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Comment by jseban | Hacker News Reader

You assign an enormous amount of special status to certain people who you happen to be related to by blood, and that's arbitrary. It works when it works, and it doesn't work when it doesn't.

What natural law says it's better to spend time with/live only with people who are related to by blood? The only necessity for reproduction is sexual intercourse. A family is susceptible to the same abuse and corruption as any other arbitrary power structure.

The arguments against it are the divorce rates, and they are not abstract or ungrounded.

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What "special status"? It simply is how the world is, as we've seen over all of history.

Yes some marriages end in divorce and families disconnect in some cases, with various outcomes. The family still exists even if no-one participates in it. The guy is being overworked and unable to see his kids, I'm all for that guy seeing his kids. It can have huge knock on effects if it's ignored. You aren't forced to participate in family.

Family is built from natural impulses, biological connections and installs in the children an inheritance of values, schooling and relationships. There are reasons from first principles for families and the surrounding neighbourhood, city and country benefits from families. You can't hand-wave away the meaning of family as 'power' and 'arbitrary'.

> What "special status"? It simply is how the world is, as we've seen over all of history.

And we are trying to move into the future, not the past.

Are nuclear families really so important and successful that we need more of it? Is this really an undebatable absolute truth that should be forced on people? Let people decide on their own if they want to spend their new found free time on families or something else.

Edit: the "special status" is loyalty, and loyalty is bad if we are trying to live in a meritocracy.

Divorces are between people not related by blood (usually). The reason you provide resources to blood relatives (kids) is to give your genes the best chance to survive.

What if a person not related by blood will give your kids better chances?

What says that the parent will necessarily be the "best" person for their child through their whole life, and not someone else? That's arbitrary.

You see no issues with swearing life long loyalty to blood relations? That's just going to be the optimal solution in every case? That's making it a little bit too easy don't you think?

Are you arguing that there's zero biological programming specific to children or blood relatives?

No, but I'm arguing that it's very unreliable, often fully backfires and becomes actually destructive, and that in our modern society there are other factors that are much more relevant to people's success in life, and blood relations I would say is fully arbitrary.

It's also just as natural for people to branch out and leave their families, as it is to stay close to their families.

And I think it's irrelevant to the discussion of shortening working hours, and a bad example because it's another oppressive construct.

It's like arguing for shortening working hours so that people can go to church more, and church is healthy. Really? That's highly debatable, and obviously another power structure which is also old fashioned and has seen decreasing success.

How about just shortening the working hours so that people can be more, free? And do what they want?

> so that people can go to church more, and church is healthy. Really? That's highly debatable, and obviously another power structure which is also old fashioned

This one is so debatable because the definition and theological implications of Church 'healthiness' depend upon many different variables and can differ subtly across all Churches.

Church isn't a 'power structure' though. It relies on voluntary participation. You can walk out of Church whenever you want.

Doing what you want tends to be quite narrow, hedonistic and unsatisfying in the end. It's easier to make the argument for free time from higher principles.

Haha ok so church has no power. And people can never be free, they must be institutionalised, and we should use shortening of working hours to just move them to a different institution that is even more old fashioned and increasingly failing, than then ones we are freeing them from.

Well I guess we can say that we have a fundamentally different view on what constitutes development and improvement of life and society.

I doubt we have a different view, as I haven't stated one on 'what constitutes development and improvement of life a society'.

Freedom is the ability to swim in any direction you want, so go ahead. Do whatever you want. The map of your possible options already exists and the institutions are just one or many worthwhile places to visit. When people do whatever they want it quite often ends up on a place on the map where there is a lot of hedonism and not much in the way of higher meaning or valuable aims.

As a dispassionate observer it is my inclination to suggest that people will take the argument for more free time off work in the favour of church and family as an easier argument to make, given it's connection to a higher meaning and relatable values. A boss will likely see anything connected to 'wants' as room for more work.

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