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Comment by monocasa | Hacker News Reader

The definition of the length of the work week and who it applies to is already a concept defined by government.

Stated this way it makes it sound as if the government, unbidden by anything external, just decided to make this a requirement one day. Of course, this was not the case.

In reality workers, unions and even industry leaders themselves were already pushing for this decades before the government codified it in the Fair Labor Standards Act.

People literally died fighting for the 40-hour workweek: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair

The reason various entities wanted it codified in law was because regardless of what labour with actual negotiating power and businesses with the ethics and margins to not demand absurdly high workweeks wanted, millions of workers didn't have much choice.

When child labour was legal, lots of children worked.

Unfortunately. People should be able to negotiate between themselves without interference from the government.

As should children! Why should the pesky government step in the way of my child working in a factory.

Child labor should be reserved for the Girl Scouts as God intended!

It doesn’t if your family business is farming.

Acting allows actual children to work very limited hours. By comparison it’s illegal for 11 year olds to do farm work where infants can be actors.

>without interference from the government.

I don't see the corps giving up all the advantages they have such as mandatory arbitration and the like. It wouldn't be an equal negotiating table for the vast majority of people.

With all respect, that is an astoundingly naive viewpoint in light of the fact that there is nowhere near power equality between employer and worker.

I suppose many folks here are in those blessed industries and positions where employers and employees are in much more balanced relationships than mostwhere.

Which is how it should be; I don't think anyone would doubt that GP is correct in this regard. But - very sadly - not how it works in most of the reality.

I agree. I constantly see arguments in HN comments that come from the perspective of a highly paid tech worker and they either ignore anyone making minimum wage or pretend they don't exist in this dynamic or they are written off as unimportant because they should have "worked harder to change their position in life"

Its pretty sad that this ideology exists, we need people to do jobs and we shouldn't shit on them for it. We should support people in what every job they're doing because we're all part of the same societal machine

The government is one of the mechanisms we created to negotiate things.

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