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Can we have the day off?

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Re: Can we have the day off?

#721

Post by Timon3 »

Aurornis wrote: post #710
Timon3 wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be fair if the rules of the market were static, but companies are actively using their power and influence to affect the market rules so they can get away with paying workers less and less - that's not to mention collusion and corruption. Just because this has been normalized doesn't mean it's not evil. If a healthcare company introduces processes that deny people life-saving interventions just to funnel m…

> but companies are actively using their power and influence to affect the market rules so they can get away with paying workers less and less - that's not to mention collusion and corruption. What do you mean? Labor is a market. Companies can’t force anyone to work for them. If the pay gets too low, people leave for other companies or jobs.

Just like all markets, the labor market isn't an immutable natural structure. It is actively shaped by the laws and regulations of the market's respective physical location. There are too many specific examples to count, but a few of the most obvious ones are IMO: Child labor, minimum wage, max. working hours and/or overtime, worker safety & health, ...

> Companies can’t force anyone to work for them. If the pay gets too low, people leave for other companies or jobs.

In an ideal world, sure! But in the real world, there are many sources of friction that - when added together - keep people tied to a job, even if they feel the pay is too low.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#722

Post by yifanl »

jgilias wrote: post #667
throwaway63467 wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been like that for a while, economic gains went to a small fraction of people, before software developers were among those that were on the winning side, now they’re on the losing side. Think about how much the US economy is growing right now and who really profits from that growth. My guess is that 90 % of the growth goes to 10 % of people, with AI maybe 99 % might go to the 1 %. Or who do you think will gain f…

We’re going to be fine. I see daily what non-engineers that build stuff with AI come up with.

You need to realize that people generally don't care about the quality of software. Crowdstrike shut down every airport in the world and is still in business today.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#723

Post by sfink »

CalRobert wrote: post #661
bryanlarsen wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that support was a family of 4-6 in a 1200 sq ft house, eating out <6x a year, vacations were picnics at the local beach, one car that you did your own maintenance on, one tv, only one set of good clothes (your Sunday outfit), et cetera. Most places in the US can still support a family at that same level of expenditure on an average income.

In many cases it's illegal or commercially unviable to build said 1200 sqft house. It's kinda funny that this is considered small, though. 110-120 sqm is perfectly normal for a family of 4 where I live, and in many cases they do it with 1 or 0 cars. But I live somewhere that isn't horribly designed (the Netherlands)

Outside of the city cores in the US, homes are built as castles. We have large refrigerators and freezers so that we can amortize our trips to the grocery store by maintaining our own inventory. In my family, we plan the menu a week ahead of time and shop for it in advance. Missing an ingredient means a minimum 1 hour round trip to the big box grocery store by car when it all adds up, which is enough to scuttle an evening's plans. There is 1 smaller store, but it's barely closer -- the main savings is less time walking across a giant parking lot -- and it's absolutely pointless; the only things they can afford to carry are sugary trash and stimulants and intoxication-related supplies. The big box stores use their scale to monopolize the lower profit margin "actual food" category.

When I briefly lived in Paris, we had a laughably small refrigerator. But it was about a 5 minute walk to a neighborhood grocery store, so we effectively used their fridge instead. Which also provided human contact in a way driving to and shopping at a big box store really cannot.

Some of this is just the difference between living in a city vs the suburbs. But not all: even in the US cities, my impression is that you'll have a large fridge and shop at the big stores, even if you take public transit to get there, because the small stores can't compete on staple items.

We're in a path-dependent hell where losing a parking space is felt as a mortal insult, while losing the need for a parking space feels pie-in-the-sky, an unobtainable fantasy. There's an entire synergistic system of dependence on scale and cars and "self-sufficiency" (that masks the infrastructure dependency that it requires).

Re: Can we have the day off?

#724

Post by danans »

mil22 wrote: post #333

Effective working hours are not set by absolute productivity - they are set by an equilibrium between two forces: 1. Competitive market dynamics. If you only work four days a week, other employees and companies who are willing to work five days a week will do so and get ahead of you, and you are more likely to get fired or to go out of business. This force pushes us all to work longer (and harder) so we have more mon…

> assuming we're all 10x more productive - we'll still be working 5 days and enjoying 2 days a week, but we'll consume 10x more, or everything we consume will be 10x higher quality

Who is "we all"? To me, it sounds like the relative few who happen to have those jobs that have the 10x productivity boost but also receive the monetary upside (via ownership).

The rest of the hard-to-automate jobs will likely see their wages crater as the workers whose jobs got automated flood those labor markets - i.e. office worker turned skilled physical laborer.

This will further enrich the previous small group relative to the masses, as they will pay lower prices and receive higher quality goods and services due to competition between everyone else. Prices will fall not by miraculous AI robots but by squeezing labor.

This is the scenario - neofeudalism - that may await us absent strong mechanisms to replace the broad productivity redistribution the social technology known as "jobs" provided. Hardly a good thing.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#725

Post by CalRobert »

sfink wrote: post #723
CalRobert wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases it's illegal or commercially unviable to build said 1200 sqft house. It's kinda funny that this is considered small, though. 110-120 sqm is perfectly normal for a family of 4 where I live, and in many cases they do it with 1 or 0 cars. But I live somewhere that isn't horribly designed (the Netherlands)

Outside of the city cores in the US, homes are built as castles. We have large refrigerators and freezers so that we can amortize our trips to the grocery store by maintaining our own inventory. In my family, we plan the menu a week ahead of time and shop for it in advance. Missing an ingredient means a minimum 1 hour round trip to the big box grocery store by car when it all adds up, which is enough to scuttle an ev…

Indeed, this is why I moved to the Netherlands. But the US has a severe sickness at its heart that puts life behind an increasingly difficult paywall.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#726

Post by pseudalopex »

majormajor wrote: post #132
kbar13 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is this not backwards? salaried employee means you get paid the same amount no matter how many hours you work.

There is a lot of regulatory stuff, particularly around benefits, that push people towards nominally 40hr salaried contracts even if they don't need all 40 of those. "Salaried" vs hourly is increasingly a scam anyway, but all that benefits stuff is something that would have to evolve. And it could, if people find the political will.

What regulations prevent an employer to give benefits to employees before 40 hours? And how do some employers give benefits before 40 hours despite them?

Re: Can we have the day off?

#727

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

ranyume wrote: post #76
madrox wrote: post #65

The four day work week is a prisoner's dilemma. If everyone did it, then we'd all get a payoff, but if someone defects to a longer work week they tend to get ahead at work. Thus we all do it and thus we all lose. It's funny how underappreciated it is how the five day work week is powered by norms...at least in the US. People assume there are laws about it. The only laws dictate compensation past certain thresholds, a…

What do you mean? You just need to ban companies from doing 5 days work.

You would also need to ban them from employing people in other countries that allow 5 days work.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#728

Post by lII1lIlI11ll »

hx8 wrote: post #117
madrox wrote: post #65

The four day work week is a prisoner's dilemma. If everyone did it, then we'd all get a payoff, but if someone defects to a longer work week they tend to get ahead at work. Thus we all do it and thus we all lose. It's funny how underappreciated it is how the five day work week is powered by norms...at least in the US. People assume there are laws about it. The only laws dictate compensation past certain thresholds, a…

By this logic you could get promoted if you worked six day work weeks.

I did get promoted for working seven days work weeks. Twice, in fact.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#729

Post by tsunamifury »

AlterEgo7 wrote: post #440
tsunamifury wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a stupid statement by a stupid philosopher. Years later we learned collective development and incentive produced a society he could have never imagined. It’s simply being looted now by the idiots this moron worshiped.

You sound very sure of your opinion... While missing the basic fact that he was a historian, not a philosopher.

The commentary was that of a general/philosopher/historian fused together... and really just a statement of "the weak are meat". Yes power has an advantage but its not the end all be all configuration.

Maybe he meant this somewhat disparagingly, but ultimately not enough. For a greek.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#730

Post by krashidov »

lmm wrote: post #570
krashidov wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? I don't need 10x more stuff. If everyone had said this 100 years ago we wouldn't have the Polio vaccine, air conditioning etc. There are lots of problems in the world and there are still a ton of incentives to fix those problems. Yes there is also greed, scams, and exploitation - but that's never going to go away

> If everyone had said this 100 years ago we wouldn't have the Polio vaccine, air conditioning etc. If we got a 4-hour work week that might be a worthwhile trade.

I agree it would be nice. Technically you can start a company and do 4 day work weeks only
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