Hacker News Reader

Comment by goalieca | Hacker News Reader

Maybe this is a controversial opinion but the world is too competitive but in all the wrong ways.

Human society has been great at and thrived on exploiting people for a very long time now. We'd probably have to go all the way back to hunter and gatherer tribes before we find a point in time where that wasn't a normal fact of life. Capitalism is just the most efficient form of exploitation that we've found. It's not really controversial though.

It's unfortunate that we can't come to a world agreement to work 32 hours a week or something reasonable like that. There can still be a healthy competition without all of us working ourselves to death.

We essentially already did and the # of hours is 40 per week.

Easy to say when you're salaried. Not so easy when you work for hourly wages. It's not as though pay would suddenly increase by ~20%. Also, 40 hours / week is already a decrease from what it was ~100 years ago.

100 years ago the average industrial working hours was apparently 45, so not that many - I feel like today 40 is more the exception than the rule.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1820827?seq=1#metadata_info_tab...

In fact the hours were starting to change to 40 that year. Funny coincidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hours_of_Work_(Industry)_Conve...

Edit: Did some more research and in 1890 we have some truly ridiculous numbers. http://www.pbs.org/livelyhood/workday/weekend/8hourday.html

But there's a good reason we turned from those.

> I feel like today 40 is more the exception than the rule.

Is it though? Most people aren't you and I. Most are working hourly jobs and their employers are not paying out overtime.

My only meaningful point is that a shorter work week would likely only benefit those among us who are already better off (in terms of compensation.) I don't see how it helps my friend working at the Chrysler plant.

> Capitalism is just the most efficient form of exploitation that we've found.

I believe slavery already won this category

Reply on news.ycombinator.com