Why we don't work 15 hour work-weeks
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Some interesting bits of information:
- People do work less to some extent, but the reduction in working hours is concentrated in teen years and old age (65+).
- People seem to like work, will continue their jobs even if they win the lottery.
- Rich people (top 1%) now work longer hours than poorer people.
That hasn't come about by accident, we demonise unemployment which is in complete contrast to the way we talk about retirement.
If you're replaceable and there aren't many better options then you can be pressured to work longer hours.
Unfortunately automation is just increasing that "reserve army", rather than reducing working hours across the board.
Maybe it is just from my own limited experience but women seem to vastly prefer dating/marrying men who have fulltime jobs, even if those men are independently wealthy and could get by without work.
Not to say there aren't women out there of the gold-digger persuasion, but at least amongst the upper-middle class women I grew up around work and the willingness to work is seen as an important character trait.
Attributing this to a gender, instead of to a society (predominantly run by another gender), is incorrect at best.
Before we had kids, I told my wife about my dream to save a lot of money and retire early. She told me she couldn't respect a man who doesn't have a job. "Even if he already made so much money that he can take care of himself and his family for the rest of his life without having to work another day?" She admitted that it was probably an irrational preference, but this was simply how she feels. The ideal man enjoys working full-time, no matter what. Even a desire to work part-time is a turnoff.
A few years later, having small kids, I asked her again whether she would respect me less if I took a part-time job and spent more time taking care of the kids and household. Now she said that as long as we would still have enough money, it would be great.
(It remains only hypothetical, because I don't know any employer offering part-time jobs with hourly salary similar to what I make now. And I don't want to work 1/2 time for 1/4 money; I'd rather save some money now, and maybe later take a sabatical between two jobs.)
I am not sure the society is a sufficient explanation here. We disrespect the unemployed, that's true, but we respect rich people without asking how much they work. I don't think that a rich entrepreneur or politician would be turned down by women after admitting that he actually works 15 hours a week.
Maybe it is a function of age and experience. When you are young and childless, your world is only fun and work, so "I wish I could spend less time at work" translates as "I wish to only have fun all week long", which of course sounds like bad news about a potential husband. Only later you realize that things like taking care of kids and household are also valuable, and they compete for time with the job.
You seem to blame patriarchy for this (you didn't use the word, but you said "society predominantly run by another gender"). Ironically, seems to me that feminism plays its part here, too. (Not too surprising; horseshoe theory, etc.) If your political goal is to get women into all kinds of jobs, you need to brainwash them that a career is something intrinsically desirable, as opposed to merely something you do in order to pay your bills. Many young women are thrilled about their dreams of a future career, and then of course a man dreaming about early retirement simply has incompatible values. It takes a few years of work experience to realize that the career isn't what you imagined it to be during university.
The other comment about society is important too. A full-time job will range from 30 to 60 hours depending on the society. I heard of a Japanese wife disappointed that her European husband was "lazy" because he was working European hours.
When you work a 15-hour week, there's always somebody who got 7 times more accomplished than you did that week.
Unless they were a 10x performer or something, then it's even more ambitious by comparison.
The longer you work, the more tired you get. Working for 2 hours is easy. Working for 4 hours requires a break. Working for 8 hours requires the lunch break, and a few minor breaks. How often can you see people socializing or reading web during the 8 hours? With 2 hours, you would just do your work, and go socializing or reading web during your free time.
On the other hand, sometimes you get work-related ideas when not working. With 2 hours a day, you would usually come to work with a very clear idea of what to do. When I work on my projects in my free time, I often realize that taking breaks more often would actually make me more productive, because I would have thought about a simpler solution before having written a more complicated one.
Also, people use some of their free time to learn new things related to their craft. Working 15 hours a week would give you a lot of free time.
I agree that with 7 times more time you accomplish more, but definitely not 7 times more. Maybe 3 times more. And your private life would probably suffer a lot.
I guess farmers have done this for extended streches over the millennia.
15 Hour days would be rough but people have done it and will do it again in the future too.
Definitely not a lot of free time for someone to have an active private life.
(Imagine a parallel reality where working 9 or 10 hours a day is the norm in 2020. A person who strongly wants to work 8 hours a day, i.e. a perfectly normal person in our reality, would have a problem finding a job in that reality, because they would be perceived as a slacker. Even if the employer doesn't get significantly more output from 9 hours over 8 hours a day, this is a red flag, and why hire a weirdo if you have other options.)
I am not really convinced by the fact that super rich people work long hours voluntarily. If you own the company, so you are your own boss, your working conditions are not really comparable with the rest of the company. You decide what you do, you decide when you do it, you decide how you do it, you decide when you take a break. You go to a trip, maybe across the world, and you call it a business trip, just because you met some of your equals. It is more similar to average person's hobby that to average person's work. You probably have your office room, where you can close the door.
Of course vacations are stressful, because during vacations people do crazy things, trying to cram as much experience as they can into the few days of continuous free time. That doesn't mean that all free time is inherently more stressful than work. Are weekends more stressful? Are evenings and nights the most stressful parts of the day? I suppose not, otherwise that would likely be used in the lecture as a strong argument in favor of long work-weeks. Working shorter work-weeks would be more like having longer weekends than like being on a vacation.
By the way, if people love spending lots of time at work so much they do it voluntarily even if they are retired or super rich, then what's wrong with UBI? I mean, if the hypothesis that people genuinely prefer long work-weeks is true, then UBI presents zero risk for the economy, right?