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I understand that, my question is moreso how one would make such a 20 hour work week possible economically? It seems like on an individual scale that companies

I understand that, my question is moreso how one would make such a 20 hour work week possible economically? It seems like on an individual scale that companies are more profitable with workers working only 20 hour weeks. I honestly think most companies are not actually efficient (see Bullshit Jobs by David Graber) but merely think that they are. Otherwise, there would not be such low hanging fruit as this still present.

ddingus 6y ago
The question is political. As things stand right now? Not possible economically, because any gains will be rolled up in to lower head counts. There have been different value judgements in the past. They can change again in the future too. Will they? Hard to say. If people end up generally happy? Probably not.
- cercatrova 6y ago
  But my point is that they'd make more money keeping headcount the same and cutting hours (keeping compensation the same of course, you're providing more value in half the time) than simply cutting half the workforce. It's like the saying, you can't make a baby with 9 women in a month.
  - ddingus 6y ago
    For a lot of people, that means having to find another job, unless compensation remains the same.
    - cercatrova 6y ago
      Yes, in this scenario compensation remains the same. Salaried, not hourly. It would definitely suck if you provided more value yet got paid half.
      - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
        How is it same value when there is automation replacing 20 man hours? Population increases exponentially. As does consumption. Resources are limited. We will all live smaller. Thats what happens when we exceed carrying capacity.
        cercatrova 6y ago
        Certain jobs sure. And we're not there yet. Of course once full automation exists there won't be any jobs anymore. You will also find that Malthusian explosions don't actually happen among humans. See the declining birth rates across much of the first world.
        jelliclesfarm 6y ago
        You are right. But if we see declining resources and many of them non renewable, we are worse off. Water comes to mind. phosphorus in Ag ..arable land, rare mineral/metal mining for our electronics/batteries etc. even sand that is ferried around by intl sand mafias is non renewable. Think of the impact of our population vs resources as a ratio rather than a number. The realization is chilling. But back to jobs. Yes..you are right again. But also, jobs that are based on materials consumption(mentioned earlier in this reply) and that can be automated will become smaller vs service/personal interaction industry that will explode. AWS is one such example. As another example: remember when we had cameras? There was a whole industry revolving around cameras, lenses, printing, developing films and then digital media. Now, we have our multitasking camera..it’s uploaded to the cloud and we can view it on an electronic device. How many jobs would have disappeared? All over the world because of this transition. How many new photo memories have been created because photography became part of our mobile phone? It has increased while jobs have also increased. Do we really need facial recognition to sort photos in our smart phone? But some guy in Apple or google or Facebook is trying to figure out how to teach AI to group similar looking facial features after recognizing them as same. An entire class of job has been created..one that did not exist just twenty years ago. They are higher paying jobs. And arguably more people are employed in this new post smart phone world than during Konica film time. More and more goods are becoming virtual and becoming cheaper to produce and consume. But because of the sheer volume, we can still keep up with creating jobs of this kind. However we can’t increase the amount of food or water or dairy milk. Tangible goods will become scarcer and those jobs will disappear. The essentials can never be expensive. Let’s hope water and food is affordable to all in the coming centuries. Which means some sectors necessarily will have to be automated and aligned sectors will also have to be automated. (Example: food production and food supply chain..if one is cheap and the other is expensive, the house of cards falls down). So yes, you are right. It is only applicable for certain jobs. But we can also expand consumption of these to keep revenue and margins up. Example: we can sign up for Facebook as well as YouTube. We can have WhatsApp as well as signal. So the jobs for those qualified to work there will continue to exist even if population increases or more jobs are created. The future will likely have advertised goods that are virtual than real. Maybe online ads for a video game than a bone china teaset. So we can look forward to shortages of real goods due to population pressure/resource scarcity. Here is where margins will have to be maintained to continue getting essentials out to the public. Like food, fiber and material goods etc. But we can also expect service sector booming and employment. And that can be endless employment. Now we will starting running on the Red Queen’s macro economic treadmill. Prices chasing wages chasing employment chasing wages chasing prices. It is like paying someone to whitewash a wall and then paying someone to spray graffiti and then hiring someone to whitewash it again just so everyone gets a chance to make some change and earn some money. That is the future we are looking at... If we can manipulate currency and money market..with man made constructs, why play the charade of mandatory 40 hour work weeks? The only reason to carry on would be to generate money for the govt in the form of taxes. If we embrace automation fully and lesser working hours and eliminate all taxes except on consumption, we will at least have happy human beings. And happy Homo sapiens will likely be less inclined..than those participating in exhausting rat races...to get into conflict situations. This will become important as we will most certainly be facing resource scarcity...esp of non renewable resources.

ddingus 6y ago

The question is political. As things stand right now? Not possible economically, because any gains will be rolled up in to lower head counts. There have been different value judgements in the past. They can change again in the future too. Will they? Hard to say. If people end up generally happy? Probably not.

cercatrova 6y ago
But my point is that they'd make more money keeping headcount the same and cutting hours (keeping compensation the same of course, you're providing more value in half the time) than simply cutting half the workforce. It's like the saying, you can't make a baby with 9 women in a month.
- ddingus 6y ago
  For a lot of people, that means having to find another job, unless compensation remains the same.
  - cercatrova 6y ago
    Yes, in this scenario compensation remains the same. Salaried, not hourly. It would definitely suck if you provided more value yet got paid half.
    - jelliclesfarm 6y ago
      How is it same value when there is automation replacing 20 man hours? Population increases exponentially. As does consumption. Resources are limited. We will all live smaller. Thats what happens when we exceed carrying capacity.
      - cercatrova 6y ago
        Certain jobs sure. And we're not there yet. Of course once full automation exists there won't be any jobs anymore. You will also find that Malthusian explosions don't actually happen among humans. See the declining birth rates across much of the first world.
        jelliclesfarm 6y ago
        You are right. But if we see declining resources and many of them non renewable, we are worse off. Water comes to mind. phosphorus in Ag ..arable land, rare mineral/metal mining for our electronics/batteries etc. even sand that is ferried around by intl sand mafias is non renewable. Think of the impact of our population vs resources as a ratio rather than a number. The realization is chilling. But back to jobs. Yes..you are right again. But also, jobs that are based on materials consumption(mentioned earlier in this reply) and that can be automated will become smaller vs service/personal interaction industry that will explode. AWS is one such example. As another example: remember when we had cameras? There was a whole industry revolving around cameras, lenses, printing, developing films and then digital media. Now, we have our multitasking camera..it’s uploaded to the cloud and we can view it on an electronic device. How many jobs would have disappeared? All over the world because of this transition. How many new photo memories have been created because photography became part of our mobile phone? It has increased while jobs have also increased. Do we really need facial recognition to sort photos in our smart phone? But some guy in Apple or google or Facebook is trying to figure out how to teach AI to group similar looking facial features after recognizing them as same. An entire class of job has been created..one that did not exist just twenty years ago. They are higher paying jobs. And arguably more people are employed in this new post smart phone world than during Konica film time. More and more goods are becoming virtual and becoming cheaper to produce and consume. But because of the sheer volume, we can still keep up with creating jobs of this kind. However we can’t increase the amount of food or water or dairy milk. Tangible goods will become scarcer and those jobs will disappear. The essentials can never be expensive. Let’s hope water and food is affordable to all in the coming centuries. Which means some sectors necessarily will have to be automated and aligned sectors will also have to be automated. (Example: food production and food supply chain..if one is cheap and the other is expensive, the house of cards falls down). So yes, you are right. It is only applicable for certain jobs. But we can also expand consumption of these to keep revenue and margins up. Example: we can sign up for Facebook as well as YouTube. We can have WhatsApp as well as signal. So the jobs for those qualified to work there will continue to exist even if population increases or more jobs are created. The future will likely have advertised goods that are virtual than real. Maybe online ads for a video game than a bone china teaset. So we can look forward to shortages of real goods due to population pressure/resource scarcity. Here is where margins will have to be maintained to continue getting essentials out to the public. Like food, fiber and material goods etc. But we can also expect service sector booming and employment. And that can be endless employment. Now we will starting running on the Red Queen’s macro economic treadmill. Prices chasing wages chasing employment chasing wages chasing prices. It is like paying someone to whitewash a wall and then paying someone to spray graffiti and then hiring someone to whitewash it again just so everyone gets a chance to make some change and earn some money. That is the future we are looking at... If we can manipulate currency and money market..with man made constructs, why play the charade of mandatory 40 hour work weeks? The only reason to carry on would be to generate money for the govt in the form of taxes. If we embrace automation fully and lesser working hours and eliminate all taxes except on consumption, we will at least have happy human beings. And happy Homo sapiens will likely be less inclined..than those participating in exhausting rat races...to get into conflict situations. This will become important as we will most certainly be facing resource scarcity...esp of non renewable resources.