Keynes, who is having a come back these days, was also in favour of a reduced week, based on the assumption that the prosperity societies have would lead to less work.
We can certainly afford it, but if 40 hours is more efficient than 30 hours, in a competitive framework the former will triumph. Of course, theres a reasonable amount of evidence (as I understand it) that beyond short pushes to get stuff done, stretching the working day reduces productivity: this is one of the reasons companies excepted union demands for an 8 hour day.
It is kind of weird that we have a 5 day working week and not a 6 day or 4 day week if you think about it. One suspects that thats a cultural creation rather than an inevitable one.
in a competitive framework the former will triumph
In what kind of a competitive framework? If, say, all the trade unions within a nation insist upon a 30-hour week, it would indeed maybe reduce the industry’s output a little - but wouldn’t the best and brightest/most conscious workers from the other nations either move there, giving the employer superior human resources, or have a strike at home and enable the same kind of thing for themselves?
The question is, who tells, or broadly hints, the workers what to ask for? (and here the buck is certainly away from the Left—c’mon, look at how useless it has been, nowdays it can’t tell the workers to stand up for anything!)
The workers don’t ask for anything. If all the trade unions insisted on a 30-hour week, it would probably happen, but there’s no real incentive for anyone to try.
but wouldn’t the best and brightest/most conscious workers from the other nations either move there, giving the employer superior human resources, or have a strike at home and enable the same kind of thing for themselves?
The incentives are higher for the best and brightest workers to move to where they are allowed to work more. Remember their opportunity cost for not working is much higher than that of the average or below average worker.
If you are good at what you do and get paid more for it than others, let alone if you are competing for prestige within your field, you have an incentive to move to the more work heavy culture. Perhaps we even see this in the real world with migration of top talent from say Europe to the US.
The typical mind fallacy is an important error to watch out for when considering policy. Many people feel they would prefer to work 30 hours instead of 40 hours or that they wouldn’t respond to certain perverse incentives, so they assume no one else will.
Yeah, you’re partly right. I was kinda mixing up two plausible consequences here—many of the “elite” workers might, in the hypothetical organized-labor-world, actively seek out higher wages even at the cost of leisure or worse conditions, while the “average” or “mediocre” ones in their line of work—or even most, if their line of work hardly allows an “elite” except as a foreman post (which was dangled in front of me after my slightly Kafkaesque stint of stocking shelves at department stores) - would prefer to stay where they are and bargain for a combination of 1)more of effective free time, 2)better conditions and 3)higher pay, instead of allowing themselves to be collectively hypnotized by 3) at the expense of 1) and 2).
Um, in fact, to rely on a cached thought—haven’t Italian workers been known for strong unionization, not-too-high wages by European standards and a rather carefree/relaxed attitude? Fun fact: work-to-rule is called an “Italian strike” in Russian.
It really depends on the field. If you get someone to work 10 less hours at mcdonalds, you are literally getting 25 percent less out of employing that person, and you need to make up the shortfall with more employees. On the other hand, office work is so independent of hours that many people can work at home with no enforcement just fine.
Yeah, the burger-flippers are exploited in a really hardcore and efficient way, no kidding. It’s exemplarly of how far modern capitalism can go in full view of its 1st world clients. (Do read “Manna”!) I’d also argue that they’re emotionally abused through all the phoney “team-building” and such, but that’s another matter.
But hey, that’s exactly where organized labor could find a good spot to make a stand—“We’re working as hard as we possibly can, we’re not some big fucking happy family, treat us like adults!”. Mcdonalds itself is known for trying various HR tricks (“Not bad for a McJob!”) to defuse serious discontent, but lesser fast food chains might indeed have cause to fear such industry-wide organization. A better and more infamous example is Walmart.
You’re welcome. It’s an interesting topic for considering how ems might evolve: can a roughly human architecture work nonstop? Or will ems have to make tradeoffs between reloading a ‘clean’ brain every X seconds and being able to learn from work?
Keynes, who is having a come back these days, was also in favour of a reduced week, based on the assumption that the prosperity societies have would lead to less work.
We can certainly afford it, but if 40 hours is more efficient than 30 hours, in a competitive framework the former will triumph. Of course, theres a reasonable amount of evidence (as I understand it) that beyond short pushes to get stuff done, stretching the working day reduces productivity: this is one of the reasons companies excepted union demands for an 8 hour day.
It is kind of weird that we have a 5 day working week and not a 6 day or 4 day week if you think about it. One suspects that thats a cultural creation rather than an inevitable one.
In what kind of a competitive framework? If, say, all the trade unions within a nation insist upon a 30-hour week, it would indeed maybe reduce the industry’s output a little - but wouldn’t the best and brightest/most conscious workers from the other nations either move there, giving the employer superior human resources, or have a strike at home and enable the same kind of thing for themselves?
The question is, who tells, or broadly hints, the workers what to ask for? (and here the buck is certainly away from the Left—c’mon, look at how useless it has been, nowdays it can’t tell the workers to stand up for anything!)
The workers don’t ask for anything. If all the trade unions insisted on a 30-hour week, it would probably happen, but there’s no real incentive for anyone to try.
My point exactly. It seems that the Market Fairy hasn’t told them they could’ve bargained for a better deal.
The incentives are higher for the best and brightest workers to move to where they are allowed to work more. Remember their opportunity cost for not working is much higher than that of the average or below average worker.
If you are good at what you do and get paid more for it than others, let alone if you are competing for prestige within your field, you have an incentive to move to the more work heavy culture. Perhaps we even see this in the real world with migration of top talent from say Europe to the US.
The typical mind fallacy is an important error to watch out for when considering policy. Many people feel they would prefer to work 30 hours instead of 40 hours or that they wouldn’t respond to certain perverse incentives, so they assume no one else will.
Yeah, you’re partly right.
I was kinda mixing up two plausible consequences here—many of the “elite” workers might, in the hypothetical organized-labor-world, actively seek out higher wages even at the cost of leisure or worse conditions, while the “average” or “mediocre” ones in their line of work—or even most, if their line of work hardly allows an “elite” except as a foreman post (which was dangled in front of me after my slightly Kafkaesque stint of stocking shelves at department stores) - would prefer to stay where they are and bargain for a combination of 1)more of effective free time, 2)better conditions and 3)higher pay, instead of allowing themselves to be collectively hypnotized by 3) at the expense of 1) and 2).
Um, in fact, to rely on a cached thought—haven’t Italian workers been known for strong unionization, not-too-high wages by European standards and a rather carefree/relaxed attitude? Fun fact: work-to-rule is called an “Italian strike” in Russian.
25 percent less output seems like more than a little to me
It would obviously be much less than 25%, if you think about the typical blue-collar worker’s day a little.
It really depends on the field. If you get someone to work 10 less hours at mcdonalds, you are literally getting 25 percent less out of employing that person, and you need to make up the shortfall with more employees. On the other hand, office work is so independent of hours that many people can work at home with no enforcement just fine.
Yeah, the burger-flippers are exploited in a really hardcore and efficient way, no kidding. It’s exemplarly of how far modern capitalism can go in full view of its 1st world clients. (Do read “Manna”!) I’d also argue that they’re emotionally abused through all the phoney “team-building” and such, but that’s another matter.
But hey, that’s exactly where organized labor could find a good spot to make a stand—“We’re working as hard as we possibly can, we’re not some big fucking happy family, treat us like adults!”. Mcdonalds itself is known for trying various HR tricks (“Not bad for a McJob!”) to defuse serious discontent, but lesser fast food chains might indeed have cause to fear such industry-wide organization. A better and more infamous example is Walmart.
″...stretching the working day reduces productivity”
AFAIK, it reduces productivity per hour; I’m not sure at what point it reduces overall productivity.
ETA: will look this up later, if no one else gets there first.
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/work-hour-skepticism.html comes to mind. (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/12/why-work-hour-limits.html also includes some interesting links.)
Thanks!
You’re welcome. It’s an interesting topic for considering how ems might evolve: can a roughly human architecture work nonstop? Or will ems have to make tradeoffs between reloading a ‘clean’ brain every X seconds and being able to learn from work?