31–40 of 238 posts
I work 70 hours a week. Surely you wouldn’t outlaw my ethic? And if a run a company, surely I could require my employees to work 5 days, 40 hours? The solution is to let business owners switch to 4 day weeks and then let the free market sort it out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The free market would grind every last human into powder if it could. Labor regulations exist because you can’t trust humans to be various degrees of moral, decent, and empathetic. If labor regulations ratchet the work week down, you’d be free to offer 32 hour work weeks to employees, and pay them for overtime beyond that. Productivity has exploded over the last four decades (across various economies, developed and d…
Humans are free to enter contracts of their own choosing, not forced by arbitrary government regulations. As many other commenters here have pointed out, negotiating oneself to a 4 day workweek (or other offers) is possible. I for one, choose to not take the 20% pay cut and will happily work a 40 hour work week. That's my choice.
I mean... If you increase work productivity there's basically two things you can do: Increase free time or increase consumption. Increasing free time is not a popular position. It is widely seen as a given that "increasing consumption" and "economic growth" are good things by itself that don't need any further justification (while of course society could strive for "free time growth" instead). Switzerland had a referendum on reducing work time not so long ago. It failed.
I say this noting that I disagree with the popular position here, but I can't avoid seeing that this is what most people seem to want.
I work 70 hours a week. Surely you wouldn’t outlaw my ethic? And if a run a company, surely I could require my employees to work 5 days, 40 hours? The solution is to let business owners switch to 4 day weeks and then let the free market sort it out.
The free market would grind every last human into powder if it could. Labor regulations exist because you can’t trust humans to be various degrees of moral, decent, and empathetic. If labor regulations ratchet the work week down, you’d be free to offer 32 hour work weeks to employees, and pay them for overtime beyond that. Productivity has exploded over the last four decades (across various economies, developed and d…
Different people have different relations to work in different stages of life. E.g. it makes sense to work your ass off while saving for downpayment for a home. Or saving for XYZ. Same people may scale down when kids come up.
Frankly, given where we are at as a society in terms of labor and productivity relative to demand, it seems like now isn’t the time to be pumping the brakes. The basis of fully automated luxury communism has not yet been delivered and won’t be for a while; Europeans will likely freeze this winter and even in the US, if I call 911 I’m lucky if the wait time is less than 10 minutes. We still need humans working, as much as it pains me to say it.
Maybe a better approach than specifying an arbitrary number would be to have full flexibility.
Example: I work hourly at a software company. Some days I work 12 hours. Some days I work 3.5. If I’m not going to be productive that day, I just don’t work (this is to my employer’s benefit, because I’m paid by the hour). If I’m on a roll, I keep on rolling. Some days I plan for 9 hours then leave at 6 because my focus is shot. Others I think it will be 5, then leave after 10.
I get to use my time as I see fit, the employer doesn’t deal with me wasting time in the office unproductively, and on net I think I’m as productive if not more than my coworkers.
In jobs where you need time-based coverage, an Lyft-like bidding system to get a wage premium would probably make sense and let people self-sort based on desire to work and schedule preferences.
Why replace one arbitrary system with another?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Humans are free to enter contracts of their own choosing, not forced by arbitrary government regulations. As many other commenters here have pointed out, negotiating oneself to a 4 day workweek (or other offers) is possible. I for one, choose to not take the 20% pay cut and will happily work a 40 hour work week. That's my choice.
In theory maybe. I bet most people don't have the luxury to chose a 80% job that still lets them pay their bills. Probably has to do with wages not tracking inflation which was caused by the same free market principles.