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This makes me think of this passage by Bertrand Russell wrt. increases in efficiency and working hours: "The War showed conclusively that by the scientific org

by jahaja 6y ago

This makes me think of this passage by Bertrand Russell wrt. increases in efficiency and working hours: "The War showed conclusively that by the scientific organization of production it is possible to keep modern populations in fair comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the modern world. If at the end of the War the scientific organization which had been created in order to liberate men for fighting and munition work had been preserved, and the hours of work had been cut down to four, all would have been well. Instead of that, the old chaos was restored, those whose work was demanded were made to work long hours, and the rest were left to starve as unemployed. Why? Because work is a duty, and a man should not receive wages in proportion to what he has produced, but in proportion to his virtue as exemplified by his industry. This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances totally unlike those in which it arose. No wonder the result has been disastrous. Let us take an illustration. 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?" https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/ https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

dantheman 6y ago
Those displaced (50% in the example above) can go and provide services in another area... Why should only the pin producers get 4 hour weeks. What about those have to toil in the field for 8 hours a day to produce food? What happens is that those 4 can go do something else; now in reality that something else is often not as good as what they were doing before or else they would have already been doing it. But people are not static and can improve, develop skills, and learn new things. Also prices normally go down, which encourages innovation, and can create whole new classes of jobs. For instance before medical imaging we didn't have x-ray technicians, etc - But I'm glad that new field was created.
- jahaja 6y ago
  > Those displaced (50% in the example above) can go and provide services in another area... Why should only the pin producers get 4 hour weeks. What about those have to toil in the field for 8 hours a day to produce food? So for the sake of fairness, no one should get to work less hours? It's pretty clear that Russell's sentiment is that this should be expanded to society as a whole.
  - dantheman 6y ago
    Sure people can work less hours, but right now people choose to want more things - better healthcare, larger houses, more entertainment and choose to work more hours. Certain areas are clearly broken - education, medicine, and housing -- but that's largely due to government interference.
    - jahaja 6y ago
      > Sure people can work less hours, but right now people choose to want more things - better healthcare, larger houses, more entertainment and choose to work more hours. That has not been proven. If anything the opposite. I'm sure that a significant portion of the population would choose less time at work over non-essential consumption given the choice. There's a reason that full-time working hours are always changed universally - having the leverage and the economic base to individually request part-time is a privilege. Furthermore there's usually a disproportional economic punishment when one's working hours doesn't reach some "full-time" threshold, not to mention the likely social punishment like having a harder time to get promoted and similar. People like to assume that people choose non-essential goods over leisure but for some reason they are never very keen on trying to prove it by giving workers the choice without undue punishment. A good experiment could be to allow people to choose to whether they'd like to get their raise (or if lucky, convert the yearly bonus) in time or money, or perhaps some split. > but that's largely due to government interference. Only in the US it seems.

by jahaja 6y ago

dantheman 6y ago

Those displaced (50% in the example above) can go and provide services in another area... Why should only the pin producers get 4 hour weeks. What about those have to toil in the field for 8 hours a day to produce food? What happens is that those 4 can go do something else; now in reality that something else is often not as good as what they were doing before or else they would have already been doing it. But people are not static and can improve, develop skills, and learn new things. Also prices normally go down, which encourages innovation, and can create whole new classes of jobs. For instance before medical imaging we didn't have x-ray technicians, etc - But I'm glad that new field was created.

jahaja 6y ago
> Those displaced (50% in the example above) can go and provide services in another area... Why should only the pin producers get 4 hour weeks. What about those have to toil in the field for 8 hours a day to produce food? So for the sake of fairness, no one should get to work less hours? It's pretty clear that Russell's sentiment is that this should be expanded to society as a whole.
- dantheman 6y ago
  Sure people can work less hours, but right now people choose to want more things - better healthcare, larger houses, more entertainment and choose to work more hours. Certain areas are clearly broken - education, medicine, and housing -- but that's largely due to government interference.
  - jahaja 6y ago
    > Sure people can work less hours, but right now people choose to want more things - better healthcare, larger houses, more entertainment and choose to work more hours. That has not been proven. If anything the opposite. I'm sure that a significant portion of the population would choose less time at work over non-essential consumption given the choice. There's a reason that full-time working hours are always changed universally - having the leverage and the economic base to individually request part-time is a privilege. Furthermore there's usually a disproportional economic punishment when one's working hours doesn't reach some "full-time" threshold, not to mention the likely social punishment like having a harder time to get promoted and similar. People like to assume that people choose non-essential goods over leisure but for some reason they are never very keen on trying to prove it by giving workers the choice without undue punishment. A good experiment could be to allow people to choose to whether they'd like to get their raise (or if lucky, convert the yearly bonus) in time or money, or perhaps some split. > but that's largely due to government interference. Only in the US it seems.