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Can we have the day off?

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Re: Can we have the day off?

#801

Post by Scroll_Swe »

cattown wrote: post #33

This 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 have 25 vacation days per year and so does everyone else in Sweden. And we all use them for real it is not like your PTOs. During summer, we make it work but it is a clear standby mode. The upside is we have to staff up too, with regulars and interns.

This is not a tech problem.

This is a you problem.

*Yes salary is way way way way lower. BUT where in the USA could I take a 10min bus (normal people take the bus here not bums) or walk 30-40min to work feeling totally safe even at night? Nevermind I spent 0 on my education in terms of tuition. And live in a city centre, walking to a grocery store with a 60k studio condo? With high speed 5g and fibre. And I hear in the US you have to worry about water or power cuts? Not here lmao.

I mean that simply you make society what you make it.

Over and out, o7, waiting for [flagged]

Re: Can we have the day off?

#802

Post by godelski »

Gareth321 wrote: post #788
godelski wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we also have high taxes In plenty of places in the US we have high taxes and none of those things. Since it's HN I'll mention San Jose has some of the hardest water I've seen in any city and I've seen glass on the street for 6 mo before being cleaned up. I can't figure out where the taxes are actually going. Other states I've lived in I've even paid less and gotten way more. I don't think people mind paying taxes,…

It really does seem like the U.S. gets the worst of both worlds: high taxes (well, not quite as high as Europe), and poor social services. Even worse: despite all this tax revenue and poor social services, the nation is borrowing trillions more every year. Where is it all going?? I suspect there is a lot of fraud baked into the structure of the system, and this makes the governance layer very resistant to change. I'v…

Don't forget that your governments can help too. The US isn't the only country with Epstein files to be released.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#803

Post by nrlucas »

(Yo, Elon: I’m trying to increase the fertility rate. Childcare for 3 small children is six thousand dollars a month here in California. Do I have to go into the office all five days this week? Why not four?)

This is just ripe for a response "leave California". Which Elon likes to bite on. But it's expensive everywhere and not just that, fundamentally time with your child is important and cannot be fixed by throwing money at it.

I know this isn't about Elon's hypocritical stance on fertility, sorry.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#804

Post by nrlucas »

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…

This is why it needs to be done top down. Pareto optimizations can only happen that way.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#805

Post by bigbuppo »

yadaeno wrote: post #119
bigbuppo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. In the four days that you worked you produced 40 days of output, so you should get 40x the pay. It would be unreasonable for the company to pay you 50x what you were getting before... they do have shareholders to think about after all.

I can promise you this is not how the MBAs are reading the situation.

The AI says MBAs aren't necessary.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#806

Post by bawis »

hellojeanpierre wrote: post #602
xiaoyu2006 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human had all the industrialization and stuff, yet we work 5 days / week now.

We worked 6 days a week before, Germany got to 5 days only in 1967 after years of strikes.

Is there any English source for more information about the years of strikes you mentioned?

Re: Can we have the day off?

#807

Post by mil22 »

danans wrote: post #724
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 wa…

[flagged]

Re: Can we have the day off?

#809

Post by cm11 »

cm11 wrote: post #111
Cakez0r wrote: post #68

Earlier 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.

I feel a bit like some have misconstrued my comment. I reread and can see how it could be read as quality of work being ALL that matters. Indeed, salaries capture many things and many bullshit ones. I don't exactly think what I wrote precludes that racism, sexism, nepotism, or cozying up to your boss factor more than they should, but I can see it. If I had another shot, maybe I'd reframe the provocation as "by and large Senior Xs make more than Junior Xs within the same company within the same geo, why?" Perhaps the existence of senior/junior titling at all is based on some sense of output/pay correlation.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#810

Post by ncallaway »

jlebar wrote: post #327
ncallaway wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but a day off would reduce supply. And 2 days off was not a system dictated by God, which we are obligated to keep in perpetuity (in fact, most religions dictate 1 day off, not 2). So, we could, as a society, just choose to make a 32 hour workweek “full time”, and mandate overtime pay after that. There’s no reason, even under capitalism that we must allow all of the productivity gains to accrue to the benefit…

> There’s no reason, even under capitalism that we must allow all of the productivity gains to accrue to the benefit of solely those at the top of an enormous pile of wealth. I would question the premise that all or even most of the productivity gains of any past technological improvement have accrued to the benefit of solely those at the top of an enormous pile of wealth. 200 years ago 90% of Americans lived on farm…

> I would question the premise that all or even most of the productivity gains of any past technological improvement have accrued to the benefit of solely those at the top of an enormous pile of wealth.

That would be relevant if I stood for that premise, but I don't and I wasn't putting it forward.

I was responding to your earlier claim:

> But if you want the laws of supply and demand not to apply to you, that's what you're asking for.

I was disagreeing that this was what was being asked in the present moment. What was being asked in the present moment ("can we have a day off") is very similar to what was being demanded in the past.

In the past, workers demanded to share in the wealth and productivity that was being created through technological gains. And so, I agree with you, workers in the modern era have benefited massively from past technological gains. But that wasn't an accident. Those gains were earned through the blood and sweat of workers demanding to be included in those gains.

And so, to ensure that these present gains continue to be distributed more equally, we need to continue applying the pressure that was applied in the past.

But that's not a rejection of the the laws of supply and demand, it's at a social layer before the economics of supply and demand apply. It's at the political and social layer of how much work we expect an individual worker to put forward into society, which is a major factor in determining the amount of supply of work available.

It's a political decision—totally separate from a rejection of capitalism—of how many hours a "full week of work" is. It is not a rejection of capitalism to set the "full work week" to 48 hours, or to 40 hours, or to 32 hours.

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