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Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?

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Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?

#61

Post by avz »

bmj wrote: post #39
privong wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only solution to competition is centrally enforced precommitment. First, the government should actually enforce the eight-hour workday. Then it should reduce the workday, for all employers at once, so no one can get ahead by cheating. I don't see any other solution. This would not really be a solution. All it would result in is more people taking work home, because job evaluations would still be based on how mu…

Do you think there /is/ a solution to the problem? Or is this just one of the side effects of capitalism? I'm not trolling here...just curious. My own mind tends to go in the direction of the parent, but, I also see how enforcement would be next to impossible.

I think you're trying to solve a wrong problem. Work isn't a problem. Work is what propelled humanity to explore, understand and conquer the world around us. Human work is a requirement for the development of medicine, greener technologies, safer transportation and even space exploration and colonization.

If there are any problems about work, they are about making it more enjoyable, making good work more widely accessible and distributing the proceeds fairly.

Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?

#62

Post by kemayo »

RivieraKid wrote: post #32
FD3SA wrote: post #6

Capitalism`s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. The profit motive is so strong that it often ends up creating irrational scenarios such as the economic situation we have today. European countries seem to have struck a far better balance by harnessing the profit motive of capitalism while preventing disasters such as for-profit healthcare, for-profit education, for-profit government policies (for the ric…

Why do you think private healthcare isn't working? Free market is typically inefficient if 1) there's not enough competition or 2) customers don't make optimal market decisions. Which one is it in private healthcare?

I'd say that consumers have a hard time making optimal market decisions.

First, it's difficult (though not impossible) to price-shop for medical care. Then sometimes your medical care is time-sensitive in a way which few other purchases are: if I slip and cut myself badly, I'm not likely to price-shop for my ambulance, then carefully compare emergency room price schedules, then gather bids from various doctors who'll be operating on me...

Also, "health insurance" distorts purchasing decisions by hiding costs -- if your insurance will pay any doctor you go to, and its only cost to you is some abstract impact on the rate your employer pays for their group insurance plan, you're not terribly motivated to be price-sensitive.

You could overcome all these things by wildly changing the way our system currently works. But if you're doing that anyway, I'd much prefer a government single-payer system.

Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?

#63

Post by rwallace »

rwallace wrote: post #54
Turing_Machine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-ranki...

Okay, taking a look at the criteria they say they use. Most of the weight is on research. Fair enough. I'm prepared to believe that conclusion, at least as an overall tendency. However, the context of the discussion was education, and that's the context in which I'm disputing the basis of the claim of superiority of American universities. Of the fraction of the weight placed on quality of teaching, a significant chun…

(Sibling comment since it's not giving me a 'reply' link for some reason)

To be clear, I'm not claiming European universities are better for education (as opposed to research) than American ones. I only have experience of the former, so I'm not in a position to make that claim. I'm merely disputing the reverse claim. I'm saying unless we can find accounts from people who have experience of both, the correct position to take is an agnostic one.

Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?

#64

Post by buckbova »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #59
rwallace wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, taking a look at the criteria they say they use. Most of the weight is on research. Fair enough. I'm prepared to believe that conclusion, at least as an overall tendency. However, the context of the discussion was education, and that's the context in which I'm disputing the basis of the claim of superiority of American universities. Of the fraction of the weight placed on quality of teaching, a significant chun…

The U.S. system has both research universities and teaching colleges. Some institutions are both (e.g., Harvard), but many are one or the other. >when you see an official looking table that seems to support a controversial conclusion I've presented some data. If you have contrary data, present it. Otherwise it's just your opinion, no? I mean, you dispute the metrics they use, but don't provide any of your own. What w…

Are you trying to get someone on the internet to admit that they are wrong? I applaud the effort. Here are upvotes.

Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?

#65

Post by tsotha »

sp332 wrote: post #14
spindritf wrote: post #4

People who don't work at all. That's the choice (maybe more like outcome) the society went with. For what might the first time in history, the rich are working more than the poor[1] and labour participation rates are dropping[2]. In many ways this is a superior alternative. Children don't work. They used to. People spend a lot more time in school at the beginning of their life when it has the potential to have the bi…

It's not that the current situation is really bad, but things seem to have stopped improving. Productivity keeps going up but wages don't.

But total compensation does. Companies are paying workers the same (in constant dollars), but the amount they're paying to employ that worker goes up.

The real problem here is productivity increases have been almost entirely soaked up by the increase in the cost of health care.

Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?

#66

Post by inscrutablemike »

RivieraKid wrote: post #35
cousin_it wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think competition is the main villain here. Zero-sum games, prisoner's dilemmas, arms races and tragedies of the commons stole the four-hour workday from us, and many other good things besides. A nice toy example is "20% time" at companies like Google, which tends to evaporate as soon as your performance evaluation compared to your peers becomes tied to your performance at your main project. The only solution to co…

Forcibly reducing the workday doesn't sound like a good idea, the optimal number of work hours depends on your specific situation. If I love my job, I could be ok with 9 hours a day. If I hate my job but it pays really really well, I could be ok with 4 hours a day or less.

You have to understand that no proposal for the government to enforce specific outcomes is ever an attempt to solve an actual problem. It's always, in every case, someone's attempt to make reality conform to their own ideological prejudices.

Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?

#67

Post by afarrell »

mrjj wrote: post #41

I prefer to think about USA as no-vacation-nation. Just because it's good to think that there a lot of guys working 24/7 and if you don't do so, you are retired. You can't do the smart work more than 4 hours a day, right, maybe it's just beyond energy exchange capacity in our brain that support extra concentration. But everyone have a lot of a dumb work, documentation, settling professional conflicts in mail, pinging…

How is documentation dumb work? Explaining technical concepts clearly is hard.

Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?

#68

Post by cousin_it »

privong wrote: post #53
bmj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there /is/ a solution to the problem? Or is this just one of the side effects of capitalism? I'm not trolling here...just curious. My own mind tends to go in the direction of the parent, but, I also see how enforcement would be next to impossible.

I am not sure there is an institutional or global solution. But I am also not convinced it is an institutional or global problem. There are certainly individual solutions—accepting a different standard of living in exchange for fewer working hours, selecting careers which have better working hours—but I have trouble envisioning a global change (short of a cultural attitude shift) which would "solve" this "problem".

Sorry, tragedies of the commons don't have individual solutions. If everyone else is overfishing the common supply, you overfish as well, or go out of business. If everyone else is using performance enhancing drugs, you use them as well, or drop out. If everyone else is working 80 hour weeks and thus bidding up the price of houses, you do the same, or you can't buy a house. These things are very well studied in game theory, and I wasn't kidding when I said the only solution is centrally enforced precommitment.

Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?

#69

Post by enraged_camel »

spindritf wrote: post #4

People who don't work at all. That's the choice (maybe more like outcome) the society went with. For what might the first time in history, the rich are working more than the poor[1] and labour participation rates are dropping[2]. In many ways this is a superior alternative. Children don't work. They used to. People spend a lot more time in school at the beginning of their life when it has the potential to have the bi…

>>People who don't work at all. That's the choice (maybe more like outcome) the society went with. For what might the first time in history, the rich are working more than the poor[1] and labour participation rates are dropping[2].

Wow! Sorry, but did you actually read and critically analyze the links you provided?

The first link for example is utterly ridiculous. First, it defines "rich" people as those who have a Bachelor's degree. In which bizarro world is this actually true? Second, the author argues that these so-called rich people work more because of factors like "winner takes all" and "earning more money makes leisure more expensive." Whereas he completely ignores the elephant in the room, which is that poor people are almost always hourly and are discouraged (if not forbidden) from working overtime. In contrast, higher-paid workers are salaried, so of course their companies do their best to suck as much work out of them as possible. This fact alone can single-handedly explain the discrepancy in work hours.

Of course, what the submitted article is talking about when it says "rich" is actual rich people. You know, those who have "fuck-you money," either because they come from wealthy families or because they made a lucky exit. Those people don't have to work at all, and in fact most of them don't.

Re: Who Stole the Four-Hour Workday?

#70

Post by privong »

cousin_it wrote: post #68
privong wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure there is an institutional or global solution. But I am also not convinced it is an institutional or global problem. There are certainly individual solutions—accepting a different standard of living in exchange for fewer working hours, selecting careers which have better working hours—but I have trouble envisioning a global change (short of a cultural attitude shift) which would "solve" this "problem".

Sorry, tragedies of the commons don't have individual solutions. If everyone else is overfishing the common supply, you overfish as well, or go out of business. If everyone else is using performance enhancing drugs, you use them as well, or drop out. If everyone else is working 80 hour weeks and thus bidding up the price of houses, you do the same, or you can't buy a house. These things are very well studied in game…

Is this issue really a tragedy of the commons though? What resource is being depleted?
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