Pfff that’s coward numbers. I’ll do you one better:
We should get a 3-day work week.
Suppose that at a given moment a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins as before. But the world does not need twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world everybody concerned in the manufacture of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?
—Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness, 1935
Studies show productivity has a sharp drop off after 6 hours iirc
Mine starts badly, tails off a little in the middle, and the least said about the end the better, but other than that I always give 100%.
We should get a 4 day work week anyway even with reduced hours. It is fucking ridiculous people think that it is possible to do anything but the simplest tasks actively for 8 hours without breaks and be productive. People who think that are either stupid or have never spent a single second analyzing what they do in their day. Practically all companies already operate with their employees getting all work done within a few hours and lounging away with tiny bits of looking busy throughout the day. Might as well let them go home and rest so they can have higher motivation, clearer minds and more productivity. It’s a win win.
Let’s make anything over 32 hours double pay.
4 days is kinda outdated, like how the $15 minimum is so long overdue it’s moot. 24 hours. 3 days working vs 4 days living. We deserve to live more than we work.
Absolutely agree. They wanna complain about entitlement. They think they’re entitled to 3/4 of all of our lives.
Hear hear!
Manager: You’re right! AI Makes me as productive as half my team, so I’m firing half of them AND working a 4 day work week!
Manager in two weeks:
Please come back, I can’t do all this myself!
If AI is so productive, we should have Unuversal Basic Income, and free college/vocational education for anyone who wants it.
America? Educating their population? For free??
We could have done this 150 years ago when oil gave us 100 times more energy back than it took to extract it.
Humans are a defective species, we must see others suffer.
Nah it’s just that the socio-economic system we’re stuck with that literally incentivizes ghoulish behavior that causes suffering. Change the system, change humanity.
I think you may have cause and effect inverted.
Well yes, ghouls were the ones who invented capitalism, but before that we had feudalism, which was even more ghoulish - but guess what, we don’t go around drawing and quartering criminals anymore, so it looks like I’m right. Change the system, change humanity.
Nah, we just change the methods, the underlying mechanism is the same. For example, you need to win so you wrote “looks like I’m right”, instead of clobbering me. But that innate human need to triumph over the other is still there.
To be fair, we kinda did. Don’t get me wrong, workers are still heavily exploited now, but we’ve come a long way since then. At least we have minimum wage and some degree of workers rights now, even if we still have a way to go.
Hopefully this current productivity boom can continue to push us along that path without driving us further into techno dystopia.
3-day by now. 4-day was due before AI, so why would this great boost not make the difference?
3-day week, baseline annual salary across the board of $100,000, free health care for all and capital asset tax of 95% over $50 million
Who’s with me?
The people.
I’m down for that. I could be satisfied with only $50 million.
We should’ve gotten a 4-day work week decades ago. Now it should be a 3-day work week at most and I’m being generous. The capitalists are always screeching about the low birth rate, but if people were working 3 days a week and making a decent living off that time, it would help the birth rate because then a household with two working parents could be scheduled on different days and alternate staying home with the child, plus have a shared day off every week.
Anyway, that’s just a selling point to make to the capitalists. Whether or not it helps with the birth rate doesn’t matter as much as the fact that we’re owed shorter work weeks thanks to all the blood, sweat, and tears that labor has put into making the world as wealthy as it is now. What’s the point of all this work if not to improve our standard of living? Technology making our lives better is hitting diminishing returns and now it’s often not making our lives better or it’s even making our lives worse.
George Jetson’s work week was one hour a day, two days a week. That’s what we were promised we’d get once everything was automated, not that Spacely Space Sprockets would make us work 60 hours a week and pocket all the extra productivity for themselves.
The argument for a 4 day work week is that studies have shown it maintains the same level of productivity as a 5 day workweek, but it makes people happier, so it doesn’t slow down the economy, but actually improves it. What’s the argument for a 3 day work week?
Because people deserve more time to be people. Not everything has to serve the Holy Economy.
Sure, I agree with that. However, we also need to consider what a “net decrease in productivity” actually means for the population as a whole, and whether it’s something we want to accept as a trade-off for more free time. Briefly, we can collectively choose to work four, three, or even two days a week, despite seeing a decrease in overall productivity. However, a decrease in productivity means that stuff like clothes, transport, food, IT services, and pretty much everything you can think of that someone has to produce becomes more scarce.
You basically need to answer the question of “would you prefer two days off per week with current access to goods and services, or have more days off with reduced access to goods and services”. Of course, there may come along technological innovations that change this in some ways, and there are studies showing that a lot of people can be sufficiently productive on a four-day work week. On a society level, I still think the point stands as an overall tradeoff we need to consider when talking about whether we should reduce the work-week.
My point is that it’s not just a “capitalists are bad, and we’re owed more free time” thing. If we produce less, then goods and services become scarcer for everyone. I would say the distribution of wealth in society, and how it’s shifted the past 20-50 years is more concerning than the fact that we’re working the same hours as we were 20-50 years ago.
Sure, I agree with that. However, we also need to consider what a “net decrease in productivity” actually means for the population as a whole, and whether it’s something we want to accept as a trade-off for more free time.
Skill issue. You know turns exist, right? Just hire two turns of people who work 3 days a week, and bam! You cover 6 weeks of work. Heck, you are hiring more people so you are creating more employment!
And that’s all even before machines and AI completely replace the need for that work, anyway.
However, a decrease in productivity means that stuff like clothes, transport, food, IT services, and pretty much everything you can think of that someone has to produce becomes more scarce.
Would not having 30 dresses make you unhappier, if you have time to spend doing things you enjoy instead of consumption being the only thing you have to show for all the time you spend at work?
How much transportation is actually what we need for living and how much is induced by being forced to go to work?
Food has the amazing ability to just grow with limited human intervention, so there is no reason to assume a reduction in food availability. Also with more free time people could tend to a small garden for some of their food more easily.
IT services… You are on a platform run by volunteers in their free time. More free time would mean more of such services available.
Capitalism has outpaced “intrinsic” consumption since at least a hundred years in the industrialized nations. Most consumption is induced by advertisment and social pressure manipulating us to consume more, so we work more, so we consume more, so the rich can extract more wealth in every cycle for themselves. You cannot separate wealth distribution, scarcity and work time from each other.
For the average people i’d wager the available goods and services wouldn’t change much, as the people who make goods and services exclusive to the super rich like yachts would be producing other goods instead.
Would not having 30 dresses make you unhappier, if you have time to spend doing things you enjoy instead of consumption being the only thing you have to show for all the time you spend at work?
It feels like you’re attributing to me an opinion that a decrease in the availability of goods and services would be a universally bad thing. I never said that.
For my own part, I don’t own much excess stuff. I use whatever clothes I buy until they’re worn out, and the only furniture I own is a couch, a bed, a kitchen table and two chairs. However, I do enjoy climbing, hiking, and skiing, all of which require a bit of equipment to do. Lower productivity would likely imply that those things become less available/more expensive.
As for food: Saying that it “has the amazing ability to just grow without much human intervention” just makes you seem unaware of the fact that loads of people would literally starve if it weren’t for modern farming equipment, synthetic fertiliser, preservation methods, and transportation. For people to rely on “a small garden for some of their food” is not a practice that works at scale with the population density in the world today. There’s a reason the population on earth was relatively stable until the industrial revolution, and has grown exponentially since: Modern technology makes it possible for us to feed very many more people with a lot less land and resources.
IT services: Yes, I’m on a platform run by volunteers. I’m on it using hardware that was built by workers, with materials developed, extracted and refined by workers, on electricity produced and distributed by workers, over an internet that is possible because of workers. All these workers are reliant on their own corporate IT systems in order to be as efficient as they are today. You can’t just extract the last link in a huge web of dependencies, and act like it could work on its own.
Anyway, all these things are side-notes. My primary point (which I still believe stands) is that we cannot expect to reduce productivity across the board (i.e. everyone works significantly less), and expect that there will not be a price to pay. Whether that price is worth paying is an open discussion, which I haven’t really decided what I think about myself.
My argument is that a lot of what we consider “productive” actually is not at the consumption for which it is produced isn’t intrinsic, but artificially induced to produce more. Production became its own end under Capitalism rather than a mean to satisfy needs.
Also we need to consider, see the farming example, how much we currently buy instead of do ourselves for a lack of time and energy. As for the risk of starvation if it wasnt for modern means of agriculture i disagree in part. In many industrialized countries the majority of agricultural land use is for animal farming. Aside from being destructive to the environment and climate, the overconsumption of meat leads to more diseases like colon cancer.
With your example of internet, how much bandwidth is used to feed people advertisement so they consume more? How much computing hardware is wasted on LLMs and other slop?
Capitalism is self reinforcing. Once you break the cycle you start seeing how much of it just goes to reproduce the capitalist system, rather than serve any human needs.
Briefly, we can collectively choose to work four, three, or even two days a week, despite seeing a decrease in overall productivity.
Or we can collectively choose to never shorten the work week while productivity continues to outpace wages forever. Which is what republicans and centrist democrats both want.
You seem to agree with my last point, which was that
the distribution of wealth in society, and how it’s shifted the past 20-50 years is more concerning
That is: The major problem we have today is that the increase in production we’ve seen the past 20-50 years has primarily benefited the wealthy. This needs to change. Once we have decent wealth distribution, we can make an informed decision on whether we want to reduce our total productivity in order to have more free time.
Once we have decent wealth distribution, we can make an informed decision on whether we want to reduce our total productivity in order to have more free time.
And since that will have its own set of prerequisites that centrists will work with republicans to block, we’ll keep on as we are, with productivity outpacing wages forever.
Most jobs I’ve ever had haven’t been about creating anything used directly by a normal person, they’ve been about optimizing things in ways that squeeze maximum profit for billionaires. I don’t think I’m alone, especially in the developed world.
A 3 day work week maintains the same level of productivity and makes people happier.
What’s the argument for a 2 day work week?
It means if you want more labor than can be accommodated within a 2 day work week, you should hire more people.
studiespilot projects, and successful ones. Productivity is even higher.https://autonomy.work/portfolio/uk4dwpilotresults/
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230319-four-day-workweek-trial-the-firms-where-it-didnt-work
https://www.sap.com/israel/blogs/the-four-day-workweek-paradox
I think the argument would be that the productivity gains that have happened since the 5 day work week was implemented means that if we want that same level of productivity then a 3 day work week would get that. It would be less productive then currently but the argument would be that a lot of that productivity is just going towards the profits of the companies through having to hire less people. Instead if you wanted to maintain current productivity with a 3 day work week you’d have to hire more people which is good with the amount of wealth transfer and inequality that’s been happening.
Edit: not to mention how bad the job market has been recently as well.
I would argue that having more hired staff on rotation would be more productive, even with fewer workdays by any one person. By having more people who have experience with a given task, should any one of them become unable to work, someone else can pick up the slack until things have returned to normal.
When a company relies on linchpin personnel, the loss of a person could be devastating, since the company will have to find a capable replacement to hire. That means interviews, introductory payment packages, hoping that delays don’t cause further damage, establishing the new hire in the workplace, and so on.
100% agree but companies are of course against it because hiring people is expensive. Since if you have two people working 3 day work weeks they’ll still need to be paid the same amount as working 5 days since they still need to make enough to make a living. It also gives benefits to people working since it means you can go on vacation without a bunch of work piling up since you’re the only person who can do it.
My reading of their argument is that when the 5 day a week, 40 hour work week began there was a specific level of productivity. As technology increased the output increased. If we believe that recent increases make it so that we only need to work 4 days to maintain our current output, we should be owed 3 days because by the same logic long ago we should’ve dropped to 4.
when the 5 day a week, 40 hour work week began there was a specific level of productivity. As technology increased the output increased.
Exactly, so following this argument, we can choose between living at our current (increased) productivity level (40 hour weeks), or trading off the technological advancements for more spare time at the cost of going back to the productivity level we had previously.
I won’t argue for which of these two is “correct”, I think the tradeoff between free time vs. more access to goods and services is considered very differently by different people. However, I do think that a major problem we’re facing today is that the increased productivity we’ve had the past 50 years due to technological advances has benefited the wealthy far too much, at the expense of everyone else.
I think it’s more fruitful to first try to take care of the wealth distribution, such that we can actually see the quality of life our current productivity level can give everyone. Then we can make an informed choice regarding whether we want to reduce the productivity in exchange for more free time.
I would assume that there’s a balance to this. At some point the reduction of hours will result in a loss in productivity. You can do 5 days of work in 4 days if you’re better rested and more focused, but this might be less true in 3 days. I mean if studies show that there’s isn’t a dip productivity and that it improves well being, then sure, that would be great but I think it’s likely than a 4 day work week.
We should’ve gotten a 4-day work week decades ago
Then you should have burned down Chicago decades ago.
The 5 day work week didn’t just happen because workers deserved it. It happened because they went to war.
We as a species could have built a leisure society decades ago. The raw energy input of fossil fuels could have been wisely parceled out by a council of benevolent dictators, while we live under the domes and chase Jessica 7 on a monorail.
Imagine being rich as fuck because you’re working 6 days a week instead of still barely making ends meet.
No, no, no. They’ll just make it so that each of us is expected to do more since AI is “helping” us. Success under capitalism just leads to more work. The number has to keep going up. If they get their arms twisted they may give us a day off, but they will absolutely decrease the pay. My fear is that they would also go, “Oh, well, since you’re not working 40 hours a week, even though it’s the same work, so no benefits for you 🤷🏿♀️.”
We should already be on a fucking 3 day with increased pay with how much productivity has gone up, instead we’re just getting ass raped harder and harder while rich assholes keep getting richer and richer with no end in sight.
with how much productivity has gone up
How has productivity gone up?
We should already be on a fucking 3 day
Are you aware how the 5-day work week happened? It wasn’t something that workers just got when it started to make sense. There were literal street battles between striking unionized workers and cops. People were hanged by the government. It took decades.
If you want that change to happen, you need to form or join a union. Right now in the US only 12.2% of workers are covered by a collective bargaining agreement. That’s the 4th lowest in the OECD, with only Mexico, Costa Rica and Turkey lower. Canada is at 31%. Switzerland, one of the most right-wing countries in Europe is at 45%. Spain is at 80%, France is at 98% and Italy is at 100%.
Once people are covered by CBAs, the unions need to flex their power and go on strike.
Complaining on the Internet is not going to cause the situation to change.
No, you don’t undestand 😡
One day I’ll be a billionaire too and I can be the one that ass rapes others 😎
Tap for spoiler
/s
I read the following sentence a day ago and it’s stuck with me:
We europeans shouldn’t laugh at the suffering of the American people, just because we get fucked in the ass with slightly more lube.
12.2% of US workers are covered by a collective bargaining agreement. In Europe the lowest rate is Greece at 14.2%, but most other countries are much, much higher. Right-wing Hungary is at 21.8%. Bend-over-backwards-for-US-tech-companies Ireland is at 34%. The home of the bankers, Switzerland, is at 45%. No other European country is below 50%, and the biggest economies France is at 98%, Germany is at 80% and Italy is at 100%.
Europeans may not be fully satisfied with the balance of power between corporations and workers. But, it is doing so much better than the US.
Well yeah absolutely, answering as an European.
The issue is that it’s so comfy for most they don’t see any issue. Like at all.
Inequity is a global issue.
But then they couldn’t pay 1/2 as many people as they used to while still expecting the same amount of work to get done.
Oh you sweet summer child. 1/2 as many people for double the amount of work
but then shareholders?
Fuck shareholders.
Ew
What?
It’s just gross is all. Don’t really want any of that shareholder action
I agree gross. But we can still eat them right?
