Work Reform

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

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!

Studies show productivity has a sharp drop off after 6 hours iirc

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.

Hear hear!

Let's make anything over 32 hours double pay.

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.

Meanwhile, in Germany: There are a lot of unemployed people, and there are a lot of people who want a four-day week, so what we desperately need is working longer hours.

If AI is so productive, we should have Unuversal Basic Income, and free college/vocational education for anyone who wants it.

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 🤷🏿‍♀️."

That's cool and all but what about maximum salary hours?

3-day by now. 4-day was due before AI, so why would this great boost not make the difference?

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.

It's already cooked Bernie. It's a charred dead carcass.

but then shareholders?

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.