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Comment by eionh | Hacker News Reader

Why $culturally_homogeneous_and_highly_educated_country leads the world in $social_wellness

Let's look at a simple fact: Finland as a Parliament of 200 seat for a population of roughly 5.5 million. France as a Parliament of 577 seat for a population of roughly 67 million.

Thats around 3 times more representative per citizen.

It's more like more democracy = more social wellness.

EDIT: To have the same amount of representative in France, we would need ~1900 députés, which mean 19 députés per département, and ~6 députés per arondissement.

In many countries every member of the parliament push the button decided by their party[1] - so one representative per party would be sufficient:

it would be much cheaper salary wise - also they could gather in a small meeting room somewhere ;) And those countries would stay as much "democratic" as now, just without the Potemkin village of the parliament...

[1] edit: by "party" I mean not the representatives, or all the party as a whole, but the leader of the party / or a smallish leading group

A higher number of representative per citizen ten to counter this effect. When an election as a small number of people who vote, their vote as more individual power, which mean, the people who end up being elected has more responsibility toward the voter, since each of them can significantly impact his chance of being re-elected.

Election with a big voter pool tend, on the other end, to blur the individual for the benefit of identifiable group with clear political line. The result of this is that, the representative get elected because they are part of this group, not truly because of his own idea (although there is exception). Due to this, it is their expected behavior that they will be faithful to the line of the party.

We have more representatives in the Parliament than France for a quarter of the population, everybody is voting what the party leader decides. Hard facts, not anecdotal evidence.

Finland has 4-5000 trees per person. Clearly it's the abundance of trees that creates the social wellness.

Well ofc the reality is more complex than that and my example is an oversimplification. But the point still stand. The more a country is democratic, the more benefit will be distributed to the global population instead of a small portion of it.

I don't think many would agree that a larger parliament would make something "more democratic". It must matter infinitely less than e.g. a media climate, level of corruption, regulation of political donations, etc. etc.

The article was very specific about the culture of flexible working hours, not a general set piece about social wellness.

All you need to do is set aside the notion that modern productivity equals having everyone at their desk at the same time. What does cultural homogeneity have to do with it?

> What does cultural homogeneity have to do with it?

Homogenous cultures have an easier time agreeing to all do the same thing. It’s called establishing social norms. I went to a STEM magnet high school that was about 1/3 Asian when I was there and is now 2/3 Asian. It was already known as a pressure cooker when I was a kid, and the competitiveness went way up since then. Why? Well I was one of those Asians. My dad grew up in a village in Bangladesh, moves his family to the US through hard work and a lot of luck. When I was in high school he told me I had to work 16 hours a day to be successful. I understand the arguments for limiting working hours at an intellectual level, but my gut reaction is to try do a little more than the next guy to get ahead. Even if it’s more for show than substance. And I’m raising my kids to do that too, because it’s my culture! (I can’t even really help it. My daughter is already kind of a striver to begin with, and my natural reaction is to reinforce those instincts.)

> he told me I had to work 16 hours a day to be successful.

"Success" in what sense? When have you succeeded?

How much should a 16h/day workweek pay for it to be a "success" if you have kids? Would the kids agree on the assessment?

And why you should be successful? This is just life - existing and being is success.

My point was something along the lines of this: “I pick my kids up at school at 4 and make them dinner every day at 5. I consider that successful”

I realize I’m lucky to be able to make that choice (and my kids will get a higher education regardless) - but it makes me sad that anyone everywhere would need to choose between success as being a present parent and success as giving your kids economic stability.

As a Finn, I really can't imagine doing an office job 16 hours a day for a sustained period of time; even the standard seven and a half is a challenge to fill with productive work every day (certainly you could idle at the office but that doesn't count as working). A single 16-hour day is doable if there's really something to do, but it would cause me to take the next day off.

Doing what I do currently, constant 16 hour days would almost certainly result in hospitalization in a few weeks.

(I'm not a Finn) I struggle to think what could possibly benefit from someone spending 16 hours devoted to something. Maybe something on the creative side of things like writing a book/novel?? But even then, I would guess that it would get the creative juices moving even more if you actually step away from the computer/typewriter/notebook for a time! What the heck in a business/enterprise environment benefits from anyone being there 16 hours in a day? Seems more and more like a hamster running inside a wheel to me. ;-)

At least in programming you can easily see who do put in extra effort be it studying/playing with new tech or writing new software and thous who for it is only a 9 to 5 job.

The former people seem to produce way better quality code and ideas compared to latter, but that is to be expected since they are in one way or another immersed in the "world of programming" more than others.

Mexico has the worst productivity of the listed countries and the longest workweek:

https://time.com/4621185/worker-productivity-countries/

For a large population working longer gives no obvious benefit.

It might work for you and your family! But globally, for any general population, you can't squeeze out more than the 7-8 hours of productive work per day and for even some fields this is a stretch.

So, even if there is the cultural need to appear ultra dedicated, there is very little evidence of any benefits to that behaviour pattern.

Lots of cultures have their way of doing things, but if it does not make sense, cultures can change.

I don't see how a cultural homogeinity is necessary to respond to cross cultural economic facts.

But the article was not about working longer! It was about being flexible when and how you want your employees to perform the added value function you've hired them to do.

I fail to see even less how cultural homogeinity would be a major factor in this.

You are quite right of course that cultural norms affect lots of things. But I don't know why they would block employers from being flexible (flexible does not mean less demanding).

You're mixing up several different things. "Productivity" is a measure of GDP created by labor. That has several significant implications:

First, productivity is heavily influenced by technology and financialization of the economy. A programmer working 8 hours per day creates a much larger GDP than a factory worker working 8 hours per day. So you can't compare the productivity of workers in a place like Mexico, where there is a lot of manufacturing and agricultural work, to a place like the USA, where a lot of the work is in fields like finance, software development, media, etc. (In your article, that's why Luxembourg has 50% higher GDP per hour worked as compared to Germany or the US--it's a heavily financialized economy.)

Second, there is a difference between productivity per hour worked and total productivity. Working more hours can lead to diminished productivity per hour, but still lead to overall higher GDP. The chart in the article actually proves that. Each American worker is responsible for $119,000 in GDP per year. Each Danish worker is responsible for $96,500 per year. Americans work about 23% more hours and produce about 23% more overall.

Third, even if there are diminishing returns to working more hours, they're not huge. Americans work a full quarter more than Germans, while maintaining higher productivity per hour. Part of that is due to America being more of a high-tech/financial economy, but in any event it doesn't seem like the extra work is tanking productivity.

As to the point about cultural homogeneity: the success of flexible work arrangements are predicated on social consensus, and building social consensus requires homogeneous values and attitudes. If you want to build a work culture where people feel comfortable taking 4-5 weeks of vacation, having a bunch of Americans who think it's better to work 25% more for 25% more money is going to undermine that. If you want people to feel comfortable working from home, having people who are culturally pre-disposed to associating face time with commitment to the job is going to undermine that.

What a fantastic reply. I'm now more convinced the point of view you expressed in your argument is more correct than mine :)

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