Trabalho divertido, trabalho não-divertido e ócio

Frances Woolley (do blog de economistas canadianos Worthwhile Canadian Initiative) escreve sobre a decisão de Rose Wilder Lane (uma das mães intelectuais do "libertarianism" norte-americano e filha da autora de Uma Casa na Pradaria) de deixar os direitos de autor sobre Uma Casa na Pradaria a Roger MacBride, seu consultor de negócios e candidato presidencial do Libertarian Party em 1976:

One account of why Wilder left everything to MacBride is the adopted grandson theory: MacBride was Wilder’s business manager and closest friend. It was only natural that she would leave her fortune to him.

Another account begins with the fact that Rose Wilder was one of the key figures in the development of libertarian philosophy in the US. She instilled her philosophy in MacBride, whom she was grooming to be a future leader. With Wilder’s financial backing, MacBride could take libertarian politics to the people, and establish a new political movement in the US. I don’t know how much truth there is in this second version of events, but it is the more interesting one to analyze.

MacBride faced a trade-off. He could devote his life to libertarian politics. But given the libertarian party's electoral prospects, that didn’t pay well - actually it didn't pay at all. He had to earn a living. In order to generate income, he had to spend less time on libertarian politics, and more time on other things. (...)

The cash bequest from Wilder shifted MacBride’s budget constraint upwards to B’. Wilder’s bequest meant that MacBride could afford to spend his time on libertarian politics, if that was what he chose to do. The impact of a lump-sum increase in income, without any change in relative prices, is called an “income effect.” (...)

However Wilder did not just bequeath cash to MacBride. She also left him the rights to the Little House series. These rights gave MacBride a lucrative alternative to politics: building the Little House on the Prairie franchise. (...)

The net impact of an increase in a person's wage rate hours worked is ambiguous. On the one hand, a higher wage translates into more income, which means that one can afford to spend more time in libertarian politics, if this is what takes ones fancy. At the same time, a higher wage increases the opportunity cost of spending time in politics, inclining one to spend more time in paid work. (...)

History does not tell us which of these two effects actually predominated. In a sense it doesn't matter: what is of interest here is the possibility of Wilder's bequest having unintended consequences. MacBride certainly devoted a fair amount of time to the Little House franchise: he sold the TV rights to the series, joined the TV series as co-producer, and wrote three additional Little House books, just for starters. At the same time, he remained active in libertarian politics, running as Libertarian party candidate for president of the United States in 1976, although in 1983 he rejoined the Republican party.

Como foi dito nos comentários ao post, isto é essencialmente a velha análise do efeito ambiguo de um aumento de salário sobre a opção entre trabalho e lazer, substituindo "lazer" por "activismo libertarian"; e, generalizando, talvez em vez de falarmos de opção entre "trabalho" e "lazer", talvez fizesse mais sentido falar-se da opção entre "trabalho divertido" (dentro da subjectividade de cada um) e "trabalho não-divertido" - no fundo, aquilo a que chamamos "lazer" pode ser definido alternativamente como "trabalho divertido com um salário muito inferior ao trabalho não-divertido", e a escolha económica entre "trabalhar" e "jogar Seven Kingdoms" pode ser considerado simplresmente como um caso notável da escolha entre "trabalhar na profissão A que paga bem mas não me entusiasma" e "trabalhar na profissão B que paga mal mas que gosto mais".

Já agora, se definirmos "lazer" como "actividade que rende menos mas de que gosto mais", a preferência pelo "lazer" faz mais sentido em termos evolutivos: realmente, não se vê grande vantagem evolutiva na preferência pelo ócio em si, mas já faz todo o sentido que a evolução tenha levado ao desenvolvimento de preferências profissionais que não correspondam necessariamente às que são atualmente bem pagas (afinal, a maior parte da nossa história evolucionária ocorreu no contexto de sociedades e de tecnologias totalmente diferentes da atual).