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Comment by lusus_naturae | Hacker News Reader

How do these attitudes towards work ensure productive output, which is related to economic activity and thus national security. Is the idea that some modern work is more mentally tasking, and so 4-day work week prevents burnout?

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In my European country there is a somewhat common view that there are other kinds of work that also need doing. For instance, taking care of the young and elderly is often done by women in their ‘own’ time. When paid, this is considered work. When unpaid, it is not. However the net benefits to the community are more or less the same and the work needs doing. It may be that society is actually better off when people are wealthy enough to allocate resources to unpaid labor as needs demand.

So much specious reasoning here. Is there even a correlation between economic output and national security across large numbers of countries? If there is, how do we know the relationship is causal? How do you quantify better or worse national security?

This is a well-studied field, but you're right to question the underlying assumptions. This paper models human capital, future investment and national security [1], this paper [2] talks about the complementarity of consumption and national defense. This book starts out with the same assumptions I am making, but I can't speak to its overall conclusions bc I haven't read it [3]. More accessible article https://www.industryweek.com/finance/software-systems/articl...

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10242694.2018.14...

[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10242694.2014.89...

[3] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26268663?seq=1

Nurses and er doctors have been on a 4 or 3 day work week for a long time. But they have to work nights and weekends.

Maybe when chic fil a moves to serving chicken only 4 days a week.

Shift work isn’t really a fair comparison. They’re generally still putting in full time hours. Just grouped differently.

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