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Comment by aaomidi | Hacker News Reader

The more interesting thing is that, if working 50 hour work weeks was the norm - how would the capitalist class take it to us suggesting its 40 hours?

40 hours isn't some magical "right" number. It was something that was decided before computers, Internet, global fast communication, etc etc etc.

I think its beyond late for us to reconsider those hours and decrease them.

To answer your question directly: Why would they change what's been "working" for them for decades? The only way we can see big companies change this is if a startup gets really successful and just has this as the norm. That'd create market pressure for change.

Where that market pressure doesn't exist, regulations can play the same role.

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It wasn't even really decided. Like most current worker protections, it was arrived at through struggle between industralists and the then still powerful labor unions.

They won the 12 hour workday, then the 10 hour workday, then the 8 hour work day and that's when the unions were defanged.

Yep! Exactly.

>then the 8 hour work day and that's when the unions were defanged.

And now the working hours are going back up. I can talk about my country in Europe, that after the 2008 crisis, and due to the increased competition pressure form globalization, many workers' rights and protections were reduced "to increase economic competitiveness", and many professionals, blue and white collar, are now doing more than the 8h/day either willingly or forced by the circumstances of a poor jobs market with little alternatives.

And with stuff like real estate getting more and more expensive, faster than wages are growing, it's tough for anyone but the most privileged, to have the luxury of working less than 8h/day and maintaining a good lifestyle.

This is effectively a description of neoliberal politics. There's going to be a pushback against it, and I hope that pushback doesn't get taken advantage of and go full nazi-lite movement.

We're already kinda seeing something similar in the US. Where a lot of republican voters are part of the "lower class" of society, and their anger is being taken advantage of and translated to xenophobia.

Combating this and creating a fair society is the hardest (yes, including climate change) challenge I see in us going forward.

I think one has to be very careful with taking the narrative of lower class, "hillbilly" republicans too much at face value. While yes, these people definitely do exist, the perception that this group is representative of republicans is something that is deliberately cultivated for political means.

As examples like recent protests show, the true core are people like business owners and wealthy suburbanites who are very much voting for their interests, not against them. This is also shown by how in every presidential election since at least 2012, voters below $50k always voted firmly in favor of democrats while voters above $100k voted firmly in favor of Republicans.

You're absolutely right.

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