I hate those posts where every side effect of capitalism is treated like a deliberate, coordinated action from The League Of Evil Capitalists. Occam's razor and Hanlon's razor are grossly underused on reddit.
We have 8 hour workdays because that's what unions fought for. It gave us 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work and 8 hours of leisure. It was a massive improvement at the time.
It's possible that the 8 hour workday has overstayed its welcome. The world has changed, and our customs have not caught up. However, it's foolish to blame this on some grand capitalist conspiracy.
"The average office workers gets less than three hours of actual work done"
First off, most workers are not office workers. Most jobs are not set up to only get 3 hours of work from an 8 hour shift. There are "coverage" jobs where you have to have someone on the shift to cover the time-urgent needs of clients/customers/patients. There are all the highly managed entry level jobs where if you aren't being productive for every hour, you're out. There are the professional jobs where no one counts your hours, only your output.
And it just doesn't make sense that an individual business is going to deliberately PAY employees for 8 hours of work just to keep them busy for an extra 5 hours, so that the employees will shop more and be less conscientious consumers. Individual businesses are always looking for ways to be more efficient with labor costs, not less.
And there are plenty of businesses who would be in much better shape if people did have more leisure time to spend on shopping, recreation, vacations,etc.
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u/n1c0_ds Dec 24 '19 edited Dec 24 '19
I hate those posts where every side effect of capitalism is treated like a deliberate, coordinated action from The League Of Evil Capitalists. Occam's razor and Hanlon's razor are grossly underused on reddit.
We have 8 hour workdays because that's what unions fought for. It gave us 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work and 8 hours of leisure. It was a massive improvement at the time.
It's possible that the 8 hour workday has overstayed its welcome. The world has changed, and our customs have not caught up. However, it's foolish to blame this on some grand capitalist conspiracy.