This is what I mention when I’m covertly pushing “radical” ideas such as 4 day work weeks. We have all of these technological advancements - Why can’t the workers see some of those benefits instead of them being funneled to the top in the form of extra profits?
The machine must be fed.
The goal was never leisure. The goal was always profit. And so we feed the profit machine, and when we run out of resources, we’ll start throwing in sacrifices.
Because the machine must be fed.
Stop pushing the idea of four day work weeks. Begin promoting the idea of three day weekends.
I bet you’ll start getting different responses.
My organisation does 4 day work weeks. But we chain our staff so only some of us have a 3 day weekend. My day off is usually either Tuesday or Wednesday (by choice, I could take Monday if I wanted).
It works for me because I have a normal weekend with my friends and family to do weekend stuff, and then my day off doesn’t really feel like a true weekend so I use it to catch up on errands, housework, medical appointments, etc. Meaning unlike most of my peers who have to do it all on the weekend, my real weekend is pure fun. I don’t do any serious housework on my weekend, I have a weekday where I work on myself and my home.
Honestly I just like the idea of it because if someone decides they really want to grind for a bit they can now take up a second up to full time job without worrying about most of the shit employers will give you for that.
What I think should be the standard is a “full time” job being 18 hours in a week of work time, including commuting, with any time above every additional multiple of 18 immediately paying out as 2.5x the pay that’s been earned so far. Doesn’t just give people their free time back in spades, it also significantly discourages extorting workers for overtime instead of staffing adequately because now it’s literally more expensive to pay out any overtime at all than it would have been to just hire the additional worker at equal pay, and that effect ramps up exponentially too, by the time you’re at the soul grind of a 40 hour week you’ve already tapped your employer so hard it would have been cheaper to hire 5 additional workers than it was to make you work that 40 hour week.
Because the Greeks you hear about were the aristocracy. You don’t hear how some estimates of the population breakdown were more than 80%-90% slaves.
Just like how you hear of the 300 Spartans, but not the several thousand Thebians, most of whom were slaves, who also defended the pass.
To be fair 1/3 of women don’t die in childbirth, 1/2 of children don’t die before they are ten, we have weed and booze they could never have dreamed of, freaken chocolate and aspirin, and you are highly unlikely to become a sex slave. It was paradise for a very small fraction of the population and rape/slavery/castration for the rest.
Still I could go for an orgy and some figs if anyone is in the mood.
weed
Weed is better today, but you wouldn’t get arrested for it back then
chocolate
Ah yes, the industry that depends on child labor, human trafficking, and slavery…
aspirin
Chew willow bark
It was paradise for a very small fraction of the population and rape/slavery/castration for the rest.
Yeah, today you don’t buy agrarian slaves, instead you just magically get cheap bananas, chocolate, oil, lithium, etc.
Out of sight, out of mind?
The Ancient Greeks weren’t actively trying to turn the strawberries in your fridge into a SaaS subscription.
This actually points to the root of the problem. You couldn’t do that kind of retail subscription nonsense in ancient times because the bookkeeping, identity management, and fraud prevention would have been a nightmare. Since we found out how to automate all of those problems away, here we are.
Sort of, my point is really that there are new kinds of work that were not really conceivable at the time, most of which has no direct influence on whether you’re fed, clothed, housed, and healthy. (Indirectly is another matter, North Korean’s wisest minds centrally decide what really matters and look where that gets them… Not a 3 day work week)
