Network effects.
Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
91–100 of 238 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#92It's very simple: if you can do five days' worth of work in only four days, you can do even more if you maintain the same level of productivity over five days.
A more interesting approach would be to combine the following:
* Unlimited holidays (offered by more and more companies)
* No difference within week and weekend days - you choose your free days whenever you want
* Fully remote, async work
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#93Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#94If you can't develop a business that sustains itself with 4-day work weeks, why are you expecting anyone else to?
From what I understand though, some companies are indeed trying 4-day work weeks.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#95Earlier 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.
Some individuals, in some particular professions, may have this choice. But there are structural forces preventing this on a population level.
Most people in the US live paycheck to paycheck as is, and it's not that they're spending frivolously. Our standards of living are based on what's needed for subsistence, yes, but also cultural and historical. Based on how we grew up and how our parents grew up, and how culture (e.g. hollywood) tells us we should be living. So most people are trying to live according to established standards.
It's already much harder for the present generation to live at the standard of the previous generation or two (e.g. buying a home is less of a possibility). Choosing, then, according to our "freedom", 20% less pay would require also choosing poverty according to established standards of living (i.e. it would look like poverty).
The narrative of "the individual" is a nice narrative from the perspective of the elites of our society to distract from the fact that, as always, there is class conflict and systematic forces in place. Of course, don't get me wrong: it is nice that there is some legitimate freedom on an individual level in the US. But for one, that legitimacy is overblown via mass media marketing (e.g. of course Jeff Bezos is going to tell his rags-to-riches story for everyone to hear). And more importantly, there is also the question of the overall structural forces that establish the population level structure.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#96They aren’t just going to give you a free day off. There would be a commensurate decrease in your pay. I don’t find the 5 days/week to be “irrational”, “irrational” to whom? It’s completely rational from an employers perspective that they have a job to fulfill and it requires employees to complete the job. If they have people working 4 days /week, they need coverage for the other days. It’s not rational for the custo…
> they will just make everyone part time. The implicit threat here is withdrawal of benefits - specifically health care insurance
Huh what? You don't get health insurance when you work part time in the US?
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#97To maybe throw the question back - what have you done to make 3 day weekends a reality? The way the post is worded right now seems to be phrased in a way that 3-day weekends are blindingly obvious, but if you look at the history of labour rights I dont see why anyone expects it to just happen without a massive amount of organising
Productivity has risen 61% since 1979: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/. 40 hour work weeks have been the standard. Wages only rose 17% in that same period. The capitalists have been able to bank the other 44%.
A 3-day work week (aka 40% less productivity if you assume a perfectly linear relationship between time working and productivity) would still mean a nice little gain for the capitalist compared to 1979 numbers.
If you've worked, you've contributed to that 44% productivity gain. Why should you need to revolt or organize to get what you've already worked for? Capitalists are taking a larger and larger share every year. Is that ethical?
I get that pragmatically many aspects in life are a power struggle, but "throwing the question back" is really a way of putting the burden of fixing an unfair system back on the victim.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#98To maybe throw the question back - what have you done to make 3 day weekends a reality? The way the post is worded right now seems to be phrased in a way that 3-day weekends are blindingly obvious, but if you look at the history of labour rights I dont see why anyone expects it to just happen without a massive amount of organising
I don't think framing this as someone's individual responsibility is at all fair or realistic.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#99See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544315 - Ask HN: Anyone working 4 day week here, as an employee?
Re: Ask HN: Why don't we have 3 day weekends yet?
#100They aren’t just going to give you a free day off. There would be a commensurate decrease in your pay. I don’t find the 5 days/week to be “irrational”, “irrational” to whom? It’s completely rational from an employers perspective that they have a job to fulfill and it requires employees to complete the job. If they have people working 4 days /week, they need coverage for the other days. It’s not rational for the custo…
No one from September 2019 would believe you if you told them about the work from home policies in place right now for millions of people who were expected to be seated at their desk at 9:00 (or 8:30) until 5:00 three years ago. The world isn't static, tradeoffs can change.
> No one from September 2019 would believe you if you told them about the work from home policies in place right now for millions of people who were expected to be seated at their desk at 9:00 (or 8:30) until 5:00 three years ago
There were lots of us who couldn't believe that so many employees had to be at a desk from 9 - 5 in industries where it made very little sense.