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Comment by joelrunyon | Hacker News Reader

> "deserves"

This word always makes me coil. Everytime I hear it - I assume someone is trying to sell me something.

In this case someone is trying to sell you the idea of work-life balance. I guess you can take it or leave it, but it doesn't seem that slimy or nefarious to me.

I'm fine with it defined on the individual level - but somehow making a blanket statement about all people regardless of culture of culture on something as subjective as "work-life balance" seems a bit broad.

That's fine for privileged artisan-class freelancers like talented software engineers are today. What about the powerless working class though?

Oh they have power. Union organization improved their lot immensely. Now they've all but given that power away.

New, from Labor Union! WEEKENDS! Two whole days off from work every week!

You buying yet?

Us Europeans think your 10 days of holidays (vaccinations) a year is crazy in the US. But then you do seem to get paid a lot better in the tech sector.

Vaccinations have indeed been the topic of much craziness in the US as of late.

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.

Technically I live in Israel, where we have 14 days minimum holidays but nobody actually enforces labor law because there's More Important Stuff (ie: silly geopolitical game-playing) to take care of.

The Republicans freed the slaves, Mussolini made the trains run on time, and Ben Affleck was in Good Will Hunting.

I hate cherry picking arguments presented as though they mean something.

Does this case warrant the recoil?

I'd argue it does. Deserve as mentioned in the parent implies some sort of generally accepted human 'right'.

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.

[1] http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/21-hours

Because words like "deserve" and "rights" are normally followed by "here is the new law to enforce what we feel everyone deserves".

> Every human being deserves an average of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of family/leisure, 8 hours of sleep and 2 days a week free.

"[...]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...

How about a law against ridiculously naive expectations of what can be achieved through the law? Ignoring a thorough analysis of unintended consequences when proposing a law should be punishable by the rack. It's so simple.

That would be a very interesting law.

"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?)

I may have jumped the gun on that one, sorry. I'll propose a law to forbid commenting before coffee.

That said, I meant "the law" as in the institution, not individual laws.

It worked fine in France, ended up raising the overall productivity of their economy. France now has a higher standard of living than the US, so it might be worth looking at what they're doing right.

By what measure?

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

Legislatively-prescribed limits like this on work, for me, would be too statist.

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.

Also, this just happened:

http://news.yahoo.com/p-downgrades-france-credit-rating-aa-0...

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