I'm a little torn. On one hand, I have an aversion to things like this being done in law. It seems wrong to limit people and it makes sense to me that some peop

I'm a little torn. On one hand, I have an aversion to things like this being done in law. It seems wrong to limit people and it makes sense to me that some people would prefer to work 40 hour weeks or 50 hours every other week. I'm not extremist in these regard or a libertarian by most definitions but I do see an inherent bad in coercion like this. It seems to outlaw so many potentially win-win arrangements. OTOH, I think the dynamic in labour economies is such that it doesn't seem to correctly value employee "surplus." I do think that empirically it's hard to ignore the fact that regulation of labour markets has had successes, some of them very important. I think most employees would be worse off without labour laws. Labour economies (maybe norms is a better word) seem to be much more influenced by "cultural" forces than "economic" ones. If this market was functioning in a healthy way, I would expect to see much more variation in arrangements and less standardization within companies. I believe there's an explanation to be found in Ronald Coase's "The Nature of The Firm" (1937 Economics paper), but I don't have a mature enough idea to be able to boil it down to an HN comment. Laissez Faire vs labour laws aside, I think that the notion that the number of hours we work today should be lower than 20 years ago is reasonable. In an increasing number of jobs more hours doesn't mean more work gets done. For a shopkeeper, dermatologist or factory worker, output per hour is fairly fixed (and transparent). More hours = more work. For a graphic designer, policy analyst, medical researcher or social media manager the relationship is fuzzier. Productivity varies a lot and shorter days can boost productivity. At the same time, worker productivity is opaque and a 'last person at his desk' culture often develops with employees trying to demonstrate their commitment. We are shedding the first kind of job and adding the second.