No increases in productivity ever led to less working hours, only organized action. We work more hours than miedeval serfs.
Source: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's
https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...
Every last modern convenience is a whip at the back of the workers. We should hang the Capitalist with the entrails of the last Priests.
Less/fewer is probably a lost cause, and a little bit of why is this kind of useless correction. If those who correct can’t or won’t explain why one is correct over the other, then it simply isn’t.
ETA: a fun comment below points me to a running joke I was unaware of; my apologies if this was an instance of it that I missed. I am not really a television person but this feels like a significant bit of cultural ignorance on my part.
> If those who correct can’t or won’t explain why one is correct over the other, then it simply isn’t.
I will try to remember this and also execute it with kindness and trivia, like you suggest, in the future.
Thank you.
(I do occasionally slip, and correct its/it's, your/you're or they're/their/there in someone's comment, but only if that comment is aggressively or nastily calling someone else stupid.)
When people correct less/fewer I always assume they are just making a Game of Thrones/Stannis Baratheon joke.
Which I will always support, even if the TV series drove off a cliff at the end.
(Though it is a somewhat dangerous one to deploy without context)
Is there a clip? (I have neither the energy nor the streaming service to get into GoT)
I actually don't even know if the person you replied to was making this joke, or if they were being sincere, I'm speculating... but...
> Is there a clip?
It was kind of a running joke on the show. Couldn't find a clip that encapsulates the whole thing, but the first clip here shows Stannis reflexively making the correction at various times as if it were like a tic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0zNWswcqMg
And then later in the series you see it rub off on the person he was with in the previous instances (in the 2nd scene in this clip):
I would guess that this is sort of an embedded joke about the use of British regional language/accents as a world building framework? A brief google suggests it is not from the books.
I am of the age/schooling/class background where people make this reflexive correction entirely unironically. I know several older people who do this, and I remember the cultural campaigns over the “ten items or less” signs in supermarkets.
Or they aren't good at defending their position. Beware of people who are good at argument: they'll often seem to be right when they're not. Conversely, don't ignore someone just because they can't argue their point well. The point may have merit, even if they can't represent it as strongly as they should.
This is where the Hacker News guidelines about responding to the strongest possible interpretation of what somebody is saying come into play.
Capitalism is optimized to produce products and services people want to buy which drives people wanting to work more hours. Which then drives up the costs of things that aren’t replicated endlessly like land and goods that are intentionally left scarce such as admission to elite institutions.
You can work dramatically less and still live well, but the sirens call is very seductive. Food, clothes, transportation, housing, etc all offer real value at minimal cost and little pushing you in that direction.
Millions of Americans working part time are struggling to find full time employment for insurance, but most such jobs are low pay. For livable hourly wages, substitute teachers positions are available in most school districts in the US for example.
High hourly wage semi retired thus part time positions are offered at nearly 40% of all US companies. Even among extremely overworked professions like doctors you’re find many people working ~20 hour weeks.
What isn’t available is part time work with the same potential for career advancement. But that’s the siren’s call of the hedonistic treadmill not some inherent requirement for employment.
Further, even at full time employment a strict 40 hour week while taking your annual vacation would be a massive step up for a large fraction of Americans.