Individual and selective deceleration fails because those who slow down pay steep penalties

Evidence

The slowdown movement promises “a new well-being through deceleration” and is organized partly in intellectual, partly in grassroots associations like the “Union for the Slowing Down of Time” or the “Happy Unemployed” who celebrate themselves as “leisure gangsters” and thus place themselves in a tradition that includes Paul Lafargue and Bertrand Russell. Although the widespread representations and fantasies of radical slowdown in this milieu have strong currency on the plane of ideas, that is, in lectures, conferences, and publications, they only seldom reach the structure-relevant plane of action. This can be accounted for in part by the fact that the price of individual slowdown in postindustrial societies is very high: whoever withdraws herself from the pressure of an accelerated tempo (for instance by joining a sect, taking over an ecofarm, or plunging into a time-forgetful drug culture) risks missing the boat and finding no chance for readmission. When after several years she is ready to return to mainstream society, her resources are hopelessly obsolete. … Many of our everyday needs for deceleration are so selective that they contain their own negation: we wish, for instance, that we would finally have time for ourselves, for family, for hobbies, etc., and precisely in order to achieve this we simultaneously desire and demand that everyone else hurry up: the cashier in the supermarket, the official in the tax ministry, etc. Even the traffic light should turn green and the tramcar go faster. Therefore selective deceleration in complex and networked societies is only possible to a very limited degree. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 282

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to the trees/sacrifice essays’ shared theme of trade-offs in trying to withdraw from dominant infrastructure/systems — the claim that withdrawal-from-acceleration exacts steep re-entry costs parallels the essays’ logic that opting out of built systems has real costs.
• XREF: connects to: Collective action against inflation fails because individual restraint could serve it equally. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 148; Individual withdrawal from acceleration carries prohibitive obsolescence costs — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 282; Individually opting out of acceleration causes social desynchronization costs — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 437 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Individual withdrawal from acceleration carries prohibitive obsolescence costs #corroborates (0.85) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 282
• Individually opting out of acceleration causes social desynchronization costs #corroborates (0.82) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 437
• Reputation deterrence fails when defectors can evade full penalties #corroborates (0.75) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2611