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Athrelon comments on Politics Discussion Thread September 2012 - Less Wrong
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80% confidence on the following:
Past economists are simply wrong about human nature. They look at humans in far mode and assume that they would agree to enjoy more leisure and de-escalate materialist status competition. In fact, humans, even wealthy humans, perceive status competition in near-mode as existential struggle. They're willing to work very hard, sacrificing leisure and quality of life, to avoid losing relative status. The fact that we continue to work hard is a fact about human nature not a fact about employee-worker power dynamics per se.
Falsfiable prediction: if a four-day work week were instated, and cultural norms shifted away from work and productivity as the primary domain of status competition, people would redirect the vast majority of their freed-up effort into status-boosting leisure activities, such as exotic travel or conspicuous altruism, much like high-school students diligently doing the "right" extracurriculars.
Checkable test: When the 40-hour work week was instated, is this what happened?
Alternative check: When France moved to the 35-hour work week (12 years ago), what happened?
This. I'm not an expert in economics, but much of what little I've seen is maths based on assumptions strongly reminiscent of assuming that a fluid has zero viscosity, with very little comparisons of theoretical predictions with empirical data.
From what I've heard, people are willing to work very long hours if they get time and a half for overtime. Caveat: I'm not sure how much of this is that they have to take the work as a condition of keeping their jobs. (American?) unions seem to be at least as likely to push for time and a half for overtime as they are to push for shorter work weeks.
On the other hand, Europeans aren't exactly revolting to get longer, better paid work weeks.
Maybe there's no "human nature" on this question?
My claim is not that workers want longer work-weeks per se. It is that they are willing to work hard to maintain their relative status. The primary domain of status-seeking may certainly shift, from work to academic competition or social/sexual competition or conspicuous altruism.
Status-seeking is the main urge, but in the aggregate people are relatively indifferent about what domain it takes place in.
One thing to check would be how much people sleep in countries that have legal requirements for relatively short work weeks.
But correlation is still not causation. Maybe people sleep more if they have more free time to fill without health implications.