7 ms·
The Ecological Limits of Work [pdf]
- perfunctory 7y ago> As early as the 1880s, Paul Lafargue, a son-in-law of Karl Marx, put forth the demand for a three-hour work day... If three-hour work day seemed feasible back then it must be even more so today. I think shorter working time is one of the most overlooked solutions to the climate catastrophe. And before you object by bringing up adverse economic effects, please consider that introducing 40-hour workweek did not collapse the economy. "For example, in the U.S in the late 19th century it was estimated that the average work week was over 60 hours per week..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time
- asark 7y agoI think three eights or four sixes (24 worked hours a week, either way) is a good goal to aim for, since it's the tipping point at which something other than paid work might dominate one's waking hours, while still leaving time for other normal activities and necessities.
- thrower123 7y agoI would rather work less longer days than more shorter days, under any scheme. Maybe in a world where I was working fully remote, it wouldn't matter, but the overhead of getting ready, commuting, and getting wound down again is a constant that doesn't vary significantly whether I work 12 hours or one.
- notahacker 7y agotbf I'm not sure the demands of a radical anarchist who wrote "The Right to Be Lazy" and quit practising medicine because he considered it quite useless are necessarily indicative of the practical feasibility of a 3 hour work day, then or now. Lafargue's the guy that was so uncompromising in his demands he put Marx off identifying as a Marxist! Not really seeing how a shorter work day alone saves the climate. Shorter shifts meaning more travel per unit of work completed could easily imply the opposite...
- jaden 7y agoAs a kid, one of the biggest benefits of technology I heard was freeing up our time from mundane labor. But with our phones making us available almost 24/7 it seems the joke is on us. A three hour work day is something I could get behind 100%.
- onemoresoop 7y agoTo me 3 hours isnt enough, i need at least an hour to warm up before jumping into the zone. Im thinking what would work out for me: 4 hour work days with the ability to squeeze 2 days in one and being able to do 2.5 days of 8 hours a week, no more no less. I’d be as productive as I am now, maybe even more. During the time off I’d still have work ideas popping up in my mind while doing things like being with family, playing with my kid, etc.. Currently thats what i do in terms of productivity but the dead time is spent sitting in a chair in an office 1.5 hour away from home.
- mrmonkeyman 7y ago6-8h a day is fine by me, just not 5 days a week and/or on a rigid schedule.
- ncg1622 7y ago"I would thus argue that the climate crisis calls for (...) us to adapt Paul Lafargue’s phrase, the ‘necessity to be lazy’" I didn't know it, but my laziness has been saving the world from global warming.
- mwilcox 7y agoThis makes no sense. Moving emphasis from Production (work) to Consumption (leisure) increases carbon usage, and halts progress towards more sustainable technologies and conservative behaviours. Climate progress takes effort not entertainment.
- mrec 7y agoWhy does leisure have to mean consumption? And isn't consumption necessarily limited to the amount produced? I wasn't particularly impressed by TFA, but I don't understand this criticism of it.
- mwilcox 7y agoWell, you still need to consume, eat, house yourself etc. Any situation where you're not paying for that without a productive output is one where you're increasing the ratio of consumption to production. Of course not all work is productive, but solving inefficiencies is _work_ not leisure
- qplex 7y agoMost work isn't aimed at making technological progress towards a more ecological or otherwise better future. Most work is also not aimed at food production or housing anymore because of technology.
- mrec 7y agoA large proportion of work is aimed at housing, but for entirely the wrong reasons. Housing costs in first world countries these days generally expand to consume available income, via land price inflation. Actual build cost - "production" - is a minor piece of the pie.
- jefflombardjr 7y agoThat's assuming all work is valuable (and productive). There are swaths of jobs that could be eliminated in favor of automation. I think the most sustainable long term approach is to aim for efficiency. No need to have people commute to an admin job that could easily be done by software. That being said, we need to also strive for sustainable consumption.
- jefflombardjr 7y agoThe same author that wrote "Debt: The First 5000 years" has a brilliant book called "Bullshit Jobs". After reading, it's hard to not frame any labor discussion from the book's perspective. There are two thoughts that came to me while reading this article that I think were a result of reading Bullshit jobs: 1. Not all labor is productive labor. We should be focusing on efficiency. By reducing hours I think this will cut down on the amount of 'unproductive' work. 2. A cultural change is needed, why do we automatically associate time with productivity?
- perfunctory 7y agoI created a poll a while ago which unfortunately didn't attract much attention. But with N=8, most HNers have bullshit jobs. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17880159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17880159
- thrower123 7y agoI did not know it was possible to create polls on here
- api 7y agoOur cultural obsession with work = time = virtue comes from the Agricultural Age and early Industrial Age when there was a more direct linear relationship here.
- asark 7y agoGraeber asserts it's specifically a reaction to changing notions of career trajectory and adulthood as feudalism gradually turned into industrial capitalism and the normal life path, for practically everyone in society, of: 1) work for someone else to learn the ropes and get started (even aristocrats would leave home to serve in other households, unless they were top of the heap), 2) run your own farm/shop/manor/etc was changed to just: 1) work for someone else, selling your time directly, and... that's it, until you retire or die, for almost all people who aren't born rich. I don't have the background and haven't followed his references to dig into how accurate his portrayal is, but his does address this exact attitude in the book. He essentially claims moralizing about the virtues of hard (sold-by-the-hour) labor and long days is a reaction (by the upper classes, largely) against what was perceived to be a growing population of people stuck in perpetual adolescence—eternal apprentices, basically.
- Nasrudith 7y agoI wonder about how distribution would play a role in yields vs pollution - especially when accounting for training costs and logistics. Would it be more efficient to have one person working 80 hours a week and thirty nine unemployed or 80 working half an hour a week or anywhere in between? Of course this is a very multivariable problem and that is ignoring the many sociological issues that would occur with such a system.
- perfunctory 7y agoAs a personal anecdote, I've been working between 4 and 2 days a week for more then 5 years already. I am never going back to 5 days. Never.
- dominotw 7y agodid you have to take pay cut?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- perfunctory 7y agoYes, but I guess the cut is not linear.
- CalRobert 7y agoCan you elaborate on how you managed that? I'm trying to get there but not sure how to make it happen.
- esotericn 7y agoHow does a three-hour work day make sense for anyone who isn't wealthy? In a lot of the world we have what are, in the short term at least, zero sum games. An example would be housing in a place like SF or London (and seemingly creeping down the scale as time goes on). If Person A works three hours a day, Person B is going to work six and end up with twice as much as you. If they can't do it at one job, they'll take two. Low paid individuals already do this, they'll have multiple jobs because they don't get enough hours at any of them. In the current situation - A will be living in student-like conditions, or homeless, and the B that works six hours will have a flat or house to themselves. Forecast that out a few years or decades and A is in poverty whilst B has established wealth via savings and investments. It feels like one of those ideas that would work if there were less scarcity in the environment.
- perfunctory 7y agoExactly the same argument could have been put forth back in the days when 40-hour workweek and 2-days weekend were introduced. Somehow we managed.
- esotericn 7y agoI imagined someone would write a response to this effect, but surely there's a line _somewhere_. People already do get an advantage by working >40 hours, but there are diminishing returns. You can't realistically work double that for extended periods, and having two distinct 40 hour jobs would be practically impossible. Not only that, but the "40-hour" work week, and weekends, are something that apply more to labourers, which at least as far as I can see in the UK are almost uniformly struggling to get 40 hours as it stands (zero hour contracts, shift work, part time, ...... etc).
- perfunctory 7y agoReduced working time doesn't have to be accompanied by reduced pay https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/world/asia/four-day-workweek-new-zealand.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/world/asia/four-day-workw... We just need to realise that most office workers don't work 40 hours anyway and adjust cultural norms accordingly. > (zero hour contracts, shift work, part time, ...... etc). These are fairly recent phenomena, not only in the UK but all over the world, aren't they. We need to fight against it. > It feels like one of those ideas that would work if there were less scarcity in the environment. Isn't it obvious that there IS less scarcity since the beginning of the 40-hour culture? Perhaps it just wasn't distributed fairly.
- fooblitzky 7y agoIf you're lucky enough to be earning a decent amount, you can simulate this (kinda) for yourself. Following the Mr Money Mustache approach, save a good portion of all your income (>50%), invest it, and work towards an early retirement. Instead of a work week that's 1/4 the hours of everyone else, you'll have a career that's 1/4 the years of everyone else.