Historically it was the experience of people who wanted the output of cottage workers, that the cottage workers would only work up to the point where they had e

Historically it was the experience of people who wanted the output of cottage workers, that the cottage workers would only work up to the point where they had earned their desired income level, rather than up to what the customer wished they would do. Gathering the cottage workers into factories enabled the boss/customer to insist on more hours of work (compensated at piece rate originally). People have shown themselves to be satisfied with doing less work for less money, even in the presence of demand that they could choose to earn more by meeting. This is perhaps a "cut in pay" from a total pay point of view. In terms of earned pay it is the same pay rate. During the Swedish demo it sounds like they were studying the effect of the reduced hours in isolation from the effect of a hypothetical pay cut. Clearly some workers ARE hippies and would be happy to work less than some of us do for less pay, a legitimate trade that autonomous, free individuals could agree to.