[HN Gopher] Why didn't we get the four-hour workday?
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Why didn't we get the four-hour workday?
Author : feross
Score : 38 points
Date : 2023-01-06 21:32 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rootsofprogress.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (rootsofprogress.org)
| Qem wrote:
| The collapse of the Soviet union in the late 80s gave rise to a
| unipolar capitalist world. That reduced the propensity of
| governments and corporations to share with workers the big
| computer-tech fueled productivity gains realized from the 90s
| onwards. In the previous decades it was easier to workers to
| negotiate better conditions, as their employees feared they would
| become communist-friendly if too mistreated. With fear from
| communism gone, corporations and governments feel free to squeeze
| their employees, sabotage unions, etc cetera. So productivity
| gains now go straight to billionaires pockets, instead of
| reducing the working hours for the rest of us.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| One thing not mentioned is that productivity increases in one
| area free up some of those people to do entirely new jobs that
| did not previously exist, just because society couldn't afford to
| allocate people to those jobs.
|
| Not many doctors and dentists and so forth 1000 years ago,
| because the agricultural base couldn't support it. It took 95% of
| people being farmers to produce enough food for themselves and
| the remaining 5% of the others. Now 5% of people can produce
| enough food for the other 95%, which allows them to be doctors
| and programmers and whatnot.
| anon291 wrote:
| People hate being bored. This means if you make people have too
| much leisure time, they seek alternatives.
|
| In the past, this was mainly family and community events.
|
| As the strength of both the family and civic social institutions
| declined, we became dependent on businesses to provide us things
| our families used to (child care, elder care, parties, dinners,
| storytelling, entertainment, music, etc). These cause demand for
| more commercial businesses.
|
| As the article states, all the commentators were envisioning a
| work week dominated only by making sure you had enough to
| survive. If people actually wanted this, they would be able to
| achieve it. However, people really want iphones, vacations, nice
| clothes, etc as well. So there is demand for labor, and where
| there's demand and a buyer with excess cash, we will step up.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > The technocrats promised every family on the continent of North
| America $20,000 a year [about $400,000 today], and a sixteen-hour
| work week. This is perhaps the peak of promises based on an
| abundance economy. Charles P. Steinmetz saw a two-hour working
| day on the horizon
|
| These projections always read like something that would come from
| a person who doesn't understand where their food comes from, how
| much work goes into building and maintaining their housing, or
| that most people's preferred entertainment options require a lot
| of _work_ to produce.
|
| I could see us arriving at some of these extreme estimates if
| everyone universally agreed to eat the cheapest synthetic food we
| could produce with the most automation, live in the most bare-
| bones housing, and exclusively choose free or cheap entertainment
| and hobbies. But in the real world, it takes a lot of work to get
| food to people, build and maintain housing, and the things people
| like to do and own are also labor-intensive to produce at various
| stages.
|
| There's definitely more room to squeeze labor out of the market
| through more automation, but that doesn't result in higher wages
| for people.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Eh, I think that a pretty huge portion of labor in the USA is
| spent on things that are not at all necessary for things people
| need or want for their quality of life. (Including the jobs of
| much of HN readership).
|
| cf David Graeber _Bullshit Jobs_.
|
| I don't think it's at all true that those people didn't
| understand the labor that is needed to create food (
| _especialy_ this; a much tinier portion of labor is spent on
| agriculture), housing, or even entertainment. I think they
| actually had it right, and that we don 't work less is not
| about material necessity but just about the way our present
| economic structure works.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| >There's definitely more room to squeeze labor out of the
| market through more automation, but that doesn't result in
| higher wages for people.
|
| This statement is kinda in odds with what proceeded it. You are
| suggesting that "in the real world" this is impossible. But
| then also conclude with the line of reasoning that you seem to
| be arguing against.
| mlyle wrote:
| > These projections always read like something that would come
| from a person who doesn't understand where their food comes
| from
|
| From a smaller and smaller proportion of the population working
| in the agricultural field-- about 25-30% of the population in
| 1930 to about 10% now-- despite producing more calories per
| person and more meat, etc.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > From a smaller and smaller proportion of the population
| working in the agricultural field-- about 25-30% of the
| population in 1930 to about 10% now-- despite producing more
| calories per person and more meat, etc.
|
| The graphs in the linked article show weekly working hours
| declining from 50H to 40H over that time frame.
|
| Taking agricultural workplace participation from 10% to a
| hypothetical 1% isn't going to drop working hours from 40H to
| 10H.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Taking agricultural workplace participation from 10% to a
| hypothetical 1% isn't going to drop working hours from 40H
| to 10H.
|
| Yes, but your argument that it requires eating the cheapest
| synthetic food seems faulty; if 10% of our work hours are
| going to agriculture and related industries, then it's not
| a _huge_ driver of our work week.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| My understanding is that the 10% number included all food
| related jobs such as cook, waiter, food manufacturing etc.
| not just farming which is 1.3% of jobs.
|
| https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-
| statistic...
| GalenErso wrote:
| Money is a loose measure of the amount of labor one is allowed
| to command. The more money you have, the more virtual servants
| you have to fulfill your needs and wants. Inflation happens
| when the total amount of labor the labor force is entitled to
| exceeds the real labor actually available.
|
| By promising every laborer the income equivalent to about 7-8
| average laborers (400k), the amount of virtual labor the labor
| force would be entitled to would exceed the labor actually
| available by 6-7x. So the price of virtual labor would quickly
| rise to meet the new threshold of 400k and we would go back to
| square one.
|
| The only way to increase the amount of virtual labor is by
| squeezing productivity out of technology and capital
| expenditures. In other words, machines, i.e. mechanical slaves.
| HPsquared wrote:
| If people today were satisfied with a 1930s level of luxury, we
| could absolutely get by on a 16 hour week. Probably a lot less,
| in fact. There would be no need for content marketing.
| kiba wrote:
| Most of the cost of living is fundamentally related to
| housing and transportation, which are determined by land use
| policies. In this respect, people of the 1930s may be better
| off than us depending on the metrics.
| jrumbut wrote:
| On an individual level it's not particularly hard to do for a
| little while when you're young.
|
| The only problem is healthcare.
| dieselgate wrote:
| One thing that irks me is how keeping up with tech is almost
| mandatory. I see sms two factor being deprecated a lot now
| and am curious how people without smart phones work around
| that - just as one example of many
| ricardobeat wrote:
| The table shows the Netherlands with an average 38 days off from
| work, this looks... wrong? The minimum is 20 days, and ~30 is on
| the high end for most companies. There is no way that 38 is the
| average unless the study counted something else.
| eitau_1 wrote:
| Housing costs, which are proportional to average population
| income, force us to compete in a Red Queen's race - everyone's
| earnings have to catch up with others'.
| [deleted]
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I blame bullshit jobs and management. I can be productive with
| less than 40 hours, I can't be a manager/PM/VP's butler if I'm
| away from my computer.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Then why are there rich and poor sides of a town? In many
| cases, people earning high incomes spend extra time to drive
| past lower priced housing to get to their higher priced
| housing.
|
| No one forced them to pay more than the minimum for housing.
| kiba wrote:
| _No one forced them to pay more than the minimum for
| housing._
|
| Not all land in a given area are equal in their attribute and
| there's fundamental scarcity in desirable lands. The richest
| presumably purchases houses in locations that has the most
| amenities, while everybody scrambles for the rest.
| ZainRiz wrote:
| Housing can be very cheap if you're willing to live in a small
| town. It feels expensive only when people want to cluster
| around the same, limited number of areas.
|
| If you're not tied by an employer, then you can be way more
| flexible about how you spend your housing budget
| akgerber wrote:
| Housing costs are a basket of the cost of the housing unit
| itself and land costs. Regulation limiting how densely housing
| may be built atop land, when this limit is lower than the
| number of housing units demanded, is what causes the Red
| Queen's race dynamic.
| kace91 wrote:
| Land is still limited (given an interest in low distance to a
| hub) and density is physically limited as well, regardless of
| regulation.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Hubs can be built, though.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| There are other, more hedonic treadmills as well. Aluminium
| used to be expensive enough to make fancy tableware from, but
| now that it is dirt cheap, people want to buy iPhones instead.
|
| I hope there are some among us who (cf Carnegie) might view
| building the equivalent of libraries as a positional good?
| jrpt wrote:
| An iPhone every few years is a very insignificant cost
| compared to a house.
| brailsafe wrote:
| What decade do you live in where housing costs are proportional
| to the average population's income? Asking for a friend.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Monthly rents and mortgage payments are proportional to
| disposable incomes, pretty much by definition. People
| competitively bid up the prices in terms of what they can
| each afford.
| johnea wrote:
| Ha Ha 8-) Nice history lesson!
|
| The author left out the most probable hypothesis of why it didn't
| happen though: ownership kept all that extra productivity and
| kept working labor just as hard for no more money.
|
| The author left out that same option in the concluding statement:
| Some of them might have just been saying that productivity could
| be much higher, regardless of whether that turned into shorter
| working hours, higher wages, or a combination of both
|
| ... or neither, all of the money can be diverted to "shareholder
| value".
|
| This is fact the way it's almost always been. Only in situations
| where labor has been highly organized has the outcome be any
| different, i.e. workers benefiting from productivity increases.
| hintymad wrote:
| How many parents would rather have a 5-day daycare or schools, so
| that they won't be exhausted for staying with their kids for so
| many hours?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > How many parents would rather have a 5-day daycare or
| schools, so that they won't be exhausted for staying with their
| kids for so many hours?
|
| Wow. I (and many people I know) have switched to jobs with
| fewer hours but lower pay just to be able to spend more time
| with my kids. This mindset that ones' own kids are to be
| avoided as much as possible is mind boggling to me.
| s0rce wrote:
| I mean its not too surprising that some people don't like
| spending time with their children, it would certainly be very
| depressing if this was the norm.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| If parents didn't have to _work_ so many hours, I am extremely
| confident that many of them would choose to spend many of those
| freed hours with their kids.
|
| Of course different people are different.
|
| Either way, it's a huge problem that currently most of the
| people paid to take care of kids (very especially but not only
| pre-public-school age) are underpaid and overworked -- this
| does not lead to the kind of care for our collective kids that
| we would want.
|
| Those paid to do childcare especially should be able to work no
| more hours than they can do while still being attentive and
| caring and fully invested, and be able to access continuing
| education and mentorship in how to raise kids, and still live a
| comfortable life.
|
| That is currently not at all how it works in the USA.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| In my country, not only 100%, but also 80% and 60% jobs are
| commonly available, and people do take them -- often in order
| to spend more time with their kids.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I knew a bunch of people who manage to squeeze less than 4 hours
| of work in an 8 hour work day.
|
| I kinda think TikTok, wow, candy crush, etc are are secretly
| funded by communists to bring down the capitalist west from
| within
| WhatsName wrote:
| From my personal experience I manage to do consistently put in
| 4 hours of focused quality work every day. If I do more because
| of stress, it usually comes at a loss of productivity later.
| Sure, I can stay around for 8h in a regular office environment,
| but then the other half gets either eaten up by distractions,
| enduring meetings or just generally not being focused.
|
| And from experience working in different environments and
| places, this is not just me. Most people pretend to be busy,
| because workplaces worship appearance and control over
| productivity and output.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| TikTok is publicly funded by communists to bring down the west.
| Tarsul wrote:
| We are always talking about 4-day work week or stuff like in this
| article. However, I am much more interested in the question how
| much hours one could chip off of the usual 8 hour (office) work
| day and still be basically 100% productive. My guess is that
| around 6-7 hours should probably be AS productive as 8 hour-days.
| But, of course, this is dependend on a lot of factors (e.g. do
| you still have enough opportunities to communicate with
| colleagues etc.) which is why I would really like to see more
| studies about it.
|
| Personally, I have just reduced my hours from 40 to about 35 and
| I love it. It's not just the extra hour that I have in the
| evening but also that I am way less tired after work (thus can
| enjoy the rest of the day more). Also, this last hour (to me)
| always felt like "I have to do it although it ain't productive at
| all". But that's me. Just one anecdata. I would like more.
| obblekk wrote:
| The prediction is $400k/yr income and 4 hours a day.
|
| We made it approx 1/6th of the way to the income goal and maybe
| 1/6th of the way to the time goal, when you account for improved
| vacation time, sick leave, mat/pat leave, remote work time, etc.
| all of which consume some of the productivity gain.
|
| The big gap is that productivity growth rates didn't really
| sustain after 1970s leading to slower income growth and slower
| free time growth (see flattening of curve
| https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours).
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Grind enough leetcode and this becomes reality though, at least
| until very recently.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| Everyone is quick to say something like, "You're not living by
| the same standards that were the norm 90 years ago." The response
| is wanting. Notably, it's _not_ the same as saying, "You _could_
| work that much if you wanted--so long as you 're willing to
| endure the same living standards as 90 years ago." That doesn't
| seem to be true; the choice to opt for those standards doesn't
| seem to be there.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| A good example with cars : GM has been selling a 5K USD EV in
| China[0] for 5 years, yet in North America the Bolt EV (which I
| believe is the cheapest EV) starts at 27.5k USD. Sure, the 5K
| car is a death trap on wheels, but I doubt it's more dangerous
| than the cars we had 90 years ago.
|
| [0]:https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/07/autos/gm-china-electric-
| car...
| icepat wrote:
| I think you may be right, at least in the developed Western
| nations. However, there are plenty of countries someone could
| settle in that have less developed infrastructure, and
| economies. You would be able to live in the same standards as
| several decades ago if you worked remotely for a small number
| of hours a day.
|
| I don't mean this to denigrate these countries, but the living
| standards in some countries are very different. These countries
| are often "cheap" by Western standards. You could settle in the
| Balkans, for example, and work a few hours each day, four days
| a week, and cover expenses very easily with a freelance salary.
|
| I know several Americans who moved to Croatia on DN visas
| specifically because they could only afford to live there on
| their freelance salaries.
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