the Swiss patent office?