Because capital has realized that as long as there are bread and circuses to distract people along with convenient targets for the less well-off to blame for their misfortune (immigrants, trans folks) they can continue to vacuum up all of the wealth and power for themselves without lifting a finger to improve the lives of those whose labor makes it all possible.
stego-tech · 4h ago
Asked and answered right here. Also worth providing context:
* When we asked the same question in the 2010s with productivity gains from technology, it was the gays and the immigrants that were the reason we couldn’t
* When we asked the same question in the 2000s with productivity gains from technology, it was the gays and the immigrants and the Iraq War that were the reason we couldn’t (until the housing crisis)
* When asked in the 90s, it was the gays, the immigrants, and budget shortfalls that were the reasons we couldn’t (nevermind continued tax cuts)
* When asked in the 80s, it was the gays, the immigrants, and the Soviets as cause for not shortening workweeks
I can go back for several more decades this way. It’s seemingly always the fault of minority groups that we can’t roll back workweeks and reclaim leisure time, rather than the fault of the monied elite demanding ever more for themselves. Until enough people acknowledge and accept this, I get to spend my time fighting to exist rather than all of us enjoying more community and leisure time together.
ponector · 2h ago
Why workweek had been shortened to 40h then? No gays, no imigrants back then?
Imagine how productive economy will become if 996 workweek will become mandatory!
stego-tech · 1h ago
…seriously? Cannot tell if you’re being serious or just shitposting.
Wikipedia has a far more gruesome and comprehensive history of the US Labor movement, like the history of the NLRB, anti-union efforts in the 1860-1930s, the Coal Wars, Battle of Blair Mountain, etc. Everyone should know this history, at the very least so they can understand the harm that comes from delaying action further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
gruez · 3h ago
>convenient targets for the less well-off to blame for their misfortune (immigrants, trans folks)
Immigrants maybe, but nobody in the rust belt thinks their town is being hollowed out and flooded with fentanyl because of trans people. That's not to say they have no grievances against trans people, but to think that the right think trans people are "to blame for this misfortune" shows a huge ignorance of the right's politics.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF · 13m ago
> to think that the right think trans people are "to blame for this misfortune" shows a huge ignorance of the right's politics
They're pointing out the use of Goldsteins to distract from the root cause of the issue (increasing wealth inequality) and get a significant fraction of the general population to believe the problem is more directly caused by immigrants than changes in legislation that allow for more corporate abuse. It's moot that trans people aren't a reasonable cause of economic problems because they are a distraction from economic problem.s
sundaeofshock · 3h ago
Evangelicals have expectations of very strict gender roles in the traditional family. The “collapse” of the traditional family is why we have social and economic problems in the United States. Trans-women are the biggest threat to their ideas gender roles, so an important part of the right absolutely blames trans people for their misfortune.
gruez · 3h ago
>The “collapse” of the traditional family is why we have social and economic problems in the United States.
You're making the same mistake as the parent comment, by conflating social issues with economic ones. Evangelicals have a lot to hate about trans people on the social front, but I'm not aware of any that thinks the decline of American manufacturing is due to trans people. At best it's something like "low birth rates is shrinking the labor force", but even that's more social than economic.
mslansn · 4h ago
I can assure you “capital” is really happy with the dirt cheap labour that immigration brings. The destruction of the lower class is not their concern.
lenerdenator · 4h ago
They're even happier with AI labor because it doesn't require nearly the costs of human labor.
collingreen · 3h ago
For now! Vendor lock in for your workforce might end up biting folks with this approach when the bills start coming due and they enshittify
bko · 4h ago
Capital isn't a group of people. What does this mean? People who own capital? Like there is some proxy sent to Blackrock about "should we shorten the work week to 4 days" and they vote on it. As someone with a 401k, I must have missed that one.
What's with this low quality comment. If you have nothing productive to add, don't comment.
Or try to make a change yourself. Start a business and try a 4 day work week. Everyone should love it according to your world view and you could just be slightly less "greedy" and hire immigrants and trans folks and every other 'misfortunate' soul.
fzeroracer · 3h ago
Capital is a group of people. It is a few shared dynasties, people who have hoovered up the majority of wealth, the folks running private equity, the shrinking number of real estate developers that own a larger and larger share of all apartments.
Your line about 'just start a business' is something people say but never actually execute on themselves. Try making a store to compete with Amazon, a
or a grocer to compete with our consolidated giants. They can and will use the economy of massive scale they have to crush your business into oblivion, taking a short term loss to maintain a death grip on the market
That's capital.
gruez · 3h ago
>Capital is a group of people. It is a few shared dynasties, people who have hoovered up the majority of wealth, the folks running private equity, the shrinking number of real estate developers that own a larger and larger share of all apartments.
What about the average American with pensions and 401ks that are invested in stocks? Or the "FIRE" crowd on reddit with 6 figures invested in Vanguard ETFs? Is "Capital" just a slur to be used against owners of capital you don't like, or you think have too much?
triceratops · 3h ago
> What about the average American with pensions and 401ks that are invested in stocks? Or the "FIRE" crowd on reddit with 6 figures invested in Vanguard ETFs?
Own capital or be owned by those who do. That's how it works.
We're trapped in a game that's taking the world to a bad place, but which we're doing really well at.
Pensions and 401ks are today's "people taking care of elders when they're too old to work" - an idea as old as humanity. It's just abstracted through markets.
gruez · 3h ago
>Own capital or be owned by those who do. That's how it works.
You didn't answer the question. Are those people "captial" or not? If it's just "own capital", then most Americans are "capital" because they at least have some sort of 401k or pension, but I suspect you wouldn't put them in the same group as "people who have hoovered up the majority of wealth" or whatever.
js8 · 2h ago
> Are those people "capital" or not?
Probably not. In the sense it's being used in this discussion, capital are people whose majority of income comes from dividends and rents. So your typical 401k (likely - I am not American) isn't in that category, rather they are labor with some savings for an old age.
The main difference is whether you need to work for someone or not. That determines your social class and to a large extent, self-interests.
gruez · 2h ago
>capital are people whose majority of income comes from dividends and rents
So the average boomer after retirement?
triceratops · 2h ago
Yes that's how retirement works. Other people work and take care of you. That's how it's always worked.
I also don't see too many boomers funding Super PACs and getting their favorite laws passed.
triceratops · 3h ago
> I suspect you wouldn't put them in the same group as "people who have hoovered up the majority of wealth" or whatever.
59% of Americans have a 401k or other retirement account.[1] They accumulate capital so they don't need to work when they're old. A small fraction of them are the "Reddit FIRE" types.
The top 1% own more than 50% of all equity in private and public companies.[2] They and their kids and maybe grandkids don't need to work to live.
Would you put both in the same group? Other than "owns productive assets" they don't have that much in common.
From my original comment: >Is "Capital" just a slur to be used against owners of capital you don't like, or you think have too much?
triceratops · 3h ago
I wasn't aware it was a "slur" as much as it was a statement of fact. A tiny minority has disproportionate control over our economy and everyone else's lives. Depending on your ideological leanings you may find that ok or not ok.
Others (retirement savers) using the same tools as that minority doesn't make them the same as that minority. Degree of control matters. That's what I was responding to.
"You know the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire? About a billion dollars"
mistrial9 · 2h ago
> 59% of Americans have a 401k or other retirement account
self-reported ? also, substantial numbers of adult people fall into various classifications that definitely do not have such a thing. Are those not counted at all ? also, how is it so precise with no caveats, callouts or error bars ?!
BS
triceratops · 2h ago
Gallup is pretty good at polling. If you have a better source, by all means show it.
bigbadfeline · 1h ago
Gallup doesn't poll capital but retirement accounts- a lot of those are invested in cash and cash equivalents - CDs, bonds, etc. That's not the capital-as-control which we're discussing here.
More importantly, the 401k-s invested in the stock market aren't capital either but they do provide intermediating third parties with controlling power without any assurance that it will be used in the interest of the account holders - pretty much like bank accounts work.
Thus, 401k holders are not holders of capital, they only notionally own a share of pooled assets which are controlled by third parties for those parties' own ends and connections - mutual funds, banks, etc.
triceratops · 1h ago
> That's not the capital-as-control which we're discussing here.
I feel you. I'm saying the exact same thing all over this thread.
> 401k holders are not holders of capital
There's capital and Capital. All 401k holders own capital. But the run of the mill retirement saver has no outsize influence on politics or business beyond what's available to a private citizen. Capital, with a capital C (haha!) controls both.
fzeroracer · 3h ago
I have a 401k and a decent amount invested in the stock market. I have almost no power because my capital cannot be meaningfully exercised in the same way other groups of capital can. My influence (as a middle class software engineer) has dwindled over the past 30+ years or so because more and more power (ie, capital) is being taken from the lower classes and being distributed to fewer hands at the upper end of society.
tharmas · 3h ago
"We need more sheep to fleece" cried the Wolf.
throwpoaster · 3h ago
Fleecing sheep doesn’t hurt them. Especially during the summer they really love it.
toomuchtodo · 4h ago
While people simultaneously scream for people to have more children. See you at terminally low total fertility rates.
jf22 · 4h ago
I follow the pro/anti natalist space and I'm not sure if anybody is "screaming" at people to have more kids.
otikik · 4h ago
I happen to live near a very religious community, and I share some common spaces with some of the families coming from that background (swimming pool, parks).
They don't scream, but the social pressure is absolutely there.
It’s less “screaming” and more “tut-tut moralizing and shaming”. Ironically, it’s mostly from the same people who spent the previous decades going “don’t have kids you can’t afford!” and are now appalled that people took their advice.
js8 · 2h ago
Wasn't the previous advice meant for black and muslim people, rather than WASPs?
If you were going to have children, you'd have them regardless of what your income was. There are people in the developing world living on a dollar a day who become parents.
jjani · 4h ago
There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who would definitely have more children if they won the lottery tomorrow. Maybe not in your surroundings, or even in your country, but very much so elsewhere.
NoMoreNicksLeft · 4h ago
>There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who would definitely have more children if they won the lottery tomorrow.
If this were true (and I don't concede that it is), then you've just stated that the minimum bribe sufficient to persuade someone to become a parent is a lottery jackpot.
Mostly though, people who won lotteries would rather spend that on themselves. Demographic collapse is inevitable, and you'll die without even understanding why it happened.
jjani · 3h ago
It is true, but they're in cultures and countries you haven't experienced. Here it's common for people who have experienced a sudden windfall to get a second child that they had been wanting to have but weren't having because of financial reasons. Zero chance this is the only place in the world where that's the case.
As the other person pointed out, a lottery jackpot is also far above the minimum, it was just the most obvious example of a sudden windfall. And even then I was considering lottery jackpots here which are usually $0.5m-5m, not tens or hundreds of millions which seems common in the US (I could be wrong on that).
collingreen · 3h ago
They absolutely said nothing about a minimum.
NoMoreNicksLeft · 59m ago
They did. The implicit statement is right there... if there were something significantly lesser that had the same effect, then that would be the salient example. If he had any such examples to choose from, why choose the absurdly improbable one?
Well, the reason why you choose the absurdly improbable example, is because it's still the least absurd/improbable. Why does this need to be explained to you?
thriifvyu67866 · 4h ago
In other news, Cattle are are being inseminated to not only provide milk, but also to have their children culled for meat after birth.
Children have been treated like state/church assets for multiple centuries if not millennia now.
sergeyfomkin · 4h ago
A lot of what we call work today really is just performative. As long as people stay busy, no one questions where the value goes. AI just makes it harder to hide the fact that so much of the system runs on keeping people occupied instead of actually improving their lives.
exe34 · 4h ago
> so much of the system runs on keeping people occupied instead of actually improving their lives
Could you give some examples outside of government? I would imagine the wealth owners would cut those jobs pretty quickly? I've always been told that private enterprise was so much more efficient and good at cutting waste.
sergeyfomkin · 4h ago
Absolutely. Take Google or Meta — both have gone through rounds of layoffs while still keeping thousands in roles focused on alignment, planning, or internal coordination. McKinsey and other big consultancies often produce reports with minimal new insight, tailored mostly to justify executive decisions. Even in finance, layers of middle office and compliance roles exist not because they’re strictly needed, but because no one wants to take on institutional risk. These aren’t government jobs — they’re high-paid, private-sector roles that persist because the system values control and optics just as much as output.
exe34 · 1h ago
> tailored mostly to justify executive decisions
> they’re high-paid, private-sector roles that persist because the system values control and optics just as much as output
Sounds like you've answered your own question - these jobs are needed for the system to work. They're not "extra".
keybored · 4h ago
That’s very simplified but the base reason is correct.
dylan604 · 4h ago
Because nobody's TODO list is empty. Just because you can "accomplish" tasks in less time does not mean that the next task doesn't need to be started until next week. It just means you can close your tickets faster, not that there's nothing left to do.
toomuchtodo · 4h ago
Work fills the time you allow it to (Parkinson's law). We could all work 7 days a week. Should we? Why? You get one life. Work is like oxygen; you need it to survive, but it isn’t the point of living.
burnt-resistor · 3h ago
Obligatory: username checks out.
No comments yet
mistrial9 · 4h ago
The Chinese "996" work system refers to a schedule where employees work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, totaling 72 hours per week. This system is common in some Chinese tech companies and startups. While not officially mandated, it is often encouraged or expected...
dylan604 · 3h ago
Not really sure what this has to do with the price of tea in China, but okay, now I know a new term. When you accepted a job at a company, there was an agreement on wages earned for work performed. If there was a definition of the hours to be worked that you agreed to, then you should not be shocked when you realize the company expects that many hours from you. Just because you have become more efficient does not mean you owe less hours than what was agreed upon when accepting the position. If you want to renegotiate your position, that’s between you and the employer. Do not be surprised if your desire for fewer hours is followed by a lower wages as a response.
tempfile · 4h ago
Do you come in on Saturdays, since your TODO list is still not empty?
dylan604 · 3h ago
When I was an hourly employee, I used to come in on Saturdays and earn 1.5x and then on Sunday to earn 2x. That was when I was young and dumb with nothing else to do to fill those hours so why not make some extra money? Now that I’m no longer hourly, I work for as long as necessary to accomplish task by deadline. It is none of my employer’s, nor yours, business how I spend that time as long as deadlines are being met
tempfile · 1h ago
> It is none of my employer’s business how I spend that time as long as deadlines are being met
This contradicts what you already said ("there are always more TODOs"). Which one should I reply to?
If your employment has fixed deadlines, and your employer does not react to efficiency increases by setting earlier deadlines, then you should expect the headline effect (efficiency increases mean your weekly hours decrease).
dylan604 · 1h ago
Again though, how I manage my time is my business. If I'm assigned a task on Monday with a deadline for Friday, I can finish it on Monday and have it ready for the Friday deadline and then spend my time how I wish OR I can report the task completed and then expect to have more tasks assigned. There's no need to have a negotiation with how any tools that I use makes me more efficient. You seem to be unable to manage your own time and need to be told by employer when to have time off. That's something you should try changing rather than expecting the world to change to how you want to spend time.
MBCook · 4h ago
We didn’t when we got computers. We didn’t when we got calculators. Or typewriters. Or the Industrial Revolution. Or anything else.
Work expands to fill available hours. We don’t get more leisure time. That’s not ‘allowed’.
frantzmiccoli · 4h ago
To offer (maybe European) perspective.
The industrial revolution coincides more or less with when starvation started to disappear from the developed world.
In many countries, holidays and PTO are a norm. I personally know a few people that choose to work 4 days a week, I know another bunch that actually retired early or simply don't jump from a job to another because they can free ride for a bit (no judgment).
That also means that you 1/ have to actually prioritize leisure over money 2/ have actually something leisurely to do.
keybored · 4h ago
“Europe” also has active unions.
drstewart · 4h ago
>To offer (maybe European) perspective.
Aren't retirement ages being raised everwhere across Europe?
deafpolygon · 3h ago
Yes, to reflect the rising life expectancy.
antisthenes · 14m ago
To reflect a looming demographic crisis as well.
tempfile · 4h ago
Not exactly true. The typical work week was longer in the 1800s than in the 1900s. The limiting of the work week to 40/5 was an explicit political movement. Of course it was not reduced as a direct consequence of increased productivity, which I guess is what you meant.
MBCook · 2h ago
Yes. 8/8/8 and 5 days a week was a labor movement in the early 1900s.
Before that labor was exploited. After that labor was exploited.
We don’t seem to be willing to do that again.
ainiriand · 4h ago
As strange as it is hear this in this day and age, these kind of improvements bring more profits to the capital that uses them.
The working class will only get any benefits through class fight and collective action, but that ship has sailed.
Capitalism has won.
collingreen · 3h ago
It's never over it's just also never easy
thriifvyu67866 · 4h ago
Even if you get time, it gets consumed by the internet or by equally silly things like shopping.
Atomisation, which liberalism promotes heavily to the underclass, has all but destroyed humanity.
jvanderbot · 4h ago
I've heard this one before.
There is no business in the world, except those already financially unhealthy, that would choose no-growth + reduced cost over growth + same cost.
It just goes against every business ethos except Arizona Iced Tea.
lee-rhapsody · 4h ago
>No business would choose no-growth + reduced cost over growth + same cost.
If that were the case, why are so many companies bent on eliminating some employees and equipping the rest with AI to make up the difference? Wouldn't it be in their best interest to retain ALL those employees and equip them all with AI?
jvanderbot · 3h ago
In my strawman/false dichotomy world, I'd explain that by saying those companies are facing the certainty of being not financially healthy.
The AI wave is masking a lot of poor economic outlook at the moment
gruez · 4h ago
"If tractors and fertilizers lets us grow more food with less time - why not shorten the workweek?"
For instance the amount of people employed in agriculture in France dropped from 60% in the 1800s to 3% today, a 95% reduction. Assuming everyone worked 40 hour weeks back in 1800s, that means everyone should only have to work 2 hours a week today, right?
It would lead to people having more free time, which leads to self-determination and independence from corporate power structures, which empowers the middle class, which the owners and controllers of global financialized capital do not want.
Your job will continue to be at least 40 hours, the base pay adjusted for inflation will decrease, the "benefits" that are too complicated to understand and extract yourself from will increase, and you definitely will come back into the office one day. =)
BurningFrog · 4h ago
This discussion seems entirely uninformed by history.
We have continuously been able to do more in less time because of new technology for 250 years, since the Industrial Revolution since.
The increased productivity has benefited workers either by higher wages or shorter hours. Mostly the former.
I'm sure this trend will continue.
exe34 · 4h ago
> I'm sure this trend will continue.
Is it still the 90s? I thought after that wages stagnated compared to productivity.
keybored · 4h ago
Increased productivity has not benefited workers since the neoliberal turn in the late 70’s, at least in the US. Productivity has gone up while wages have stagnated.
amanaplanacanal · 3h ago
The great majority of the returns to those productivity increases have gone to capital, not to labor. Inequality just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Eventually they are going to kill the goose that has been laying all these golden eggs.
throwpoaster · 4h ago
Because employees compete to sell more or less of their time for more or less money, and it’s generally an over-served market where they have little pricing power.
As a business owner I’m using AI to hire fewer people for less time, massively reducing HR headaches. It’s great!
pxc · 4h ago
Because for capital, shortening the work week is leaving money on the table! Leisure time for the masses does have technological requirements, but actually increasing it across the society is more of a problem of power and politics than of technology. It's been this way for a long, long time.
It was like this when we won the 8-hour day norm that we have now! The 8-hour day may have been enabled by technology in some sense, but it was won with a fight.
qwerty456127 · 4h ago
32-hour workweek still is too much. For six-hour workdays would be a reasonable change. Specifically for the United States - also a mandatory 20-workday vacation (I live in the EU, heard Americans only have 2 weeks an that sounds nightmarish).
People need to have lives, not just jobs+recovery. Working for 5 consecutive days feels like living in the office and only coming home to sleep and do home chores - this doesn't even justify commuting.
deafpolygon · 3h ago
Not just “2 weeks”, most offer 10 days - and that has to include sick time off.
I once had 4 days sick, and my manager had to call me into a meeting with HIS manager to impress upon me that there was 6 months left to the year and I could only take 2 more sick days before they would have to count it against me on my performance review.
NoMoreNicksLeft · 4h ago
They won't reduce the workweek without reducing your pay. There might be some 3-card-monte-style shuffling so that it seems like they didn't (at first), but no rational person (or company) pays more for less product.
In the United States, employees have no leverage.
exe34 · 4h ago
> In the United States, employees have no leverage.
If only there was some kind of organisation that workers could form to improve their collective bargaining power...
dfxm12 · 3h ago
Please put the snark down for one second. Unions have been intentionally eviscerated by both the government and the media (eta: as evidenced by at least one sibling comment). It took a heroic effort to start one union in one Amazon factory, and that was under "the most pro-union administration in American history" (and it is sad to realize that it might be near the top of that list).
Setting that aside, employees still have no leverage as many benefits that people rely on are tied to employment requirements. People can't take off time to retrain for a better job, have to come in when they're sick, etc., because if they upset their employer, they may lose their job which means losing food assistance they need for their kids, and employers know this...
This is a systemic issue.
exe34 · 1h ago
> This is a systemic issue.
And the only way you will fix it is by collective bargaining. Not by giving up.
SirMaster · 2h ago
People negotiate things like a higher salary or more PTO etc every day. How can you say employees have no leverage?
NoMoreNicksLeft · 4h ago
If there were some kind of organization like that, mobsters would take it over, and they'd collude with the business to squeeze the workers for all they're worth. Believe it or not, some of us have first and secondhand experience with unions, so we don't pay much attention to the communist propaganda bragging about them. Besides, in an economy where many are unemployed and desperately seeking jobs, they tend to want fewer barriers to getting hired, not more. Only the most mature companies can afford the extra overhead of a unionized workforce... how many of the people here reading your comment work for startups? Do you think that they read it and say to themselves "gee, I know that we can barely afford to keep the lights on and we're just six, but I wish there was a union here holding the CEO's head under water until he gives us more raises"?
collingreen · 3h ago
I get that you don't like unions but this is a weird argument. Unions being corruptible isn't a great reason to imply companies should be able to do anything they want to their workers and the workers should placidly accept it. Neither is your next implication that some companies wouldn't be viable if they had to pay more so therefore paying more is bad.
In a labor market, companies aren't entitled to labor and laborers aren't entitled to jobs. If a company isn't viable then it isn't viable. If a job doesn't pay what you want, you dont have to do it. Things get complicated (intentionally?) when companies control large swaths of jobs at once or have outsized impacts on their employees' lives and future careers. Employees don't have nearly as much impact in the other direction (individually) and this asymmetry is the cause of lots of abuse historically. Unions are one way to help steady and maintain the labor market in order to keep it fair and efficient and powerful.
In general, things are worth improving even if there aren't perfect answers.
NoMoreNicksLeft · 1h ago
>Unions being corruptible i
Never really heard of one that didn't end up corrupted. Usually from the get-go. To call my argument "weird" tells me how little personal experience you have with unions.
>Neither is your next implication that some companies wouldn't be viable if they had to pay more so therefore paying more is bad.
Not some. Practically all companies. In tech, maybe only the FAANG set would be able to shoulder that burden.
>If a company isn't viable then it isn't viable.
Some companies are viable in one environment, but not in another. If you're changing the environment to make fewer companies viable, then you're putting more people out of work. This should be obvious. It isn't, I think, because some second grade teachers pass children who should have flunked out.
>In general, things are worth improving even if there aren't perfect answers.
Dimwitted people will try to "improve" things right until the world burns down around them. Any attempt to point out to them that this is occurring will be met with even more ambitious-but-ill-conceived attempts at improving things.
amanaplanacanal · 3h ago
Depending on what you consider a startup, they employee less than 10% of full time workers in the US. The great majority of folks are not working for startups.
Possibly higher than that on HN though.
exe34 · 2h ago
> Believe it or not, some of us have first and secondhand experience with unions, so we don't pay much attention to the communist propaganda bragging about them.
Sorry but I'm not going to pay 56 dollars to read a 17 year old paper with 18 citations.
bgwalter · 4h ago
Yes, there will be many new jobs as cannon fodder for the upper classes in various overseas wars.
causalmodels · 3h ago
Or like as therapists as we continue to 'do the work' via buying new and increasingly strange forms of self exploration.
But also get real if you don't believe that kill bots won't take all the cannon fodder jobs. Computer programs don't have the nasty habit of disobeying orders or revolt.
lysecret · 4h ago
I'm pretty sure we will, because we already have? Remember work used to be 6 days a week.
add-sub-mul-div · 4h ago
Labor now does not have the power that it did then because people have been convinced to vote based on fear of pronouns and immigrants.
dfxm12 · 4h ago
but to share the gains from new technologies
AI has nothing to do with this. Worker productivity has already been shooting up and workers have been given nothing to match their efforts. As long as capitalism is the default economic system, any pro-worker change will have to be taken. Most corporations can't even allow workers to toil anywhere but under their direct supervision. Giving people more free time is clearly out of the question.
BurningFrog · 4h ago
I've gotten a shorter work week a few times by asking my boss.
You can just do things!
discordance · 3h ago
My company is in the midst of laying off thousands of people and I'm certain if I requested a 4 day work week I would be short listed for the door.
thriifvyu67866 · 4h ago
Because the world is not about the wage-slaves; it's about the elites and their power games.
And they'll exhaust humanity, destroy ecosystems, and kill all the flora and fauna to achieve this.
kgwgk · 3h ago
Because people would rather work more to get more money.
bdangubic · 3h ago
that isn't the problem, the problem is that people actually work more to get same or less money too :)
kgwgk · 2h ago
Given the choice between working 20% less for the same money and earning 20% more for the same work many (most?) people will take the latter.
I hope that working more for less wouldn’t have many takers but there may be a few.
ponector · 2h ago
Because you can shorten workforce instead!
jamesgasek · 4h ago
Because more people will be building things, business competition will not decrease. There will be even more to do.
eweise · 4h ago
"This question is increasingly central to debates about the future of work" Nope. The only question my company is asking is how to get more efficiencies from AI so that they don't have to hire so many people.
deadbabe · 4h ago
The workweek does shorten, in those quiet moments when workers are not doing much of anything. Lord knows that software engineers, who already spend a lot of time sitting around doing nothing, are now doing even less thanks to improvements in AI automation. I’d bet that software engineers are down to about 3 day work weeks when you sum up all the time they spend actually doing something. It doesn’t feel like it for some people though because they are imprisoned in offices, where they are restricted from doing anything with their time that isn’t work. It is a cruel condition that leads to burnout and long term loss in productivity. It only gets worse as even more efficiency in automation results in having to perform even more office theatre to fill the down time.
My advice to would-be CEOs and managers is to just let people be, don’t try to squeeze blood from a stone. It’s good to have some slack in the workline for when you need it, because the workers who have been treated well are far more likely to jump into an emergency and dump massive loads of work all at once, since they have a lot in reserves. Those emergencies are moments that make or break companies.
sergeyfomkin · 4h ago
Yep, the irony is that the workweek has quietly shrunk — but instead of freeing people, we trap them in offices and force them to fake productivity. It’s not about output anymore, it’s about control. That’s what a formal 4-day week could challenge.
deadbabe · 4h ago
I think a 4-day work week isn’t really ideal.
The problem is you will increase cycle times. There is a sort of time dilation that occurs around weekends. Thursdays will become the new Fridays and on Mondays people will be kind of groggy from being out for 3 days. So basically Tuesdays and Wednesdays become the days to really do hardcore work. That means it takes longer to get big projects done as people naturally schedule things around Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
A better model is to just have people be remote, and do a little bit of work each workday. This keeps people a little more fresh and boils their days down to just getting 1 or 2 important decisions made.
sergeyfomkin · 4h ago
Totally agree with your last point — I’ve tried exactly that model myself: working a little every day, remotely, and it works incredibly well. It keeps the pressure low, the mind clear, and people don’t mind doing an hour or two even on a Saturday if needed. But yeah, it only works for people with high self-discipline — otherwise it just turns into doing nothing at all.
eli_gottlieb · 4h ago
Because the workers don't have the bargaining power to shorten the workweek at the moment. It's a fine idea in principle.
qsort · 4h ago
You do understand that asking to work 32 hours rather than 40 is exactly the same thing as asking a 25% raise right?
I'm not against workers asking for more money in the slightest, they don't do that nearly as often as they should, but this sounds a bit like "big brain idea: give me more money lol".
js8 · 4h ago
No it's not the same thing. The difference is productivity growth. If you ask 25% more ceteris paribus, someone has to give something up. In this case, nobody has to give something up.
NoMoreNicksLeft · 4h ago
>No it's not the same thing.
... screams the economics-illiterate left. If they pay you money for your work/time, then it's by definition fungible.
old_man_cato · 4h ago
No sense in responding, people. This person can't be saved. Move on.
frabcus · 4h ago
It is different, because productive output does not go down by 20% when working hours go down by 20%.
The OP is arguing this is even more true when AI does routine tasks, and the remaining tasks are more creative, strategic, inspiration-based.
old_man_cato · 4h ago
I'll be sure to remind myself of that next time I wish I had more time to spend watching my daughter grow up. Sure, I may miss some seminal moments but the raise I get at the end of the year is just as good.
otikik · 3h ago
If asking someone to work during an evening or during the weekend in order to make a deadline is not lowering their salary, then someone working less hours per week is not raising their salary.
discordance · 4h ago
Despite what they say, time does not equal money.
keybored · 4h ago
Or it’s "asking" for more of the productivity to go to workers instead of the capitalists.
deafpolygon · 3h ago
Because they don’t want to pay you more.
ninetyninenine · 4h ago
Competition drives ever increasing growth. China uses the same AI and they aren’t decreasing their work weeks. Are you going to let China steam roll America like it already has in almost every major industry?
more_corn · 3h ago
Because AI is the property of the owning class and they use it to spend less for labor from the working class?
atemerev · 4h ago
Because the masses need to be be busy, otherwise they would get ideas.
Ygg2 · 4h ago
But why not work 8 days a week? 7 regular days and one extra day spread out. 9.5 hours 7 days a week.
That way, masses won't ever have time to think!
atemerev · 2h ago
The current balance of engagement / sustainability of 8 hours per day, 5 days a week was reached after decades of trial and error. One might argue that it converged during the industrial age (it was 6 days a week in agricultural age), but it worked fine in a post-industrial economy as well.
tempfile · 4h ago
Because the enterprise is not owned or controlled by you, and you don't get to set the rules. If you can negotiate better conditions, and nobody else on the market can undercut you, then you can have them. This isn't even an abstract consequence of capitalism, it is an axiomatic, defining feature. If you don't like it, you are rejecting capitalism.
amanaplanacanal · 3h ago
Unfettered capitalism is bad. We are just discussing which fetters it should have.
tupac_speedrap · 4h ago
You've got to learn to play the game, the only reward for working hard nowadays is more work so you have just work just the right amount
* When we asked the same question in the 2010s with productivity gains from technology, it was the gays and the immigrants that were the reason we couldn’t
* When we asked the same question in the 2000s with productivity gains from technology, it was the gays and the immigrants and the Iraq War that were the reason we couldn’t (until the housing crisis)
* When asked in the 90s, it was the gays, the immigrants, and budget shortfalls that were the reasons we couldn’t (nevermind continued tax cuts)
* When asked in the 80s, it was the gays, the immigrants, and the Soviets as cause for not shortening workweeks
I can go back for several more decades this way. It’s seemingly always the fault of minority groups that we can’t roll back workweeks and reclaim leisure time, rather than the fault of the monied elite demanding ever more for themselves. Until enough people acknowledge and accept this, I get to spend my time fighting to exist rather than all of us enjoying more community and leisure time together.
Imagine how productive economy will become if 996 workweek will become mandatory!
Here, an old-fashioned LMGTFY: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2015/10/how-did-the-40-hour-...
Wikipedia has a far more gruesome and comprehensive history of the US Labor movement, like the history of the NLRB, anti-union efforts in the 1860-1930s, the Coal Wars, Battle of Blair Mountain, etc. Everyone should know this history, at the very least so they can understand the harm that comes from delaying action further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
Immigrants maybe, but nobody in the rust belt thinks their town is being hollowed out and flooded with fentanyl because of trans people. That's not to say they have no grievances against trans people, but to think that the right think trans people are "to blame for this misfortune" shows a huge ignorance of the right's politics.
They're pointing out the use of Goldsteins to distract from the root cause of the issue (increasing wealth inequality) and get a significant fraction of the general population to believe the problem is more directly caused by immigrants than changes in legislation that allow for more corporate abuse. It's moot that trans people aren't a reasonable cause of economic problems because they are a distraction from economic problem.s
You're making the same mistake as the parent comment, by conflating social issues with economic ones. Evangelicals have a lot to hate about trans people on the social front, but I'm not aware of any that thinks the decline of American manufacturing is due to trans people. At best it's something like "low birth rates is shrinking the labor force", but even that's more social than economic.
What's with this low quality comment. If you have nothing productive to add, don't comment.
Or try to make a change yourself. Start a business and try a 4 day work week. Everyone should love it according to your world view and you could just be slightly less "greedy" and hire immigrants and trans folks and every other 'misfortunate' soul.
Your line about 'just start a business' is something people say but never actually execute on themselves. Try making a store to compete with Amazon, a or a grocer to compete with our consolidated giants. They can and will use the economy of massive scale they have to crush your business into oblivion, taking a short term loss to maintain a death grip on the market
That's capital.
What about the average American with pensions and 401ks that are invested in stocks? Or the "FIRE" crowd on reddit with 6 figures invested in Vanguard ETFs? Is "Capital" just a slur to be used against owners of capital you don't like, or you think have too much?
Own capital or be owned by those who do. That's how it works.
We're trapped in a game that's taking the world to a bad place, but which we're doing really well at.
Pensions and 401ks are today's "people taking care of elders when they're too old to work" - an idea as old as humanity. It's just abstracted through markets.
You didn't answer the question. Are those people "captial" or not? If it's just "own capital", then most Americans are "capital" because they at least have some sort of 401k or pension, but I suspect you wouldn't put them in the same group as "people who have hoovered up the majority of wealth" or whatever.
Probably not. In the sense it's being used in this discussion, capital are people whose majority of income comes from dividends and rents. So your typical 401k (likely - I am not American) isn't in that category, rather they are labor with some savings for an old age.
The main difference is whether you need to work for someone or not. That determines your social class and to a large extent, self-interests.
So the average boomer after retirement?
I also don't see too many boomers funding Super PACs and getting their favorite laws passed.
59% of Americans have a 401k or other retirement account.[1] They accumulate capital so they don't need to work when they're old. A small fraction of them are the "Reddit FIRE" types.
The top 1% own more than 50% of all equity in private and public companies.[2] They and their kids and maybe grandkids don't need to work to live.
Would you put both in the same group? Other than "owns productive assets" they don't have that much in common.
1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/691202/percentage-americans-ret...
2. https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1212/average-net...
Others (retirement savers) using the same tools as that minority doesn't make them the same as that minority. Degree of control matters. That's what I was responding to.
"You know the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire? About a billion dollars"
self-reported ? also, substantial numbers of adult people fall into various classifications that definitely do not have such a thing. Are those not counted at all ? also, how is it so precise with no caveats, callouts or error bars ?!
BS
More importantly, the 401k-s invested in the stock market aren't capital either but they do provide intermediating third parties with controlling power without any assurance that it will be used in the interest of the account holders - pretty much like bank accounts work.
Thus, 401k holders are not holders of capital, they only notionally own a share of pooled assets which are controlled by third parties for those parties' own ends and connections - mutual funds, banks, etc.
I feel you. I'm saying the exact same thing all over this thread.
> 401k holders are not holders of capital
There's capital and Capital. All 401k holders own capital. But the run of the mill retirement saver has no outsize influence on politics or business beyond what's available to a private citizen. Capital, with a capital C (haha!) controls both.
They don't scream, but the social pressure is absolutely there.
https://apnews.com/article/jd-vance-childless-cat-ladies-bir...
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/30/nx-s1-5382208/whats-behind-th...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bridget-phil...
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jun/25/parenti...
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/may/25...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/11/what-is-pron...
https://www.vox.com/policy/363543/pronatalism-vance-birth-ra...
https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/commentary/the-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/style/women-pronatalist-m...
https://fairerdisputations.org/have-more-kids/
https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-parental-dead-end-of-consent-m...
As someone who also follows pro/anti natalist space closely, I'm not worried pronatlism efforts are going to move the needle though.
https://www.axios.com/2024/07/25/adults-no-children-why-pew-...
https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/50th-edition-spring-2025
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Slides_London.pdf
If this were true (and I don't concede that it is), then you've just stated that the minimum bribe sufficient to persuade someone to become a parent is a lottery jackpot.
Mostly though, people who won lotteries would rather spend that on themselves. Demographic collapse is inevitable, and you'll die without even understanding why it happened.
As the other person pointed out, a lottery jackpot is also far above the minimum, it was just the most obvious example of a sudden windfall. And even then I was considering lottery jackpots here which are usually $0.5m-5m, not tens or hundreds of millions which seems common in the US (I could be wrong on that).
Well, the reason why you choose the absurdly improbable example, is because it's still the least absurd/improbable. Why does this need to be explained to you?
Children have been treated like state/church assets for multiple centuries if not millennia now.
Could you give some examples outside of government? I would imagine the wealth owners would cut those jobs pretty quickly? I've always been told that private enterprise was so much more efficient and good at cutting waste.
> they’re high-paid, private-sector roles that persist because the system values control and optics just as much as output
Sounds like you've answered your own question - these jobs are needed for the system to work. They're not "extra".
No comments yet
This contradicts what you already said ("there are always more TODOs"). Which one should I reply to?
If your employment has fixed deadlines, and your employer does not react to efficiency increases by setting earlier deadlines, then you should expect the headline effect (efficiency increases mean your weekly hours decrease).
Work expands to fill available hours. We don’t get more leisure time. That’s not ‘allowed’.
The industrial revolution coincides more or less with when starvation started to disappear from the developed world.
In many countries, holidays and PTO are a norm. I personally know a few people that choose to work 4 days a week, I know another bunch that actually retired early or simply don't jump from a job to another because they can free ride for a bit (no judgment).
That also means that you 1/ have to actually prioritize leisure over money 2/ have actually something leisurely to do.
Aren't retirement ages being raised everwhere across Europe?
Before that labor was exploited. After that labor was exploited.
We don’t seem to be willing to do that again.
The working class will only get any benefits through class fight and collective action, but that ship has sailed.
Capitalism has won.
Atomisation, which liberalism promotes heavily to the underclass, has all but destroyed humanity.
There is no business in the world, except those already financially unhealthy, that would choose no-growth + reduced cost over growth + same cost.
It just goes against every business ethos except Arizona Iced Tea.
If that were the case, why are so many companies bent on eliminating some employees and equipping the rest with AI to make up the difference? Wouldn't it be in their best interest to retain ALL those employees and equip them all with AI?
The AI wave is masking a lot of poor economic outlook at the moment
For instance the amount of people employed in agriculture in France dropped from 60% in the 1800s to 3% today, a 95% reduction. Assuming everyone worked 40 hour weeks back in 1800s, that means everyone should only have to work 2 hours a week today, right?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-the-labor-force-...
Your job will continue to be at least 40 hours, the base pay adjusted for inflation will decrease, the "benefits" that are too complicated to understand and extract yourself from will increase, and you definitely will come back into the office one day. =)
We have continuously been able to do more in less time because of new technology for 250 years, since the Industrial Revolution since.
The increased productivity has benefited workers either by higher wages or shorter hours. Mostly the former.
I'm sure this trend will continue.
Is it still the 90s? I thought after that wages stagnated compared to productivity.
As a business owner I’m using AI to hire fewer people for less time, massively reducing HR headaches. It’s great!
It was like this when we won the 8-hour day norm that we have now! The 8-hour day may have been enabled by technology in some sense, but it was won with a fight.
People need to have lives, not just jobs+recovery. Working for 5 consecutive days feels like living in the office and only coming home to sleep and do home chores - this doesn't even justify commuting.
I once had 4 days sick, and my manager had to call me into a meeting with HIS manager to impress upon me that there was 6 months left to the year and I could only take 2 more sick days before they would have to count it against me on my performance review.
In the United States, employees have no leverage.
If only there was some kind of organisation that workers could form to improve their collective bargaining power...
Setting that aside, employees still have no leverage as many benefits that people rely on are tied to employment requirements. People can't take off time to retrain for a better job, have to come in when they're sick, etc., because if they upset their employer, they may lose their job which means losing food assistance they need for their kids, and employers know this...
This is a systemic issue.
And the only way you will fix it is by collective bargaining. Not by giving up.
In a labor market, companies aren't entitled to labor and laborers aren't entitled to jobs. If a company isn't viable then it isn't viable. If a job doesn't pay what you want, you dont have to do it. Things get complicated (intentionally?) when companies control large swaths of jobs at once or have outsized impacts on their employees' lives and future careers. Employees don't have nearly as much impact in the other direction (individually) and this asymmetry is the cause of lots of abuse historically. Unions are one way to help steady and maintain the labor market in order to keep it fair and efficient and powerful.
In general, things are worth improving even if there aren't perfect answers.
Never really heard of one that didn't end up corrupted. Usually from the get-go. To call my argument "weird" tells me how little personal experience you have with unions.
>Neither is your next implication that some companies wouldn't be viable if they had to pay more so therefore paying more is bad.
Not some. Practically all companies. In tech, maybe only the FAANG set would be able to shoulder that burden.
>If a company isn't viable then it isn't viable.
Some companies are viable in one environment, but not in another. If you're changing the environment to make fewer companies viable, then you're putting more people out of work. This should be obvious. It isn't, I think, because some second grade teachers pass children who should have flunked out.
>In general, things are worth improving even if there aren't perfect answers.
Dimwitted people will try to "improve" things right until the world burns down around them. Any attempt to point out to them that this is occurring will be met with even more ambitious-but-ill-conceived attempts at improving things.
Possibly higher than that on HN though.
So the UK and Europe are communist now?
It this rhetorical?
But also get real if you don't believe that kill bots won't take all the cannon fodder jobs. Computer programs don't have the nasty habit of disobeying orders or revolt.
AI has nothing to do with this. Worker productivity has already been shooting up and workers have been given nothing to match their efforts. As long as capitalism is the default economic system, any pro-worker change will have to be taken. Most corporations can't even allow workers to toil anywhere but under their direct supervision. Giving people more free time is clearly out of the question.
You can just do things!
And they'll exhaust humanity, destroy ecosystems, and kill all the flora and fauna to achieve this.
I hope that working more for less wouldn’t have many takers but there may be a few.
My advice to would-be CEOs and managers is to just let people be, don’t try to squeeze blood from a stone. It’s good to have some slack in the workline for when you need it, because the workers who have been treated well are far more likely to jump into an emergency and dump massive loads of work all at once, since they have a lot in reserves. Those emergencies are moments that make or break companies.
The problem is you will increase cycle times. There is a sort of time dilation that occurs around weekends. Thursdays will become the new Fridays and on Mondays people will be kind of groggy from being out for 3 days. So basically Tuesdays and Wednesdays become the days to really do hardcore work. That means it takes longer to get big projects done as people naturally schedule things around Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
A better model is to just have people be remote, and do a little bit of work each workday. This keeps people a little more fresh and boils their days down to just getting 1 or 2 important decisions made.
I'm not against workers asking for more money in the slightest, they don't do that nearly as often as they should, but this sounds a bit like "big brain idea: give me more money lol".
... screams the economics-illiterate left. If they pay you money for your work/time, then it's by definition fungible.
e.g. See "Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19198649
The OP is arguing this is even more true when AI does routine tasks, and the remaining tasks are more creative, strategic, inspiration-based.
That way, masses won't ever have time to think!