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Comment by yetihehe | Hacker News Reader

Because we got used to the idea that who is not working, is consuming resources made by those working and putting in effort. Then those putting in effort say "if I could get resources without putting in effort, why should I put the effort?".

> ere is a very simple statement which may sound a bit mean: it is entirely feasible that giving a job to a “stupid” person, regardless of how much we try and train them, might cost the economy more than we benefit, in aggregate.

Well, if they don't put in effort, however small, and get resources, others will try to be stupid too. Or, they would not get enough resources, starve and those with empathy will be very vocal and use shame.

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The dream society would be where we all just work less hours. Everyone can get a job but doesn't have to burn every workable hour of their life.

This, for some reason makes too much sense. So much so that I’m curious if there is some sort of world wide conspiracy to not do this.

If more people were employed during less time, we would also need more administration.

Not to mention that there are at least two sectors where there can never be enough employees: medicine and education.

I think the simplest answer that probably accounts for most of it is just that employees all have overhead, 20 people working full time is more efficient than 40 people working half time. Less HR work, less moving context between people, less office space, less laptops, etc.

So I can see how naturally the system has prioritised this way of working, but despite the efficiency I think we need to do something to normalise 20-30 hours as full time. Give people less iphones and more hours in their life.

40 is probably the most optimal way to extract the most value out of the most people. If only some worked less, there would probably be bigger HR overhead, like you say, plus those individuals would be less communicable. In reality, those companies who extract the most value from their workers are able to outcompete others, so the system stays. If company would pay less to workers (for less time used, half of "normal" employment), they would try to compensate with getting another job just to support themselves, because most workers are typically always on edge of supporting themselves (they move that edge whenever they get more money). If companies paid for less hours, their products would cost too much and couldn't compete with other companies.

I feel like we should be doing something like requiring paying overtime for over 30 hours a week. The complication here is countries are competing with each other as well as internally. That said, most jobs are local, so cheap construction workers or child care workers overseas don't compete with local ones.

This combined with doing something about housing prices seems like it could work.

> so cheap construction workers or child care workers overseas don't compete with local ones.

That's also why building homes is so costly. Transporting non-local materials costs more than making them near. Then you need to support builders, plumbers, electricians...

Don't forget about elderly care, which is not a subset of medicine.

Rate of profit = Exploitation rate ÷ (1 + Organic composition of capital)

> The dream society would be where we all just work less hours. Everyone can get a job but doesn't have to burn every workable hour of their life.

That's not the world our Overlords want for us. They want us to literally work ourselves to death making them richer than Gods as cheaply as possible, and then fall over into a convenient nearby pit and bury ourselves for their convenience.

It’s not even a hypothetical. That’s what was happening (at least towards the end) during socialism in Eastern Europe. Since everybody had to have a job, the over-employment produced a lot of slackers.

Same thing was also happening in Gulags.

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