This entire thread is drenched in class consciousness and I am here for it.
Can we have the day off?
531–540 of 823 posts
Re: Can we have the day off?
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s pretty naive to ask your employer for a day off. As experienced by companies, the market is more competitive than ever. Whoever slows down will get eaten by some hungry upstart that is willing to work 996 to eat the incumbent’s lunch. It’s a Prisoner’s Dilemma. The only way to get this outcome is to coordinate at a level higher than individual market participants. In other words, get your government to i…
lol, this government is going to just throw anyone trying into the meat grinder. The only way to do this is to bypass the authorities.
Or change them.
Re: Can we have the day off?
#533This article is kind of playful, but I think there’s a serious point here that’s not discussed enough. We’re being asked to usher in huge productivity gains by introducing AI to our workflows, but we’re not asking how does it help us? Not a lot of us stand to directly gain from our employers becoming more productive. I know everybody is afraid of getting fired and replaced with AI or whatever right now. But we should…
It won't get you days off because you (rather, your employer) will fall behind those who didn't opt to take days off. You'd only get days off if it was only you who got a 10x increase. But it's everybody. So it's status quo: technology advances, and you have to keep up if you want to stay in the industry.
> It won't get you days off because you (rather, your employer) will fall behind those who didn't opt to take days off.
I don’t believe this is true. Or that more hours worked reliably translates to serious competitive advantage, in general.
But your point stands, because many (or most) employers think it does, and employees are usually incentivized to support that notion.
Re: Can we have the day off?
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s pretty naive to ask your employer for a day off. As experienced by companies, the market is more competitive than ever. Whoever slows down will get eaten by some hungry upstart that is willing to work 996 to eat the incumbent’s lunch. It’s a Prisoner’s Dilemma. The only way to get this outcome is to coordinate at a level higher than individual market participants. In other words, get your government to i…
UBI without many other anti-capitalist reforms is just a subsidy paid directly to your landlord.
Where do you suggest we start? You can't nuke everything at once.
Re: Can we have the day off?
#535This article is kind of playful, but I think there’s a serious point here that’s not discussed enough. We’re being asked to usher in huge productivity gains by introducing AI to our workflows, but we’re not asking how does it help us? Not a lot of us stand to directly gain from our employers becoming more productive. I know everybody is afraid of getting fired and replaced with AI or whatever right now. But we should…
I think it's a fair question to ask ourselves. But it's worth noting how leisure hours have been allocated after the invention of the 5 hour work week: we've reduced working hours at the end of life (longer retirements), start of life (longer education), and some amount of people simply do not work. There hasn't been a reduction in hours during peak earning potential because many jobs are competitive, because firms a…
It's strange to put it like “we invented 40hour workweek”. It was extremely hard fight won by cooperation of many levels of the working class. The business owners absolutely didn't want it.
This would have to happen again. But there is none of that worker unity so it's unlikely to happen. The productivity gains will go solely to the bussiness owners.
Re: Can we have the day off?
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reality is that most people are paid for their time, not for their output. I think most contracts for salaried employees are along the lines of "work n hours a week". If you want to get paid for output, you can't be a salaried employee.
I don't think this is the reality. It is part of it, but people get paid different salaries, why? Some are more productive than others. Aside from leadership's (and society's) biased ability to determine value, these people theoretically get more because they contribute more.
This is a naive view. Companies will literally pay you as little as they can get away with. If they think they can hire someone “equivalent” according to HR for less money they will often do so. Actual contribution means nothing unless you’re willing to walk away. I’ve literally seen an intern with less than one year of experience when hired into a company where a senior architect who has been at the same firm for 16 years made over $40k less than them. The former intern was great. I had no real complaints. And he was more ambitious than the senior architect. But he stayed with the company two more years before jumping ship for another significant pay raise while the senior architect is still there making about the same amount as he did five years ago. It doesn’t matter how much value the senior architect delivers if he doesn’t demand his increase in pay.
Re: Can we have the day off?
#537Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is society better off? Honest question, you used to be able to support a family of four with a single 9-5.
You still can if you want to live like you're in the 60s. My parents grew up eating bread with dripping for most meals, meat since they were farmers, some inexpensive vegetables, not much variety. Houses were half the size and had twice as many people in them, my grandparents did any building or expansions themselves. Public schools with free tuition. No overseas holidays, eating out once a month max. The urban poor…
You can't really live like you're in the 60s. Food and accommodation and other basic costs are going up all the time. Young people in entry-level jobs can barely support themselves while renting a room with flatmates.
Standards of living are going up regardless if we like it or not, and costs as well.
Re: Can we have the day off?
#538This article is kind of playful, but I think there’s a serious point here that’s not discussed enough. We’re being asked to usher in huge productivity gains by introducing AI to our workflows, but we’re not asking how does it help us? Not a lot of us stand to directly gain from our employers becoming more productive. I know everybody is afraid of getting fired and replaced with AI or whatever right now. But we should…
> But we should be seriously asking in our next all hands meetings if 10x’ing our productivity can get us some days off. Pretty sure if you ask this that they'll give you all your days off.
Standing up for yourself and your peers is a virtue, not a weakness. Yes, it’s easy to crack down on individual dissent — but only if you stay quiet.
Re: Can we have the day off?
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
Human had all the industrialization and stuff, yet we work 5 days / week now.
I was looking for facts to disprove your point, but it seems we actually work more than our ancestors. Medieval folks and hunter-gatherers had plenty of time off. It wasn't until the industrial revolution that we started extending our workweek. Here's a nice summary of how the workweek looked like, from the AskHistorians subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1rf0lb/comme...
> it seems we actually work more than our ancestors.
Only if you count the hours worked for the local lord and forget about all other mandatory work like:
- growing your own food
- cooking/prepping said food (44 hours per week)
- maintenance
- spinning, weaving and sewing clothes
https://acoup.blog/2025/09/05/collections-life-work-death-an...
https://acoup.blog/2025/10/10/collections-life-work-death-an...
Re: Can we have the day off?
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
The past had slaves too. The feudal arrangement of tenant farmers was only one system of labor. I don't think union bargaining was ever tied to specific advances in technology.
Sorry, I'm drawing a blank on much history of slaves in a extremely-low-technological society or how it was imposed or ended in those societies, could you provide some examples of what you're meaning exactly by bringing slavery up? Feudalism or other things happening in those centuries is well into the technological era. Are you saying you can't think of examples from the past of the introduction of technology changi…
When you say technological era, do you mean anything after the introduction of potery, writing, or what? Because you can trace slavery back to the earliest recorded civilizations, but it won't be easy to trace it to before a written record.