Comment author: drethelin 05 September 2012 06:15:20PM 2 points [-]

It really depends on the field. If you get someone to work 10 less hours at mcdonalds, you are literally getting 25 percent less out of employing that person, and you need to make up the shortfall with more employees. On the other hand, office work is so independent of hours that many people can work at home with no enforcement just fine.

Comment author: Multiheaded 05 September 2012 06:39:05PM *  1 point [-]

Yeah, the burger-flippers are exploited in a really hardcore and efficient way, no kidding. It's exemplarly of how far modern capitalism can go in full view of its 1st world clients. (Do read "Manna"!) I'd also argue that they're emotionally abused through all the phoney "team-building" and such, but that's another matter.

But hey, that's exactly where organized labor could find a good spot to make a stand - "We're working as hard as we possibly can, we're not some big fucking happy family, treat us like adults!". Mcdonalds itself is known for trying various HR tricks ("Not bad for a McJob!") to defuse serious discontent, but lesser fast food chains might indeed have cause to fear such industry-wide organization. A better and more infamous example is Walmart.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 September 2012 04:04:50PM *  7 points [-]

That is, not acknowledging that the personal is political will only leave 'the personal' trapped in the current discourse, accepted as the way of things.

Wu wei dude.

Social norms are never static and are shaped by strong forces outside the control any individual coalition making monkey brain part. By not acknowledging that the personal is the political I demonstrate it on a meta level. Of all the coalitions this subsidizes, the current is but one member. I am unsure if it is better or worse than what will replace it or its successor. I have much more confidence in which class of coalitions is better.

Comment author: Multiheaded 05 September 2012 06:24:42PM -2 points [-]

Let me refine this to fit better within the current LW discourse: the Personal is Ideological. Also, see TimS below.

Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 05 September 2012 03:05:57PM 5 points [-]

Are you aware this reads like a piece of satire?

Comment author: Multiheaded 05 September 2012 06:18:50PM *  0 points [-]

Most people who are concerned about gender egalitarianism probably feel, in fact, slightly relieved that this comment is quite, so to say, neutral - I know I did!

It treats hypothetical males as selfish animals who only care about dating a physically attractive fertile female and hypothetical females as selfish animals who only care about dating a socially attractive tribal chieftain! So basically it's neither misogynistic nor misandric, it's simply misanthropic :)

Comment author: drethelin 05 September 2012 05:53:09PM 1 point [-]

25 percent less output seems like more than a little to me

Comment author: Multiheaded 05 September 2012 06:02:18PM 0 points [-]

It would obviously be much less than 25%, if you think about the typical blue-collar worker's day a little.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 September 2012 05:01:20PM *  4 points [-]

but wouldn't the best and brightest/most conscious workers from the other nations either move there, giving the employer superior human resources, or have a strike at home and enable the same kind of thing for themselves?

The incentives are higher for the best and brightest workers to move to where they are allowed to work more. Remember their opportunity cost for not working is much higher than that of the average or below average worker.

If you are good at what you do and get paid more for it than others, let alone if you are competing for prestige within your field, you have an incentive to move to the more work heavy culture. Perhaps we even see this in the real world with migration of top talent from say Europe to the US.

The typical mind fallacy is an important error to watch out for when considering policy. Many people feel they would prefer to work 30 hours instead of 40 hours or that they wouldn't respond to certain perverse incentives, so they assume no one else will.

Comment author: Multiheaded 05 September 2012 05:58:31PM *  1 point [-]

Yeah, you're partly right.
I was kinda mixing up two plausible consequences here - many of the "elite" workers might, in the hypothetical organized-labor-world, actively seek out higher wages even at the cost of leisure or worse conditions, while the "average" or "mediocre" ones in their line of work - or even most, if their line of work hardly allows an "elite" except as a foreman post (which was dangled in front of me after my slightly Kafkaesque stint of stocking shelves at department stores) - would prefer to stay where they are and bargain for a combination of 1)more of effective free time, 2)better conditions and 3)higher pay, instead of allowing themselves to be collectively hypnotized by 3) at the expense of 1) and 2).

Um, in fact, to rely on a cached thought - haven't Italian workers been known for strong unionization, not-too-high wages by European standards and a rather carefree/relaxed attitude? Fun fact: work-to-rule is called an "Italian strike" in Russian.

Comment author: Kindly 05 September 2012 02:13:09PM 2 points [-]

The workers don't ask for anything. If all the trade unions insisted on a 30-hour week, it would probably happen, but there's no real incentive for anyone to try.

Comment author: Multiheaded 05 September 2012 02:15:20PM *  2 points [-]

The workers don't ask for anything.

My point exactly. It seems that the Market Fairy hasn't told them they could've bargained for a better deal.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 September 2012 01:55:32PM *  20 points [-]

"Personal is Political"

I very much think the personal should not be the political. Because such a mentality when adopted by a society results in:

  1. Tribalization of more and more of the human experience. Making it harder and harder to think about more and more things.
  2. Apolitical identities or outlooks are harder if not impossible to maintain.
  3. Opening up areas to new kinds of remarkably damaging rent seeking.

Thus ceteris paribus it makes life in such a society suck more.

Comment author: Multiheaded 05 September 2012 02:02:47PM *  0 points [-]

Nah, this is an empirical claim. That is, not acknowledging that the personal is political will only leave 'the personal' trapped in the current discourse, accepted as the way of things.

Comment author: thakil 05 September 2012 12:25:09PM 1 point [-]

Keynes, who is having a come back these days, was also in favour of a reduced week, based on the assumption that the prosperity societies have would lead to less work.

We can certainly afford it, but if 40 hours is more efficient than 30 hours, in a competitive framework the former will triumph. Of course, theres a reasonable amount of evidence (as I understand it) that beyond short pushes to get stuff done, stretching the working day reduces productivity: this is one of the reasons companies excepted union demands for an 8 hour day.

It is kind of weird that we have a 5 day working week and not a 6 day or 4 day week if you think about it. One suspects that thats a cultural creation rather than an inevitable one.

Comment author: Multiheaded 05 September 2012 12:50:06PM 2 points [-]

in a competitive framework the former will triumph

In what kind of a competitive framework? If, say, all the trade unions within a nation insist upon a 30-hour week, it would indeed maybe reduce the industry's output a little - but wouldn't the best and brightest/most conscious workers from the other nations either move there, giving the employer superior human resources, or have a strike at home and enable the same kind of thing for themselves?

The question is, who tells, or broadly hints, the workers what to ask for? (and here the buck is certainly away from the Left - c'mon, look at how useless it has been, nowdays it can't tell the workers to stand up for anything!)

Comment author: Multiheaded 05 September 2012 12:15:00PM *  5 points [-]

Here's a few left-wing, subversive provocations to get you started:

It's the 21st century – why are we working so much? - again, everything by Owen Hatherley is worth reading.

The boring, bourgeois but fairly diligent Mother Jones magazine has a nice report from last year on American companies driving their sl.. employees to greater and greater feats of Productivity. Don't you want to be Productive? No?! What kind of a parasite are you?!

(Observe how the top comment on MoJo and the first comment on the Guardian both mention that crazy bearded German with his theories about how employers will collectively find a way to wring more and more out of the workers as the technology allows them more reach, while the pay stays more or less the same. He sounds a bit less crazy now, eh?)

While you're at it, please take time to read Oscar Wilde's wonderful utopian essay that Hatherley quotes. I do not entirely share his hopes of better social interaction and a more decent status assignment in the absense of material need, but hell, there's definitely something to his words.

Related, a roundup of a heated exchange on workers' rights between Crooked Timber and Bleeding Heart Libertarians.

Politics Discussion Thread September 2012

-1 Multiheaded 05 September 2012 11:27AM

The last thread didn't fare too badly, I think; let's make it a monthly tradition. (Me, I'm more interested in thinking about real-world policies or philosophies, actual and possible, rather than AI design or physics, and I suspect that many fine, non-mind-killed folks reading LW also are - but might be ashamed to admit it!)

Quoth OrphanWilde:

  1. Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments. 
  2. Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised.  This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it.  If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both.  If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both. 
  3. A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate. 
  4. In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

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