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.
Comment on Bernie Sanders says that if AI makes us so productive, we should get a 4-day work week
hark@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
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.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
merc@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
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.
Widdershins@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Imagine being rich as fuck because you’re working 6 days a week instead of still barely making ends meet.
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
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.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
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?
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Because people deserve more time to be people. Not everything has to serve the Holy Economy.
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 16 hours 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. 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.
Saleh@feddit.org 15 hours ago
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.
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
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.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
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.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
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?
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
It means if you want more labor than can be accommodated within a 2 day work week, you should hire more people.
WarlordSdocy@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
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 of 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.
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 10 hours ago
I would argue that having more hired staff on rotation would be more productive. 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.
WarlordSdocy@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
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.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
studiespilot projects, and successful ones.JackbyDev@programming.dev 19 hours ago
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.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
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.
thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
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.