Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

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> Why has the 40 hour week persisted? Market forces.

Mostly zoning laws, burdensome regulations and government subsidies, really. If housing, education and healthcare still cost in real terms what they did in 1950 then people could afford to work 20 hours a week if they wanted to, but they're stuck working 40 hours because of government policies that cause price inflation and cost disease.

> Climate change? Market forces.

Markets require consent to operate. The victims of climate change didn't consent and should have every right to sue.

> The persistence of the slave trade? Market forces.

It was actually market forces that destroyed the slave trade. The rise of factories gave the slaves something much better to run away to, which made "slaves running away" a thing that happened so much more often that the entire system started to disintegrate. It's not a coincidence that the Civil War was between the industrialized North and the slave-owning South.

Also, slavery is obviously the epitome of not being a free market.

> Prostitution and human trafficking, opioids, disintegration of the family, Facebook; all your good friend “market forces”.

Prostitution is dangerous primarily because it's illegal.

Human trafficking is slavery again.

The opioid crisis is caused primarily by the War on Drugs and failed government policies that make it hard and expensive to seek medical treatment while causing black market drugs to have high but inconsistent potency and all the other issues.

Disintegration of the family is mostly a result of social assistance programs replacing the need for social ties with government programs.

Facebook is lame but it's also in decline. That is how the market is supposed to work -- things people hate fall out of favor.

You haven't chosen very good examples.

>Mostly zoning laws, burdensome regulations and government subsidies, really. If housing, education and healthcare still cost in real terms what they did in 1950 then people could afford to work 20 hours a week if they wanted to, but they're stuck working 40 hours because of government policies that cause price inflation and cost disease.

You arguing this is really ironic because the only reason they're working only 40 hour weeks to begin with is labor regulation. The free market didn't give factory workers 8 hour shifts.

Labor regulation has historically followed market trends rather than driving them.

If you tried to pass a 40 hour work week in 1790 you would have been laughed out of the statehouse because it would have caused mass starvation since people had to work longer hours than that just to grow enough food to feed everyone.

Then industrialization rolls around and we slowly get to the point that labor supply starts to outstrip demand, and then we don't need everyone to work 80 hours anymore. Moreover, it doesn't cost much more to pay twice as many people for 40 hours as half as many people for 80 hours, but then you have built in slack if someone is sick or quits or dies because you have someone else to work a double shift temporarily. And research starts to show that not working people as long leads to more productivity. And there is less unrest and more consumption when you have everyone working 40 hours than when you have half of everyone working 80 hours and the other half unemployed. And the people who still prefer to work 80 hours instead of 40 just take two jobs.

Meanwhile you've had labor activists demanding a 40 hour work week for years, and once most businesses were either already doing it or getting ready to, opposition to the law becomes weak enough that they can finally pass it. Then for a hundred years they take credit for the thing that was already happening regardless.

> If you tried to pass a 40 hour work week in 1790 you would have been laughed out of the statehouse because it would have caused mass starvation since people had to work longer hours than that just to grow enough food to feed everyone

This theory that in history the conditions for survival were so much worse as to require much longer working hours is a great myth. Long working hours came mostly at the time of industrial revolution.

https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...

From the article:

... the medieval workday was not more than eight hours. The worker participating in the eight-hour movements of the late nineteenth century was "simply striving to recover what his ancestor worked by four or five centuries ago."

This is somewhat apples and oranges when you go that far back. It's not that they weren't working for most of the day, it's that everything was more laborious. You would work several straight days for your "employer" and then need several for yourself, not to sit on your butt and have a beer but because there was no such thing as a washing machine or a refrigerator and all repairs and maintenance on your dwelling were things you were expected to do for yourself rather than hire out.

It's tempting to think of a "feast" as a party, but even now, and especially back then, it was laborious. Everyone travels to gather in the same location (without cars), butcher the animals, clean them, prepare vegetables that started off as whole plants, chop wood to build a fire to cook with etc. A feast is not a vacation, it's just more working.

Post-industrialization brought specialization, so that instead of working a day for the local land owner and then a day for yourself, you would work both days for the factory and then use your wages to buy appliances and hire a roofer and eat in a restaurant. And then, as automation got better, you got to work for eight hours rather than sixteen and then come home and watch TV and argue with people on the internet instead of needing that time to carry your clothes to the river and then ride a horse several miles to the general store to buy lamp oil and gunpowder.

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