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Productivity and the Workweek
- shurcooL 12y ago> An average worker needs to work a mere 11 hours per week to produce as much as one working 40 hours per week in 1950. Suppose there's a meteor heading for earth that will collide in 30 years. If that's the case, the increases in productivity will be helpful in saving the race. That said, IMO it makes sense to channel some percentage of productivity increases into faster progress, but also some remaining percentage into reducing standard working hours a little.
- Amarok 12y ago>shorter hours were assumed to be a natural consequence of increased productivity Another possibility is that progress will increase the amount of people that are unemployed or unneeded to support society, as the others continue to work the same hours. Not that far-fetched, if you consider our current work-culture. If this happens, there would be rising social unrest at first, but I believe we'd reach a tipping point and a decrease in population would eventually correct the offset. Of course human reproduction can't be explained away by simple supply and demand, but the fact is, birth-rates are lowering in developed nations. While these may just be suppositions, I think it's interesting to try and predict how progress will shape our population growth.
- sarciszewski 12y ago> a decrease in population would eventually correct the offset a.k.a. lots of people die
- dang 12y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8262381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8262381
- pera 12y agowow that's strange: I searched the title (without the year) before posting it but I got only one result from 2011 and no comments
- greenyoda 12y agoIf you search for for "Workweek" (which is what appears in the actual title of the article), it doesn't find the posting from four days ago since the submitter changed the title to "Work Week".