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> Everyone seems to agree that it is best for the workers to be working 70 hour weeks That’s not true at all. The workers were excited about getting overtime p

> Everyone seems to agree that it is best for the workers to be working 70 hour weeks That’s not true at all. The workers were excited about getting overtime pay. The best thing for them would be higher pay, and time-and-a-half overtime pay. If they were able to earn enough with 40 or 50 or 60 hours some would chose to stop working then.

roenxi 3y ago
I suppose, but you could make that argument about any non-zero number of hours. There are people who drop out of the workforce altogether after making a few million dollars. So that argument doesn't give any indication of what is fair and why. It'd be nice if that million-dollar thing could happen to all of us, but to happen on a large scale we need more opportunities for people to create millions of dollars in value. Trying to squeeze value out of ... I dunno, asparagus farmers ... won't do that. There isn't that much value in seeding asparagus. Much as I notionally appreciate the efforts that these people go to (I suppose on reflection, I'd rather see them replaced with machines - that would result in the farmer paying them approx. $0 but maybe it'd get more people employed as mechanics. Who knows).
- kennywinker 3y ago
  > but to happen on a large scale we need more opportunities for people to create millions of dollars in value. Wouldn’t you say that there has been a huge spike in opportunities over the past 50 years? I’m thinking of the explosion of computing and its impact on society. Yet we’ve mostly seen the middle class shrink. I’m skeptical the issue here is opportunities. I’m pretty sure the issue is a shift in the balance of power, moving it from labour to capital. One superyacht could have paid for a lot of middle class lives. Automating a farm is a great opportunity to make a couple engineers+ceos+investors rich, and dump a few hundred people onto the job market, diluting their and every other worker in their position’s power
  - roenxi 3y ago
    Yeah. The article points out one instance in a long, systemic conga line of instances where the regulators find the best option that people have and ban it. Yes, we have seen the middle class shrink. If you want the middle class to grow, people need to have freedom to take the best option available. If workers are paid more than the value they produce and there are policies that push people to work 40 hours a week when there are opportunities to work 70 then quality of life isn't going to go up. A lot of the growth has gone to places that let people work [0] at wages you would probably call unfair. Those people are much better off than they were 50 years ago. They worked in hellish conditions and it turns out the theory is correct - after working very hard and saving their standards of living started to improve. That isn't possible without combinations of hard work and low consumption. > I’m pretty sure the issue is a shift in the balance of power, moving it from labour to capital. Then you're choosing a damn stupid strategy by advocating that people get paid more. You should be advocating that they have better opportunities to own and create capital. If labour is at a disadvantage, why encourage people to be labourers? The goal should be to make everyone a capitalist. It is like those people who are proud of the wins of the union movement. Y'know, congratulations. They locked themselves into being the losing side of a losing game. If they'd been going for more legal support for co-ops and better access to capital there'd be less workers and more people'd be better off. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China#Macroeconomic_trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China#Macroeconomic...
    - kennywinker 3y ago
      > policies that push people to work 40 hours a week when there are opportunities to work 70 then quality of life isn't going to go up. Seems like we have very different definitions of quality of life, if you think working 70 hours/week is a path to it. > You should be advocating that they have better opportunities to own and create capital. If labour is at a disadvantage, why encourage people to be labourers? Because labour exists, and a world without it doesn’t. So someone will always be a labouror. All you’re advocating for is more little warlords, instead of a couple kings. Doesn’t sound better to me.
      - 3y ago

roenxi 3y ago

I suppose, but you could make that argument about any non-zero number of hours. There are people who drop out of the workforce altogether after making a few million dollars. So that argument doesn't give any indication of what is fair and why. It'd be nice if that million-dollar thing could happen to all of us, but to happen on a large scale we need more opportunities for people to create millions of dollars in value. Trying to squeeze value out of ... I dunno, asparagus farmers ... won't do that. There isn't that much value in seeding asparagus. Much as I notionally appreciate the efforts that these people go to (I suppose on reflection, I'd rather see them replaced with machines - that would result in the farmer paying them approx. $0 but maybe it'd get more people employed as mechanics. Who knows).

kennywinker 3y ago
> but to happen on a large scale we need more opportunities for people to create millions of dollars in value. Wouldn’t you say that there has been a huge spike in opportunities over the past 50 years? I’m thinking of the explosion of computing and its impact on society. Yet we’ve mostly seen the middle class shrink. I’m skeptical the issue here is opportunities. I’m pretty sure the issue is a shift in the balance of power, moving it from labour to capital. One superyacht could have paid for a lot of middle class lives. Automating a farm is a great opportunity to make a couple engineers+ceos+investors rich, and dump a few hundred people onto the job market, diluting their and every other worker in their position’s power
- roenxi 3y ago
  Yeah. The article points out one instance in a long, systemic conga line of instances where the regulators find the best option that people have and ban it. Yes, we have seen the middle class shrink. If you want the middle class to grow, people need to have freedom to take the best option available. If workers are paid more than the value they produce and there are policies that push people to work 40 hours a week when there are opportunities to work 70 then quality of life isn't going to go up. A lot of the growth has gone to places that let people work [0] at wages you would probably call unfair. Those people are much better off than they were 50 years ago. They worked in hellish conditions and it turns out the theory is correct - after working very hard and saving their standards of living started to improve. That isn't possible without combinations of hard work and low consumption. > I’m pretty sure the issue is a shift in the balance of power, moving it from labour to capital. Then you're choosing a damn stupid strategy by advocating that people get paid more. You should be advocating that they have better opportunities to own and create capital. If labour is at a disadvantage, why encourage people to be labourers? The goal should be to make everyone a capitalist. It is like those people who are proud of the wins of the union movement. Y'know, congratulations. They locked themselves into being the losing side of a losing game. If they'd been going for more legal support for co-ops and better access to capital there'd be less workers and more people'd be better off. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China#Macroeconomic_trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China#Macroeconomic...
  - kennywinker 3y ago
    > policies that push people to work 40 hours a week when there are opportunities to work 70 then quality of life isn't going to go up. Seems like we have very different definitions of quality of life, if you think working 70 hours/week is a path to it. > You should be advocating that they have better opportunities to own and create capital. If labour is at a disadvantage, why encourage people to be labourers? Because labour exists, and a world without it doesn’t. So someone will always be a labouror. All you’re advocating for is more little warlords, instead of a couple kings. Doesn’t sound better to me.
    - 3y ago