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Why Not a Three-Day Week?

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Re: Why Not a Three-Day Week?

#91

Post by lifeisstillgood »

nostrademons wrote: post #76
TeMPOraL wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should, but they aren't and this is the reality. Capitalism sucks at valuing things that don't give immediate profit. Education is such a thing - it has extreme ROI... 20 years down the line. Which is too long a time and it gets valued less than small changes that will bring in a little bit of money next month.

There's also a bit of a principal-agent problem. The people who make decisions about the educational system are state bureaucrats, teachers, and parents, in roughly that order. The one person who's most affected by it - the kid - has basically zero say in anything. I suspect that education would be a much higher priority and teachers would be paid much more if children could vote.

If children could vote and direct funds then school would rapidly become a cross between a candy-store and a hotel Spa.

Re: Why Not a Three-Day Week?

#92

Post by dllthomas »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #90
dllthomas wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain how this supports your figure. I don't see it. Dividing the consumer unit "average annual expenditure" by the "average number of persons per consumer unit" per column there, only the top two exceed $20k, and only the top 3 approach $20k. It does all exceed $10k, but there's still 27 million households spending less than $15k/yr/person - where it would be more correct to say "about $10k" than "about $20…

My mistake, I missed the fact that consumer units had multiple people in them. I thought those figures were for individuals.

Gotcha.

Re: Why Not a Three-Day Week?

#93

Post by patio11 »

kyllo wrote: post #78
patio11 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clients are surprisingly willing to deal with that. It may be less of a hard constraint than you think it is, particularly if you train your clients to expect that type of working relationship. I had an interesting call with a doctor client recently. "I didn't notice a number on your website." "That's correct." "So how am I supposed to get in touch with you?" "I recommend email." "But you only respond to email a day…

Kind of ironic that a doctor would say that to you. Just try getting a doctor's direct line or cell. It's almost impossible, they have receptionists because they'd be overwhelmed with patients calling them with stupid questions all day if they didn't. Of course, you could also just hire a remote assistant to field phone calls for you if you wanted.

Working on it, but since I don't have one yet and was not returning voicemail reliably I hid the number.

Re: Why Not a Three-Day Week?

#94

Post by wyager »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #65
wyager wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If automation continues and demand stays the same, things like 3-day work weeks will come about naturally. A capitalist system would not prevent that from happening. Would you care to share why you think capitalism would prevent an increase in leisure time (even though it has been increasing since the industrial revolution)?

> Would you care to share why you think capitalism would prevent an increase in leisure time It's actually a quite simple mechanism - people who would want to work 3 days will get replaced by people willing to work 4 days, which will get replaced to work one day more, etc. As long as people actually need jobs to survive, the end result is they work as much as possible within bounds of law. We sometimes forget about i…

Why would people who want to work less get replaced, instead of just accepting lower pay?

Re: Why Not a Three-Day Week?

#95

Post by 21echoes »

WalterSear wrote: post #56
21echoes wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed]

Have you worked anything other than menial jobs?

yes. and the science is very exhaustively on my side: time and time again, it's been shown that workers (especially knowledge workers like programmers, designers, etc.) are more productive when working less hours.

* http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_protect/---pro...

* www.eurofound.europa.eu/pubdocs/2002/07/en/1/ef0207en.pdf

* http://sciencenordic.com/we-should-only-work-25-hours-week-a...

* http://news.illinois.edu/WebsandThumbs/Lleras,Alejandro/Ller...

* the list goes on...

Re: Why Not a Three-Day Week?

#96

Post by wyager »

mjburgess wrote: post #31
wyager wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If automation continues and demand stays the same, things like 3-day work weeks will come about naturally. A capitalist system would not prevent that from happening. Would you care to share why you think capitalism would prevent an increase in leisure time (even though it has been increasing since the industrial revolution)?

"Reduced labour" isnt produced by automation, increased profit is. To "give back" labour you have to reduce profits. "Leisure time" was won by unions, collective bargaining and legislation. "The Weekend" only exists at all because of the collective actions of the workforce, not of capital owners.

Reduced labor (per output value) and increased profit are the same thing.

There is always a trade off between time spent working and wealth. Only through automation can we keep our current quality of life while working less, increase our quality of life without working any more, or do anything between those two possibilities.

Re: Why Not a Three-Day Week?

#97

Post by wyager »

psychometry wrote: post #85
wyager wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If automation continues and demand stays the same, things like 3-day work weeks will come about naturally. A capitalist system would not prevent that from happening. Would you care to share why you think capitalism would prevent an increase in leisure time (even though it has been increasing since the industrial revolution)?

> If automation continues and demand stays the same, things like 3-day work weeks will come about naturally. That's simply not true, otherwise we wouldn't be working the same hours at the same adjusted wages as we were 50 years ago despite massive gains in productivity. A company's increased productivity doesn't benefit the workers, it benefits the owners/shareholders. What do you think the typical factory owner will…

We are working the same hours as 50 years ago because we want to be able to purchase cell phones and modern cars bad stuff. You could work a lot less and live with 50s level technology, but almost no one chooses to.

Also, if a shareholder makes more money, they buy more, creating new labor requirements elsewhere.

Re: Why Not a Three-Day Week?

#98

Post by twobits »

exstudent wrote: post #48
Xcelerate wrote: post #41

I find the whole economic system to be quite bizarre. Nobody's salary seems to correlate with much except their skill at getting a high salary. For instance, my sister (elementary education) makes even less than I do as a grad student. The difference is that she wakes up at 5:00 AM and works all day teaching and taking care of little kids until 7:00 PM, whereas I wake up whenever I feel like it, head to a coffee shop…

I think there are two separate issues in your comment... You make more than your sister doing "less" work because knowledge and high level skills are a value multiplier. You may come up with a world changing idea that generates billions of dollars. No kindergarden teacher could achieve that. Pay matches accordingly. Your second point is that there seems to be a lot of people with useless jobs and I couldn't agree mor…

"You make more than your sister doing "less" work because knowledge and high level skills are a value multiplier. You may come up with a world changing idea that generates billions of dollars. No kindergarden teacher could achieve that. Pay matches accordingly."

And then the kids grow up, and you are fucked. Do you think the first ever important thing those kids learn, for society, is when they become 20+ and one day they start learning compsci-simulated-quantum-biomolecular-teleportation-of-artificial-intelligence-nanoparticle-drug-dynamofeedback 101? (Yes, if it's not obvious, I just pulled that out of my...)

She gets less, cause the system doesn't care about if the world in totally destroyed 30 years down the road. (Actually that would be great. Opportunity for "growth" and profit.) It only cares about billions yesterday.

Re: Why Not a Three-Day Week?

#99

Post by twobits »

wyager wrote: post #94
TeMPOraL wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you care to share why you think capitalism would prevent an increase in leisure time It's actually a quite simple mechanism - people who would want to work 3 days will get replaced by people willing to work 4 days, which will get replaced to work one day more, etc. As long as people actually need jobs to survive, the end result is they work as much as possible within bounds of law. We sometimes forget about i…

Why would people who want to work less get replaced, instead of just accepting lower pay?

Because there are also other people that are more desperate, and are willing to work more for less.

Re: Why Not a Three-Day Week?

#100

Post by wyager »

twobits wrote: post #99
wyager wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would people who want to work less get replaced, instead of just accepting lower pay?

Because there are also other people that are more desperate, and are willing to work more for less.

That's obviously false. If there were an infinite supply of desperate people "willing to work more for less", wages would be zero, or minimum wage at most.

There is a finite supply of labor, and we are not anywhere near a level of technology where we no longer have an unbounded demand for labor.

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