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If you pick cotton for 80/hr a week I promise you won't be picking cotton in the long run as long as the guy only doing it 20 hr/week (you will develop physical problems very quickly)

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From a business perspective it is probably better to burn though many people at 80 hours a week, rather than fewer 20hr week employees (er, or slaves as history goes). Since it is a low skill job and anyone can do it the employee longevity likely doesn't matter. An employee that has picked cotton for 1 month isn't likely to be that much worse than an employee that has picked for 1 year. Of course this is my anecdote, and picking cotton is rather brutal by hand, hence we have machines that do it for us now.

If the amount of experience is irrelevant why not use more employees for shorter periods of time?

What is the administrative cost per employee?

In most business you will have a point where the cost per employee align with the output per employee and you try to peg production there. Also getting too many employees can lead to second and third order effects that have to be managed, like transportation of employees and parking.

Okay obviously there's some limit. It doesn't make sense to have 1000 employees that only work 5 min each. However I also fail to see the benefit of making anyone work 80 hours, rather than say 40.

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