Deserves? Why does anyone deserve anything? Nature itself does not act that way.
People around the world deserve not to live in fear of their government killing them. Women deserve not to live in fear of being raped. Children should not live in fear of abuse. Yet untold millions starve, are beaten, tortured, abused, have lives of unimaginable torment and despair, and you have the gall to talk about how the privileged few should not work so hard?
How about those of us born into a life of privilege work harder until suffering is alleviated, until pain is removed, until equality is reached.
Deserves in the same sense that they deserve the other natural rights and protections which are afforded them within our societies. I wouldn't be quite so prescriptive about the number of hours, but being able to work in a decent and humane manner, without damaging your health, and with space for an outside life, is significantly more important than many other natural rights.
> How about those of us born into a life of privilege work harder until suffering is alleviated, until pain is removed, until equality is reached.
Work, for the vast majority of people, has no such aim, and no such outcome. If anything, people in the developed world are often in direct competition with their counterparts elsewhere.
I'm not saying they should feel entitled, but that isn't very rational.
>Deserves? Why does anyone deserve anything? Nature itself does not act that way.
Living as we would in nature would be a HORRIBLE way to live human life. The way things "naturally" would occur is irrelevant, we build societies and develop science to improve our lives to where we all want them to be.
Chances are, you ain't alleviating suffering around the world by putting in overtime at your shitty startup job. So feel free to pack up at 5PM.
I don't think this situation is all that unusual. Charitable giving that's a fixed fraction of income is common practice in many religions (which have a whole lot of members) and among the "effective altruism" community (which is small but I bet it's overrepresented among HN types), and is a natural enough thing to do that I bet lots of other people do it.
(Ideally I wouldn't need to say these things explicitly, but I will anyway: Of course working harder is not always a good idea; as I said above, it's very much possible to work harder and merely make yourself tired and therefore less effective. And of course working harder, whether it makes you more effective or less, is no guarantee of getting paid more; plenty of employers are quite unresponsive to their employees' commitment and productivity. If anything I've said above looks as if it's denying those things then I expressed myself badly and I apologize.)
If a charitable organization needed some software written, volunteering to write it would certainly be helpful, but this still requires you to be a domain expert in two things, rather than one.
Unless you mean "valuable" in the sense of "makes you feel more fuzzy," in which case you are killing people and I advise you to stop.
(Of course "lives saved" is an unsatisfactory metric; something like QALYs would be better. But the lives-saved figure is the one I happen to remember.)
Are you one of those people where if I say, "Hey where do you want go for lunch?", would respond with "Nowhere, I just want to DIE, why do I get to eat if everyone else DIES!"
And yet we've progressed from our prehistoric roots and have decided as a society that everyone does deserve basic rights.
> How about those of us born into a life of privilege work harder until suffering is alleviated, until pain is removed, until equality is reached.
Working harder at a mundane job won't achieve this. At best it means you'll just have less family time, leisure time, and be unhappier. At worst it means you're taking a bigger slice of the global economic pie, and contributing to inequality.
In the factory floor, this has been quantitatively measured and is solid. In creative jobs, quantification is a lot harder, so proof isn't as solid. I can argue for longer hours in creative jobs. I can as easily argue for shorter than 40h weeks. In the absence of further solid proof, the best option is probably to stick with 40h weeks.
So, leaving aside the rant about evils in the world and other straw men, Nature does act that way.
There's a good summary of arguments and references here: http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-less...
It seems crazy that a high responsibility job like that, where peoples lives depend on it, and it is expected to be done by sleep deprived junior doctors.
She is Mexican, but as far as I can tell it is not restricted to that country.
I think the main reason is there are two few doctors for too many patients. The reasons for that situation are a separate topic all together.
Commuting is a different problem.
I don't know how the 35 hour work week in France is working out but I feel that they are the anomaly and could just as easily swing back to 39/40 hrs.
In the 8 hours for 'free time', a lot is taken up by chores etc.
I totally agree that working less makes more sense - although we are much more productive, this has not gone into working less, or even paying people more (except those at the top).
Why not allocate more time for sleep or activities? Why not work more (not all people hate working).
Seems like we could come up with a bunch of other arbitrary decisions that would make just as much sense if they were already a part of our culture for the last 100 years.
[1] http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_...
If true - that's really interesting. I wonder what the other outcomes / configurations were.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellogg_Company
Thye found (in the 1930s) that the reduced work week paid for itself in reduced workplace accidents. However, after WW2 companies moved to employer-paid accident insurance instead of paying out-of-pocket workman's comp, and as a result, the cost savings would be socialized anyway. This tilted the equation back toward an 8-hour day, at least from management's perspective, though employees remained staunchly opposed to the longer day for a generation.
What ultimately killed it was a status thing: by the 70s and 80s, employees on the 30-hour work week felt like they were "slackers", and didn't have the same social status as those who worked harder.
This word always makes me coil. Everytime I hear it - I assume someone is trying to sell me something.
The length of the work day/ work week is fairly arbitrary and definitely up for debate, there are great arguments that actually a three day working week would make far more sense [1].
Imo describing a simple convention in terms of deserve discourages debate and so should be avoided. Something broader such as `a human being deserves not to have to work every waking hour to live` would have been more acceptable as it separates the underlying principle from arbitrary conventions.
You buying yet?
More on-topic, I once mentioned to a European colleague my company's policy of giving employees four weeks of vacation once they've been here for five years. It took some convincing for him to understand that those employees did not get that extra four weeks of paid vacation as their PTO balance every year thereafter.
I hate cherry picking arguments presented as though they mean something.
"[...]deserves an average of 8 hours of work[...]"
"[...]2 days a week free[...]"
I think that's the snake oil you're smelling.
How does society ensure this can happen? With laws, of course! Why, we can just make overtime and >5 in every 7 days with worked hours illegal, it's so simple...
"It is a criminal offense to have unreasonable expectations of this law."
Or did you mean "the law" as in the institution?
(Also, to check, you didn't read my sarcasm as sincerity, right?)
That said, I meant "the law" as in the institution, not individual laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Deve...
Also, a single number will be misleading. France has fewer immigrants and thus a different cultural structure. It also has very different neighbors and trade partners.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-bo...
"I think you need a lot of context to seriously examine anything." -- The Wire, Season 5
Now, I very much believe in the spirit of the concept. Bertrand Russell hit the nail:
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
But through legislation, no. It needs to be a culturally grown movement.
Also, the US has a higher Human Development Index rating than France: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Deve...
and on whatever the Legatum Prosperity Index is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legatum_Prosperity_Index
and Germany's OECD's Better Life Index (using the "weigh all of these equally" measure): http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/#11111111111
I would argue that standard of living is higher in the US.
http://news.yahoo.com/p-downgrades-france-credit-rating-aa-0...
New Economics Foundation report on a 21 hour work week
After the commute I have to walk 10 minutes, to arrive at my front door. I have to walk through a little park. Really. For me commuting and then walking is my way of coming down. Of letting go of the work, so that I arrive at home free of all the stuff, that happens in front of my two screens.
But that is just anecdotal evidence - and it might just work for me.
But on the topic, I would add one point: Regularly working more than the paid 8 hours might show another thing: You just are not fit for the work you do. You are not good enough, as you cannot get it done in 8 hours.
By the way is that a signal that you send to your boss, if you work longer regularly.
The only problem is that having got used to this I'd be very reluctant to take a job that I could walk or cycle to - which is a bit limiting.
I did used to cycle ~10 miles to work, which was far better exercise. Unfortunately my employer doesn't want to relocate to a convenient distance just for me.... :-)
(but I also willingly increase the commute time by picking a „wrong” train station, to have a longer cycling leg of the commute)
I feel like the big difference is the expectations of others placed on me. When I had to commute to the office, I was doing it for someone else. Others wanted me there certain days, at certain times, and it becomes a dash to meeting their expectations. That was the most draining part of the entire job. On the farm, I'm doing it for myself. I want to go because it is what I want to do.
Driving itself isn't that bad. I spent nine hours in the tractor and another hour on the road yesterday and while I was certainly tired and beat up, I felt a certain euphoria of accomplishment.
We deserve at least 5:4. Personally I think 4:5 would be nice. I'd get a lot done.
The numbers didn’t come from nothing, but certainly didn’t come from any great calculation. It came from how much we (the workers) could wrestle away from industrialists. Google scholar searches (not very extensive, feel free to repeat) weakly suggests that cutting work hours may have a net positive effect on economy, so as long as I’m operating from the worker perspective, it actually makes sense to not settle on the current ratio. It’s like settling on your wage because you once got a raise 105 years ago.