Hacker News Reader

Comment by standardUser | Hacker News Reader

I think it's worth considering that, in the US, the ultimate leap from 5 to 4 day work weeks would require a change in labor laws to mandate full-time status and overtime pay cutoff at 32 hours/week. Close to 60% of US workers are hourly. I can't predict all of the ramifications from that kind of change, but I have to imagine it would largely benefit workers. I wish we had a major political party that was at least willing to start the conversation. We all know this "40 hours" nonsense is just historical happenstance, not some ideal or even well-reasoned number, let alone balanced in the interest of the overwhelming majority (working people).

View on HN

>We all know this "40 hours" nonsense is just historical happenstance, not some ideal or even well-reasoned number, let alone balanced in the interest of the overwhelming majority (working people).

The more and more I see cases like this that exist, the more I feel it's yet more supporting evidence that the US is a failing democracy. We can point fingers and play responsibility games, we can claim its minority protection (are wealthy and powerful individuals really a minority that need more protection in our current structure or should they even be considered a minority), but at the end of the day it doesn't seem to be working in some respects. If we aren't seeing labor law improvements and most fall in labor, something seems amiss.

I'm not advocating for mob rule, there are very good reasons for minority protections, but in some cases when the majority of a democratic society abhors the state of affairs yet we continually have no significant influence to at least try something different, that to me says we're in a failing or failed democracy charading around as a democracy. The older I get, the more I want to call a duck a duck if it walks, quacks, and looks like a duck.

We had a literal coup attempt two years ago. Of course our democracy is faulting, it's been disintegrating for many years.

To be pedantic, the US has never been a democracy, it has always been a republic and it was built in to give land equal or more power than individuals. Though I don’t deny that it seems to be either in or approaching a failure mode (though perhaps the observant may notice it never worked as it was advertised even from Day 1, there was never really a success mode).

What exactly is pedantic about that? The US is a constitutional democracy and a republic. Just like India. Unlike the UK that's a constitutional democracy and a monarchy.

It's like saying something is "technically not a car, it's electric".

Correct! This thing about "republic not a democracy" is so absurd. Don't people learn this stuff in middle school?

Generally when I see someone say "republic not a democracy" they are typically Americans with (far) right authoritarian/illiberal political beliefs that you don't say out loud in polite company, but if you call them out on it you get called an alarmist.

The proper word here would be "archaic" - it's a correct claim per se, but they're using a definition of "democracy" that was the prevailing one at the time the US constitution was written.

To make this claim about the US is to overlook that basically all western countries have 40 hour work weeks.

Are they all failing democracies too?

Its a shame how many Americans are too busy hating America to look outside the border and see how good they have it, but also how most of their “uniquely American” problems are not unique at all.

(My perspective is as an Australian living in America. And my comment doesn’t apply to guns.)

US working hours are legitimately higher than most of the developed world.

And worker rights are objectively much worse.

This is not really true though, 40 hour working weeks are very much not something western countries "have" in the general sense of having a constitution or police force. In many western countries, especially northern Europe, it is a given that parents (especially women, but also men) work less than 40 hours, even in demanding jobs. As a more general example, the municipalities of many cities in the Netherlands consider 36 hours a full time job, in the sense that getting paid more than 36 hours is actually beyond your contract and working that long is very unlikely to happen. Personally I work a demanding tech job with 32 hours a week, like others in this thread, this does not hurt my performance.

The real problem, and reason I suspect you use the word "have", is that this is fundamentally a cultural issue where the resolution is not for "the bad companies to stop demanding all this work" but actually the entire society moving away from the idea that work is somehow the only way to constructively spend your time, and for money being the only value that is worth pursuing.

Concretely what this means is that the fetishization of work must stop. This includes hustle culture, the idea of "side" or "passive" income, and the glorification of high salaries and high work "ethic" (see the use of the word ethic there, super interesting right). Opening hackernews itself, you can see that this mindset is widespread and actually not enforced by companies.

If you look around the world, you will see that many societies don't work this way. Western societies became like this, for better or worse, through religion, specifically protestant christianity. If we look back now, saying that this is a good or bad thing is complete nonsense, but looking at the present we can desire for things to be different, and that desire is what is missing.

>To make this claim about the US is to overlook that basically all western countries have 40 hour work weeks. >Are they all failing democracies too?

If said populations voters in general think otherwise and its viable to execute, then yes. If not, then no.

The point has very little to do with 40-hour work weeks and almost everything to do with the lack of policy reflecting reasonably implementable wants and needs of the population at large (again, while not trampling on human rights of minorities).

The reason you see Americans hating on America is because they're unhappy in some way shape or form. Looking at those complaints externally, one might be inclined to dismiss those complaints because the situation is better than other locations relatively speaking in some respect from outside looking in. Ultimately, that doesn't negate the unhappiness of those complaining or a failure of a system designed specifically to address those shared views and frustrations through policy. It's possible for some things to appear "better" from the outside relative to another basis and still be undesirable by the population at large.

I'm not well versed in labor rights in every country but in the US its not great, I can assure you. If you're comparing it to Somalia, it's probably amazing. That doesn't mean it can't be better in the US. Americans are often comparing America to itself and usually in a historic context: are things getting better or worse? We want to see progress, improvement in our lives or at least stability. That's of course not always possible because reality sinks in. When the pandemic hit, it wasn't a situation we could just "policy away" a viral infection without tradeoffs (social distancing, isolation, etc. were policy based but had ramifications on people's lives).

I had a colleague from India who shared this frustration, they came from poverty in their country and moved into a high paying tech position here and would often bring up the same point that while so many complain in the US, "its better than many places." That point isn't invalid but that doesn't dismiss the desire to make it even better here, especially if it's possible and it's not the case of simple power imbalances. I came from poverty in the US. Maybe my poverty wasn't as bad as his poverty as a basis of comparison? Does the comparison really matter? We both want enjoyable happy present and future lives, let's focus on that instead of "who had/has it worse" and not use the worst to set the bar of progress.

So, whether or not the situation is worse somewhere else doesn't invalidate frustration unless you are against progress for a population in general.

> almost everything to do with the lack of policy reflecting reasonably implementable wants and needs of the population at large

And there’s my point. I think your claim is that most Americans want a 32 hour work week, and that the fact it doesn’t exist at large is proof of a failure of democracy. My claim is that by that logic every country in the world is a failed democracy since there’s always something that hasn’t been implemented by government that the people say they want in a poll.

I don’t think that all democracies are failed democracies (and I doubt you do either), which means you should rethink your criteria for what makes a democracy successful.

The US is a fully functioning representative democracy. People in small groups always overestimate the popularity of their cause.

Quite simply there are other people. And those people often have other opinions.

As someone who moved out of the US and goes back to visit family every year ... I'd say it is barely functioning. Functioning, but barely.

I had to go to the US consulate a few weeks ago. I was literally facepalming at the inefficiencies of it. It was laughable.

Haha, right, the government is kind of incompetent, but it is the government we elect so it functions as a democracy. It just doesn't function very well as a government.

> We all know this "40 hours" nonsense is just historical happenstance

It's not happenstance. It's something workers fought and sometimes died to win against an incumbent 6 or 7 day, 10 plus hour a day norm.

Right, but it’s not some magical optimal number.

It’s lets you have 3 shifts per day (3 x 8 = 24) for full coverage. That also fits with the idea that it gave you a balanced life. 8 hours at work, 8 hours asleep, 8 hours for the rest.

It was a convenient number below the old, much worse, standard.

People act like 40 hours is some kind of natural law that can’t be questioned.

It absolutely can be.

40 hours really has to due with overtime rates, advocated by progressive companies back in the day. 20 years ago, Progressive companies advocated for company gyms, day-care, unlimited M&Ms and ping-pong tables. Now, its work from home (for now.)

Otherwise can we question the need to differentiate full-time vs part-time? Its certainly arbitrary, and mostly related to whether one qualifies for benefits. In the case of benefits, it may be less than 40 hours.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com