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> Last year, Infosys cofounder Narayana Murthy suggested that Indian youth should work 70 hours a week for the nation's development. Murthy’s advice came up at

> Last year, Infosys cofounder Narayana Murthy suggested that Indian youth should work 70 hours a week for the nation's development. Murthy’s advice came up at the Indian Parliament on the first day of its winter session and found support from a list of influential Indian tech leaders, including Bhavish Aggarwal, founder of India’s first AI unicorn, Ola Krutrim; Ayushmaan Kapoor, cofounder of the AI-powered customer platform Xeno; and even veterans like Sajjan Jindal, CEO and MD of JSW Group, and Vinod Khosla of Sun Microsystems. Well... we see the same bullshit being pushed across Europe (particularly Germany and France), justified by us being no longer "competitive" with particularly Asian countries. How about we just go and say "hey, no more imports and trade with these countries until they either reduce their working hours to reasonable limits or there will be levies applied to compensate for the extra productivity gained through exploitation"? Or why do we not go and close our skies to airlines that operate under clearly unsafe regulations? The super rich will not stop undoing a hundred years worth of labor laws history until we all stop them.

yoyohello13 2y ago
And we wonder why birth rates are declining...
- morkalork 2y ago
  Aren't South Korea and Japan locked into that death spiral now? Thinking they have to extract more time out of people to make up labor lost to a declining labour force, which makes the labour force decline further, so they squeeze even more...
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    The old farts in power don't care. They will soon be dead anyway (at least if age-reversal research doesn't make serious progress in the next 10 years), so they want one last giant party - no matter how hard it fucks up those who come after them.
    - morkalork 2y ago
      IMO it's a good example of where government regulations are needed (max hours for salaried workers, overtime rules for wage workers etc) because otherwise its a tragedy of the commons type of situation. If another business can (and will) exploit their workers, they will undercut you because their costs are lower so you either need to do the same or go out of business. It has to be an outside party that looks at that situation and realize that's not good long term and stops it because businesses won't.
    - pixl97 2y ago
      "Some of you may die, but that's a risk I'm willing to take"
ben_w 2y ago
We got these specific labour laws because there's no real productivity boost for working longer, except for very brief sprints. IIRC during WW2 people were volunteering for long shifts to help the war effort, but after week three or so their (absolute, not merely hourly) productivity had dropped below those who hadn't.
- eesmith 2y ago
  WW1 munitions production operations research demonstrated there was a 60 hour max. Quoting https://docs.iza.org/dp8129.pdf https://docs.iza.org/dp8129.pdf > From the evidence brought to their attention, in January 1916, the HMWC recommended shorter working hours: for men, hours of no more than 65-67 per week (13-14 hours daily) on average and for boys, for girls, and for women a maximum of 60 weekly hours. It is not always clear whether these recommendations referred to scheduled hours or actual hours worked. 12 The basis for these recommendations was not because shorter hours would yield higher average product or higher marginal product, but because total output would be unchanged.
  - pixl97 2y ago
    And that's for repetitive work, when you get to creative work it's far worse.
aprilthird2021 2y ago
> Indian youth should work 70 hours a week for the nation's development The nation does ghanta for Indian youth so why should they slave away for people who treat them like crops that regrow every year, and try to extract the highest yield. Every test for good jobs becomes a scam for politically connected kids. Every movement by people to raise wages (like the farmer's movement) is violently put down. The government has no plan, just doing stupid things like cancelling all the currency randomly and causing us all to miss so much work standing in bank lines, then blame us for work not getting done. Absolutely sick of it.
0xcde4c3db 2y ago
> Well... we see the same bullshit being pushed across Europe (particularly Germany and France), justified by us being no longer "competitive" with particularly Asian countries. See also: the "996" schedule in Chinese companies, which (if I understand correctly) was ruled illegal but the ruling is not really enforced [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

yoyohello13 2y ago

And we wonder why birth rates are declining...

morkalork 2y ago
Aren't South Korea and Japan locked into that death spiral now? Thinking they have to extract more time out of people to make up labor lost to a declining labour force, which makes the labour force decline further, so they squeeze even more...
- mschuster91 2y ago
  The old farts in power don't care. They will soon be dead anyway (at least if age-reversal research doesn't make serious progress in the next 10 years), so they want one last giant party - no matter how hard it fucks up those who come after them.
  - morkalork 2y ago
    IMO it's a good example of where government regulations are needed (max hours for salaried workers, overtime rules for wage workers etc) because otherwise its a tragedy of the commons type of situation. If another business can (and will) exploit their workers, they will undercut you because their costs are lower so you either need to do the same or go out of business. It has to be an outside party that looks at that situation and realize that's not good long term and stops it because businesses won't.
  - pixl97 2y ago
    "Some of you may die, but that's a risk I'm willing to take"

ben_w 2y ago

We got these specific labour laws because there's no real productivity boost for working longer, except for very brief sprints. IIRC during WW2 people were volunteering for long shifts to help the war effort, but after week three or so their (absolute, not merely hourly) productivity had dropped below those who hadn't.

eesmith 2y ago
WW1 munitions production operations research demonstrated there was a 60 hour max. Quoting https://docs.iza.org/dp8129.pdf https://docs.iza.org/dp8129.pdf > From the evidence brought to their attention, in January 1916, the HMWC recommended shorter working hours: for men, hours of no more than 65-67 per week (13-14 hours daily) on average and for boys, for girls, and for women a maximum of 60 weekly hours. It is not always clear whether these recommendations referred to scheduled hours or actual hours worked. 12 The basis for these recommendations was not because shorter hours would yield higher average product or higher marginal product, but because total output would be unchanged.
- pixl97 2y ago
  And that's for repetitive work, when you get to creative work it's far worse.

aprilthird2021 2y ago

> Indian youth should work 70 hours a week for the nation's development The nation does ghanta for Indian youth so why should they slave away for people who treat them like crops that regrow every year, and try to extract the highest yield. Every test for good jobs becomes a scam for politically connected kids. Every movement by people to raise wages (like the farmer's movement) is violently put down. The government has no plan, just doing stupid things like cancelling all the currency randomly and causing us all to miss so much work standing in bank lines, then blame us for work not getting done. Absolutely sick of it.

0xcde4c3db 2y ago

> Well... we see the same bullshit being pushed across Europe (particularly Germany and France), justified by us being no longer "competitive" with particularly Asian countries. See also: the "996" schedule in Chinese companies, which (if I understand correctly) was ruled illegal but the ruling is not really enforced [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system