[HN Gopher] Remembrance of Work Time Standards Lost (2001)
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Remembrance of Work Time Standards Lost (2001)
Author : robtherobber
Score : 16 points
Date : 2023-01-14 14:34 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (web.archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (web.archive.org)
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| This is a polemic, the chapter he refers to is actually a cogent
| argument:
| https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...
|
| Basically he traces the origin of the "fallacy" back to "a
| hodgepodge of borrowed working-class slang, middle-class
| prejudice, and archaic economic doctrine" from David Schloss in
| 1891, and shows it had nothing to do with the 8-hour day effort
| at the time. The "lump-of-labor fallacy" is essentially a
| strawman trotted out by opponents of lower hours as a rhetorical
| device, similar to how the waterfall model never existed before
| Agile came along as "the alternative". (See e.g.
| https://pragtob.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/why-waterfall-was-a...)
|
| Then he uses Chapman's theory of hours and some estimates from
| Denison to show that most likely the 35 hour work week would
| result in lower unit labor costs, increased demand, and a net
| gain in productivity overall from the redistribution of working
| time.
|
| Then he gets into a discussion of fixed costs, and basically says
| "the government can subsidize the transition by restructuring
| taxes".
|
| I'm not saying his arguments are sound, although they don't seem
| obviously wrong, but the chapter is certainly a lot better than
| the original link, which just summarizes the strawman conclusion
| but not the evidence.
| robocat wrote:
| I suspect the problem is that the fallacy has assumptions, and
| like most economic theories you need to know what those
| assumptions are.
|
| The assumptions get shown when thinking about why many countries
| are raising retirement ages, or what happens to work when
| pandemics occur, or just how fungible people are between
| different jobs, or why we allow immigration.
|
| The article says that the author thinks the "lump of labour
| fallacy" is wrong, but doesn't provide any hint as to why they
| think there actually is a lump of labour (except to read their
| other work).
|
| A very sloppy editorial in The Economist on the topic:
| https://archive.ph/attgx
|
| [minor edits]
| blep_ wrote:
| This is the most frustrating kind of article: "I think this thing
| is bad and will spend several paragraphs explaining why, but will
| explicitly refuse to tell you what it is."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
|
| > In economics, the lump of labour fallacy is the misconception
| that there is a fixed amount of work--a lump of labour--to be
| done within an economy which can be distributed to create more or
| fewer jobs.
| goodSteveramos wrote:
| Economics is a strange field. True statements are "fallacies"
| and fallacies like the rational actor model are axioms.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| People on HN like to make things up about the field of
| economics, and then complain as a group about those things
| they just made up.
| notahacker wrote:
| Are you seriously arguing the lump of labour fallacy is
| actually a true statement, and the amount of work to be done
| in the economy is fixed?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum... There is a couple thousands of words article at the
| top explaining why what you say is meaningless propaganda.
| But TLDR, only you care about the lump of labor fallacy,
| the people you are talking with never used it.
| notahacker wrote:
| The article contained a couple of thousand words, but
| neither it, nor Sydney Chapman, nor the person I replied
| to provided a single actual argument for why the lump of
| labour fallacy is not a fallacy. The article contains no
| statements about why the lump of labour fallacy is
| incorrect, not even any about why it might not be
| applicable to his proposals, but two statements that
| readers don't need to know what it is, they should take
| his word for it that it's bad (hmm... what was that about
| meaningless propaganda?!)
|
| Do you believe the quantity of work that there is to be
| done in an economy is fixed and the work readily
| substitutable, so if HN dropped down to 10 hour weeks the
| result would be unemployed factory workers all finding
| jobs writing backend code, not less software development
| work being done (and probably 10 hour work week devs
| buying less stuff from factories)?
|
| Unless you do, the lump of labour fallacy is a fallacy.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The rational actor model is not a fallacy, nor is it
| axiomatic in economics.
| pjscott wrote:
| The lump-of-labor thing was called a fallacy by someone
| arguing that the amount of labor to be done in society is not
| fixed: if you happen to have people with a bunch of time on
| their hands, they can usually find something useful to do
| that would not otherwise get done. And as for the rational
| actor model, everyone knows that it's not true; the reason
| people use it is that its predictions are often surprisingly
| close to the truth. ("All models are wrong, but some are
| useful.")
| notahacker wrote:
| The bit where he references Sydney Chapman's obscure theory as
| being of critical importance and then doesn't actually tell you
| what it actually stated is even more annoying.
|
| This paper - funnily enough written by the article author -
| does attempt to tell you what Chapman argued. https://papers.ss
| rn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1125543#....
|
| Assuming his paraphrase is accurate, Chapman argued that
| workers would act against their interests by picking higher pay
| over shorter hours, and employers would respond in kind by
| poaching employees from rivals by offering higher salaries for
| longer hours. It's also implied that this is somehow also
| against the corporation's long term interest but without a
| proper explanation of why; but perhaps the original writing
| offered a less muddled concept of the "optimal" amount of
| working hours (for whom, on what basis?) than the paraphrase.
|
| That provides some theoretical justification for state limits
| on reducing working hours in the interests of preserving
| employee health, something which happened in many industries a
| year after Chapman made his argument (a bunch of industries
| where people worked an average of 57 hours saw a mandatory 48
| hour maximum working week; though I suspect arguments that UK
| mining and manufacturing workers didn't have much choice over
| schedules was a larger factor in that decision than the
| assumption they were working those hours out of greed)
|
| But I'm not sure this theory which doesn't have a whole lot of
| empirical support particularly conflicts with what mainstream
| economists believe[1] or gives us any reason to support the
| author's contention that the "optimal" maximum working week is
| 35 hours.
|
| [1]few economists will argue for the benefits of a 57 hour work
| week, and other theories in labour economics acknowledge
| certain scenarios in which workers will become overly fixated
| on the size of their pay package over longer term
| considerations
| marcosdumay wrote:
| My reading of the article is that there are two main claims
| in it:
|
| 1 - There exists an optimum amount of working hours that
| maximize the society's wealth.
|
| 2 - A competitive labor market will maximize the hours
| worked, completely ignoring the optimal value.
|
| He cites Javon (from the famous "paradox" that the "lump of
| labor fallacy" fallacy misinterprets) for item 1, but does
| not supply a reference.
| jrm4 wrote:
| People are having an issue with him "not naming the issue" in the
| article, but for what it's worth, I understand why?
|
| There is _so so much_ in mainstream economics that "feels rooted
| in fact," aka, lies or more accurately, overly-relied-on-
| unprovable-theories, the work of trying to debunk them can make
| one forget which one you're talking about today.
| kkfx wrote:
| I think this classic explain better, and in general:
| https://i.ibb.co/gdTBXT0/Corp-Whining-Hist.jpg
| dahdum wrote:
| I enjoy how the author skips facts and reasoned arguments and
| just tells me how I should feel, which is mostly angry. Also I
| appreciate him assuring me I don't need to critically think about
| or do any research on the topic at all. It's just so obvious that
| the mainstream economists are wrong.
|
| His style would do well in journalism today.
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