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Comment by UweSchmidt | Hacker News Reader

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UweSchmidt

Often, when articles highlight bad laws or customs, economical arguments are brought up.

Workaholism -> backfires and is bad for the economy

and in recent threads here on HN:

Workplace surveillance -> backfires, people feel controlled and performance suffers

Government espionage in USA -> backfires, people lose trust in US businesses

I don't feel that this is the strongest argument. "Please treat us better, it is in your own interest!"?

Germany's vacation was achieved through politics (labor laws) and unions (labor contracts).

The economic argument probably won't work, since economic considerations (real or imagined/short-term/local maximum...) have led to the current situation in the first place.

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It's the only argument here in the USA.

It sucks that things are this way, but the only way to justify anything or argue for anything is an appeal to higher profits.

Money is this country's highest value, and all other values such as decency or shared prosperity have been thrown into the garbage and decried as socialism or wishful thinking.

And that is (in my opinion) the biggest problem of all. Focusing on profit margins alone (without any respect to the people), leads to burn-out, social discrepancies to the extreme (go to South Africa/Kapstadt, if you want to see, where it will end) and at last will dehumanize the human race. I write that, because I see in my country, where it goes and we long where an isle inside the ocean of capitalism. Now, capitalism has conquered humanity and capitalism will kill humanity finally, it seems.

Our capitalism of today exploits all the resources of this planet (oil, water, air, environment, humans, ...) in an increasing fashion and because this planet has only limited resources, soon all will break down. The question only is, what entity will break down first: capitalism, this planet, the human race.

What use will you make of your five smartphones, three tablets and seven cars, when your children will have no future?

Great point. One way to argue for more vacation time is that it's economically a better idea- but you're setting yourself up for a tough argument.

Instead, it might be easier to argue it socially or through a simple declaration like, "this is what we want".

You're right, we should fix the vacation policy for humanitarian reasons, not economic ones.

However, having a solid economic rationale is a great counter-argument.

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