8 ms·

The solution to (nearly) everything: working less

84 points by csantini 10y ago

iamcasen 10y ago
Crazy that, though this is so widely known, nothing has really changed in the last 100 years. Instead, wages stay stagnant, and cost of living rises. Hours needed to survive increase. It's all so illogical, it's crazy.
- james-watson 10y ago
  It's illogical from a rational, maximum-utility-for-all perspective. However, looking at it from the point of view of a primate status hierarchy competition, it makes perfect sense. The apex individuals derive pleasure from subjugating their lower status colleagues, and thus seek to make their lives as miserable as possible. From this point of view, all of human history makes sense. We are but primates, and no amount of highbrow pontificating can change that. Starting today, if the powerful wanted to, they could design a rational system that maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering for the largest number of people possible. But then, there is no incentive in the primate brain to foster such an endeavor. Even philanthropists, instead of uniting and agreeing on a shared vision, compete with each other for status amongst themselves by virtue signalling their own superiority over their peers. It is nature red in tooth and claw. We are no exception.
  - jjn2009 10y ago
    >Starting today, if the powerful wanted to, they could design a rational system that maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering for the largest number of people possible. In the same breath you pointed out why such a system does not work then state such a system is possible, I don't think anyone with power would ever genuinely want to enact such a system, but even if they did those participating in such a system would always look for ways to un-level the playing field and recreate the hierarchy we seek in society as primates.
  - lastyearman 10y ago
    I remember reading that indigenous people are very equal amongst their tribe.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  There's also been a massive increase in the standard of living since the early 1900s. Refrigeration (both for food and buildings), telecommunications, computers (all the entertainment you could ever want at your fingertips!), health care, transportation (cars; trains; air fare, while expensive, is still far less costly and is much than a horse or ship over a very long distance). We also expect higher standards in many areas. Regulation increased costs but it also keeps our food and medications water free of contaminants. Auto safety standards keep cars from becoming death traps. All of this costs money, but would you argue the regulatory standard of the early 20th century produced a superior quality of life for the average person? Truth be told, there are only two real expenses in society these days: housing and health care. Maybe we can automate medicine to become as relatively cheap as transportation and information/entertainment has become, but housing will be harder, as per the aforementioned regulations. For example, my girlfriend and I are moving into a 1br which could easily support a second bedroom in the back study, but because that room doesn't have any Windows, by law it cannot be a bedroom. Also, the costs of housing and general rents are passed along to the consumer, so it affects everyone.
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    > but because that room doesn't have any Windows, by law it cannot be a bedroom. Could it be a bedroom with Linux?
  - petra 10y ago
    There's some doubt on how important all this, when you see surveys that the amish are happier as billionaiers, and on the other hand, empathy decreased by 20% among college student, just between 2000-2010.
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  There's nothing illogical about it. You put pure competition at the foundation of the whole society, well then pure competition permeates everything. The more competitive you are, the better you're blending in. Of course, there's the little nagging fact that the whole system might be orthogonal to stuff such as happiness, or enjoying life.
  - lqdc13 10y ago
    For some people happiness only comes from competition. Having said that, competition at work is not great because it leads to worst possible result for workers and best possible result for employers.
    - Florin_Andrei 10y ago
      It's pretty obvious: don't absolutize anything. Pure competition is not the answer to everything. Pure collaboration isn't either. And neither is pure free market, nor pure dictatorship. The secret sauce must be a blend of many different ingredients. The main thing is finding the right proportions.
  - aeorgnoieang 10y ago
    I'm not sure I live on the same planet, or even the same universe as you. On my planet most people have an incredibly strong anti-market bias and lots of people strongly and loudly deride competition. Nor is "pure competition" (whatever that is) at the foundation "of the whole society". Instead, the various societies in my world vary to the degree that they believe that competition, particularly economic competition, is important. But very few of them consist of even a large fraction of people that think competition should 'permeate everything'. Nor are there any societies in which a small number of elites have managed to permeate everything with competitiveness. There is however a form of competition that does permeate everything. I refer of course to competition for (relative) status. But still, characterizing it as 'permeating everything' is just hyperbole. It is pervasive and sometimes (if not often) pernicious, but in fact, in my universe at least, most of the world has improved remarkably in a short span of recent time and any even-more-recent backsliding is pretty close to insignificant in comparison to the slightly less recent improvements.
- aetherson 10y ago
  Wages are nothing like stagnant over a 100 year timeline, they've grown massively. Also, when you say "wages stay stagnant and cost of living rises," you make it sound like real wages have gone down. That's not the case. Nominal wages have increased, but nominal cost of living has also increased, so real wages have been stagnant (on a 30 year, not 100 year, timeline).
atemerev 10y ago
I don't know, did Keynes ever understood how capitalism works? Capitalism is competition. If your employees work less, your competitor's employees will work full time and overtime, getting their product to market faster and reaping all the rewards. It works with entire countries as competitive agents (see China). "Winner takes it all" operation mode of modern markets amplifies the magnitude of the problem. Another issue is management overhead. Managing 10 people working full-time is easier (perhaps exponentially) than managing 40 people working 1/4 time. Easier means cheaper, which means that you are better positioned in the competition. This is why every rational company will hire 10 people full-time and leave the other 30 unemployed, instead of hiring all 40 for quarter of the time. I see no solution to this problem in peacetime (Keynes' own solution famously didn't work). In wartime, of course, there are nearly no unemployed.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  The managing problem is easy. Work the same hours! Say M-F 5 hour days. Or M-W 7 hour days. Lots of options. So so many office jobs don't need to cover all shifts. The places that really need someone always there, say 24 stores or fast food.. they already are all part timers, and they manage. I guess the only case to figure out is the fulltime employee + need coverage.. but I bet it can be solved with delegation...
  - atemerev 10y ago
    How so? Coordinating the jobs between 40 employees is always way harder than between 10 employees.
    - johnward 10y ago
      Yet these retail stores are comprised of basically all part-time employees outside of management. My guess is that the money they save on benefits is worth it. Plus it doesn't seem like they need more people to manage the part time employees.
    - brianwawok 10y ago
      Well you are jumping from 10 to 40. If you had 10 programmers, and gave them 3 day weeks (24 hours). How much less work to you get? Maybe none. Maybe 20%. So you hire 2 more. So you went from managing 10 programmers to 12. I guess maybe a tiny bit harder? I suspect most managers would take the new workload for 4 day weekends.
peatmoss 10y ago
I really wish there were jobs out there that let you do this. My ideal work week is 32 hours, with occasional bursts of more. I've met very few traditional workplaces that were very open to the idea of part time schedules. For me, focus is all or nothing during work hours. I'd much rather bring fire for fewer hours each day, and then recharge with some of my other pursuits.
- tirant 10y ago
  Here in the Netherlands is very, very common to have 3 or 4-day working weeks. Those free days are usually taken by parents who want to stay at home and take care of their children, but also by older people. I barely know anyone that takes extra hours either. At 5pm almost everyone has left the office.
  - peatmoss 10y ago
    Ah yes, I should have specified the US. When I lived in New Zealand, I think my contracts were based around a 36.5 hour week. Even that was noticeably nicer than the 40+ hour expectation here in the states.
  - glenndebacker 10y ago
    In Belgium that is also mostly the case. But at my current company we have a 40 hour weeks (and a lot of unpaid overtime) because for some bizarre reason management is convinced "that is how successful Silicon valley does it". I personally think that American dominance in technology has to do with other things than low pay/max hours, but who am I. This is the first time in more then a decade that I am working in such a regime and I'm not really convinced that I am now more productive then ever. Au contraire, I have the feeling that I'm working more on autopilot and I'm a lot less creative in solving problems. In the past when I was dealing with a problem, solutions often came when I was doing something mundane like driving or gardening. I got my best solutions/idea's when I was away from my computer. The moment you could switch off and put your unconscious mind to work, now I frankly don't have the time.
- keithpeter 10y ago
antisthenes 10y ago
And exercising more. I'm fairly certain the optimal work week is ~30-35 hrs, and the optimal exercise time is 6-8 hrs/week. Imagine how low the health care costs could be if we were somehow mandated by a benevolent dictator to do some activities at work (our preferred sport for example). One can dream.
- civilian 10y ago
  This would be acceptable if the benevolent dictator also participated in 6-8 hrs/week of exercise, and it was televised raw on CSPAN. At the very least it would be a good motivator, and at I bet it'd be very humanizing too. "Oh man, our B.D. only did 7 reps when he was aiming for 10. Look at that sad puppy face! Just exhausted, but he has 20 more minutes to go."
andrewfong 10y ago
Working fewer hours per week can actually be really hard. Fewer hours means more workers, but adding more workers means additional communication, planning, and other costs. This is especially true for "knowledge work" since you can't brain-dump everything you know onto a co-worker. If your job involves a service component as well (e.g. like lawyering), that probably means you have also to be on call in addition to the hours you spend working. And then there are tasks where workers need to put in 40 hour work weeks to get anything done because of how long to get up to speed (e.g. I'd personally have a very hard time getting any meaningful coding, writing, or art done if I was limited to working only two hours a day or one day a week on that project). I think the solution here is probably not so much a focus on part-time work but on seasonal work or jobs where sabbaticals are a thing.
_zachs 10y ago
This is something I'd definitely be interested in trying. Like stated elsewhere here, the Netherlands has a culture similar to this. I've had 3 internships so far, and the most recent one has had a lot of overtime. Maybe I'll try to start my first full-time job in the Netherlands.

84 points by csantini 10y ago

Crazy that, though this is so widely known, nothing has really changed in the last 100 years. Instead, wages stay stagnant, and cost of living rises. Hours needed to survive increase. It's all so illogical, it's crazy.

james-watson 10y ago
It's illogical from a rational, maximum-utility-for-all perspective. However, looking at it from the point of view of a primate status hierarchy competition, it makes perfect sense. The apex individuals derive pleasure from subjugating their lower status colleagues, and thus seek to make their lives as miserable as possible. From this point of view, all of human history makes sense. We are but primates, and no amount of highbrow pontificating can change that. Starting today, if the powerful wanted to, they could design a rational system that maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering for the largest number of people possible. But then, there is no incentive in the primate brain to foster such an endeavor. Even philanthropists, instead of uniting and agreeing on a shared vision, compete with each other for status amongst themselves by virtue signalling their own superiority over their peers. It is nature red in tooth and claw. We are no exception.
- jjn2009 10y ago
  >Starting today, if the powerful wanted to, they could design a rational system that maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering for the largest number of people possible. In the same breath you pointed out why such a system does not work then state such a system is possible, I don't think anyone with power would ever genuinely want to enact such a system, but even if they did those participating in such a system would always look for ways to un-level the playing field and recreate the hierarchy we seek in society as primates.
- lastyearman 10y ago
  I remember reading that indigenous people are very equal amongst their tribe.
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
There's also been a massive increase in the standard of living since the early 1900s. Refrigeration (both for food and buildings), telecommunications, computers (all the entertainment you could ever want at your fingertips!), health care, transportation (cars; trains; air fare, while expensive, is still far less costly and is much than a horse or ship over a very long distance). We also expect higher standards in many areas. Regulation increased costs but it also keeps our food and medications water free of contaminants. Auto safety standards keep cars from becoming death traps. All of this costs money, but would you argue the regulatory standard of the early 20th century produced a superior quality of life for the average person? Truth be told, there are only two real expenses in society these days: housing and health care. Maybe we can automate medicine to become as relatively cheap as transportation and information/entertainment has become, but housing will be harder, as per the aforementioned regulations. For example, my girlfriend and I are moving into a 1br which could easily support a second bedroom in the back study, but because that room doesn't have any Windows, by law it cannot be a bedroom. Also, the costs of housing and general rents are passed along to the consumer, so it affects everyone.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  > but because that room doesn't have any Windows, by law it cannot be a bedroom. Could it be a bedroom with Linux?
- petra 10y ago
  There's some doubt on how important all this, when you see surveys that the amish are happier as billionaiers, and on the other hand, empathy decreased by 20% among college student, just between 2000-2010.
Florin_Andrei 10y ago
There's nothing illogical about it. You put pure competition at the foundation of the whole society, well then pure competition permeates everything. The more competitive you are, the better you're blending in. Of course, there's the little nagging fact that the whole system might be orthogonal to stuff such as happiness, or enjoying life.
- lqdc13 10y ago
  For some people happiness only comes from competition. Having said that, competition at work is not great because it leads to worst possible result for workers and best possible result for employers.
  - Florin_Andrei 10y ago
    It's pretty obvious: don't absolutize anything. Pure competition is not the answer to everything. Pure collaboration isn't either. And neither is pure free market, nor pure dictatorship. The secret sauce must be a blend of many different ingredients. The main thing is finding the right proportions.
- aeorgnoieang 10y ago
  I'm not sure I live on the same planet, or even the same universe as you. On my planet most people have an incredibly strong anti-market bias and lots of people strongly and loudly deride competition. Nor is "pure competition" (whatever that is) at the foundation "of the whole society". Instead, the various societies in my world vary to the degree that they believe that competition, particularly economic competition, is important. But very few of them consist of even a large fraction of people that think competition should 'permeate everything'. Nor are there any societies in which a small number of elites have managed to permeate everything with competitiveness. There is however a form of competition that does permeate everything. I refer of course to competition for (relative) status. But still, characterizing it as 'permeating everything' is just hyperbole. It is pervasive and sometimes (if not often) pernicious, but in fact, in my universe at least, most of the world has improved remarkably in a short span of recent time and any even-more-recent backsliding is pretty close to insignificant in comparison to the slightly less recent improvements.
aetherson 10y ago
Wages are nothing like stagnant over a 100 year timeline, they've grown massively. Also, when you say "wages stay stagnant and cost of living rises," you make it sound like real wages have gone down. That's not the case. Nominal wages have increased, but nominal cost of living has also increased, so real wages have been stagnant (on a 30 year, not 100 year, timeline).

atemerev 10y ago

I don't know, did Keynes ever understood how capitalism works? Capitalism is competition. If your employees work less, your competitor's employees will work full time and overtime, getting their product to market faster and reaping all the rewards. It works with entire countries as competitive agents (see China). "Winner takes it all" operation mode of modern markets amplifies the magnitude of the problem. Another issue is management overhead. Managing 10 people working full-time is easier (perhaps exponentially) than managing 40 people working 1/4 time. Easier means cheaper, which means that you are better positioned in the competition. This is why every rational company will hire 10 people full-time and leave the other 30 unemployed, instead of hiring all 40 for quarter of the time. I see no solution to this problem in peacetime (Keynes' own solution famously didn't work). In wartime, of course, there are nearly no unemployed.

brianwawok 10y ago
The managing problem is easy. Work the same hours! Say M-F 5 hour days. Or M-W 7 hour days. Lots of options. So so many office jobs don't need to cover all shifts. The places that really need someone always there, say 24 stores or fast food.. they already are all part timers, and they manage. I guess the only case to figure out is the fulltime employee + need coverage.. but I bet it can be solved with delegation...
- atemerev 10y ago
  How so? Coordinating the jobs between 40 employees is always way harder than between 10 employees.
  - johnward 10y ago
    Yet these retail stores are comprised of basically all part-time employees outside of management. My guess is that the money they save on benefits is worth it. Plus it doesn't seem like they need more people to manage the part time employees.
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    Well you are jumping from 10 to 40. If you had 10 programmers, and gave them 3 day weeks (24 hours). How much less work to you get? Maybe none. Maybe 20%. So you hire 2 more. So you went from managing 10 programmers to 12. I guess maybe a tiny bit harder? I suspect most managers would take the new workload for 4 day weekends.

peatmoss 10y ago

I really wish there were jobs out there that let you do this. My ideal work week is 32 hours, with occasional bursts of more. I've met very few traditional workplaces that were very open to the idea of part time schedules. For me, focus is all or nothing during work hours. I'd much rather bring fire for fewer hours each day, and then recharge with some of my other pursuits.

tirant 10y ago
Here in the Netherlands is very, very common to have 3 or 4-day working weeks. Those free days are usually taken by parents who want to stay at home and take care of their children, but also by older people. I barely know anyone that takes extra hours either. At 5pm almost everyone has left the office.
- peatmoss 10y ago
  Ah yes, I should have specified the US. When I lived in New Zealand, I think my contracts were based around a 36.5 hour week. Even that was noticeably nicer than the 40+ hour expectation here in the states.
- glenndebacker 10y ago
  In Belgium that is also mostly the case. But at my current company we have a 40 hour weeks (and a lot of unpaid overtime) because for some bizarre reason management is convinced "that is how successful Silicon valley does it". I personally think that American dominance in technology has to do with other things than low pay/max hours, but who am I. This is the first time in more then a decade that I am working in such a regime and I'm not really convinced that I am now more productive then ever. Au contraire, I have the feeling that I'm working more on autopilot and I'm a lot less creative in solving problems. In the past when I was dealing with a problem, solutions often came when I was doing something mundane like driving or gardening. I got my best solutions/idea's when I was away from my computer. The moment you could switch off and put your unconscious mind to work, now I frankly don't have the time.
keithpeter 10y ago

antisthenes 10y ago

And exercising more. I'm fairly certain the optimal work week is ~30-35 hrs, and the optimal exercise time is 6-8 hrs/week. Imagine how low the health care costs could be if we were somehow mandated by a benevolent dictator to do some activities at work (our preferred sport for example). One can dream.

civilian 10y ago
This would be acceptable if the benevolent dictator also participated in 6-8 hrs/week of exercise, and it was televised raw on CSPAN. At the very least it would be a good motivator, and at I bet it'd be very humanizing too. "Oh man, our B.D. only did 7 reps when he was aiming for 10. Look at that sad puppy face! Just exhausted, but he has 20 more minutes to go."

andrewfong 10y ago

Working fewer hours per week can actually be really hard. Fewer hours means more workers, but adding more workers means additional communication, planning, and other costs. This is especially true for "knowledge work" since you can't brain-dump everything you know onto a co-worker. If your job involves a service component as well (e.g. like lawyering), that probably means you have also to be on call in addition to the hours you spend working. And then there are tasks where workers need to put in 40 hour work weeks to get anything done because of how long to get up to speed (e.g. I'd personally have a very hard time getting any meaningful coding, writing, or art done if I was limited to working only two hours a day or one day a week on that project). I think the solution here is probably not so much a focus on part-time work but on seasonal work or jobs where sabbaticals are a thing.

_zachs 10y ago

This is something I'd definitely be interested in trying. Like stated elsewhere here, the Netherlands has a culture similar to this. I've had 3 internships so far, and the most recent one has had a lot of overtime. Maybe I'll try to start my first full-time job in the Netherlands.