The Gospel of Consumption

[Jason McCullough]

This (http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/2962) is a pretty interesting story on the history of the 40 hour work week and the invention of mass consumerism.


In a 1927 interview with the magazine Nation’s Business, Secretary of Labor James J. Davis provided some numbers to illustrate a problem that the New York Times called “need saturation.” Davis noted that “the textile mills of this country can produce all the cloth needed in six months’ operation each year” and that 14 percent of the American shoe factories could produce a year’s supply of footwear. The magazine went on to suggest, “It may be that the world’s needs ultimately will be produced by three days’ work a week.”

Business leaders were less than enthusiastic about the prospect of a society no longer centered on the production of goods. For them, the new “labor-saving” machinery presented not a vision of liberation but a threat to their position at the center of power. John E. Edgerton, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, typified their response when he declared: “I am for everything that will make work happier but against everything that will further subordinate its importance. The emphasis should be put on work—more work and better work.” “Nothing,” he claimed, “breeds radicalism more than unhappiness unless it is leisure.”

By the late 1920s, America’s business and political elite had found a way to defuse the dual threat of stagnating economic growth and a radicalized working class in what one industrial consultant called “the gospel of consumption”—the notion that people could be convinced that however much they have, it isn’t enough. President Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes observed in glowing terms the results: “By advertising and other promotional devices . . . a measurable pull on production has been created which releases capital otherwise tied up.” They celebrated the conceptual breakthrough: “Economically we have a boundless field before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.”

I don't know about you, but I'd greatly prefer a 30 hour work week and the corresponding pay cut. If large numbers of people did, all those positional goods like house prices would fall to match.....

Yet we could work and spend a lot less and still live quite comfortably. By 1991 the amount of goods and services produced for each hour of labor was double what it had been in 1948. By 2006 that figure had risen another 30 percent. In other words, if as a society we made a collective decision to get by on the amount we produced and consumed seventeen years ago, we could cut back from the standard forty-hour week to 5.3 hours per day—or 2.7 hours if we were willing to return to the 1948 level. We were already the richest country on the planet in 1948 and most of the world has not yet caught up to where we were then.

Rather than realizing the enriched social life that Kellogg’s vision offered us, we have impoverished our human communities with a form of materialism that leaves us in relative isolation from family, friends, and neighbors. We simply don’t have time for them. Unlike our great-grandparents who passed the time, we spend it. An outside observer might conclude that we are in the grip of some strange curse, like a modern-day King Midas whose touch turns everything into a product built around a microchip.

Of course not everybody has been able to take part in the buying spree on equal terms. Millions of Americans work long hours at poverty wages while many others can find no work at all. However, as advertisers well know, poverty does not render one immune to the gospel of consumption.

[StGabe]

But consumption is a Good Thing. By definition. I don't think you understand economics.

[Fugitive]

I suspect that if I were teleported back into 1948's standard of living, my reaction would soon be "this sucks."

[Hawkeye Fierce]

God, what? Can't work with anything remotely resembling a free market. Everyone else is working 30 hours? Great, I'm gonna work 40 and get a competitive advantage out of it. Oh shit, now everyone's doing it. Oh well.

[Midnight Son]

The job's not done until we have consumed the entire planet! Then, we spread beyond!

[JeffL]

It's kinda ironic we could chat about how we might be better off with less consumerism in our lazy boy chairs on notebook computers (probably got a couple of PCs in the house) in front of nice TVs and stereos, on a forum where people discuss the hundreds and thousands of dollars worth of games and gaming hardware they have. ;)

I have said it many times - people today want and feel they "need" more than they did in, say, the 50s. The amount of "stuff" the average family today has and feels is necessary is a lot more than in the 50s and 60s.

[Jason McCullough]

God, what? Can't work with anything remotely resembling a free market. Everyone else is working 30 hours? Great, I'm gonna work 40 and get a competitive advantage out of it. Oh shit, now everyone's doing it. Oh well.

Why do you think everyone works 40 right now, rather than 60 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day), which was the standard until ~1880-1936?

[Qmanol]

But consumption is a Good Thing. By definition. I don't think you understand economics.

And that consumption has lead to an unsustainable lifestyle. Which is a Bad Thing. I don't think economics understands reality.

[JeffL]

Why do you think everyone works 40 right now, rather than 60 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day), which was the standard until ~1880-1936?

The people in the nice offices with the big corner windows do work that 50 - 60 hour week.

[Hawkeye Fierce]

Why do you think everyone works 40 right now, rather than 60 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day), which was the standard until ~1880-1936?And how many people actually work those 40 hours, as opposed to 60? 80? There is a limit to what labor laws can accomplish, and reducing the American work week to 30 hours would be a really bad idea in the current global economy.

And fuck, man, I'm a liberal and I'm telling you this.

[Linoleum]

Once the sexbots arrive, it's all over.

[Major Icehole]

And that consumption has lead to an unsustainable lifestyle. Which is a Bad Thing. I don't think economics understands reality.

QFT, call me a romantic, but consumerism, free markets and using up of the planet are not good things. As much as I like, and am thankfull for technology, it's gonna kill us all. The best and worst thing that ever happened to the plannet is human beings discovering agriculture which lead to economy.

[Midnight Son]

We are seeing the first signs that the population currently on this planet is not sustainable in the long run. Therefore, I'm working on my Bunker again.

[Anti-Bunny]

We are seeing the first signs that the population currently on this planet is not sustainable in the long run. Therefore, I'm working on my Bunker again.

Uhm, no.. The idea that the population on earth is unsustainable is not new (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb)..

[Midnight Son]

Not a new idea, but it's now becoming more evident all the time.....

That's all I'm saying.

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

[Anti-Bunny]

Not a new idea, but it's now becoming more evident all the time.....

Yes, and this time, it's for realz!

[Qmanol]

Look, there's physical limits. In the past, people have predicted these problems, but then technology has advanced to increase the level of supportable population. But science and technology has real, hard limits. Eventually we will reach a point where the tech required to up the population limit on the planet will either not be possible, or not be developed in time to prevent mass die-offs.

Just because it hasn't happened in the past, doesn't mean it can't happen now. So we should work both at making sure we have tech research focused on making things more sustainable, and trying to find a way to make a non-expanding economy work.

[Anti-Bunny]

Of course there's physical limits, but that doesn't mean we need to start building bomb shelters and.. start working 30 hours a week?

[BrewersDroop]

Current population growth trends are only unsustainable if we maintain our current body size. If humans were 1/2 our current size, the sustainable population would increase eight-fold. For the sake of the planet, marry a midget and encourage your children to do the same.

[StGabe]

And that consumption has lead to an unsustainable lifestyle. Which is a Bad Thing. I don't think economics understands reality.

I knew someone wouldn't get the sarcasm.

...

But basically, yes, I was agreeing with you. Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, the solution is not nearly so simple as "ok, let's just work 30 hours now". Also, I definitely wouldn't want to live by 1948 standards (although if I only had to work 15 hours a week... and could travel...).

It is clear that there is room for us to start enjoying more of our lives however. How we go about doing that is extremely tricky but it starts with an understanding that, yes, defining economic theory to have a goal of maximizing average production/consumption is problematic.

Personally I'm more concerned with the fact that median income/consumption hasn't been keeping up with increases in productivity. And this is another area where where the short-sighted view of economics, as a task of maximizing average production, fails us.

[Midnight Son]

Yes, and this time, it's for realz!

Well, ain't it?

[Anti-Bunny]

Well, ain't it?

I'm not building a bomb shelter, if that's what you mean.

[Aeon221]

Look, there's physical limits. In the past, people have predicted these problems, but then technology has advanced to increase the level of supportable population. But science and technology has real, hard limits. Eventually we will reach a point where the tech required to up the population limit on the planet will either not be possible, or not be developed in time to prevent mass die-offs.

Just because it hasn't happened in the past, doesn't mean it can't happen now. So we should work both at making sure we have tech research focused on making things more sustainable, and trying to find a way to make a non-expanding economy work.

Name a hard limit on continued growth. Please, I'd love to hear one. No real scientist could point to one, but I'm sure that you, in all your infinite wisdom, know the truth.

Because your argument that our previous success as a species in overcoming changes to our environment and limits to our growth can't possibly continue really isn't very convincing. It's like arguing that, even though the hare beats the turtle every time, this one time the turtle will win!

[Jason McCullough]

Jeff, the rich are working longer hours than they used to, also. See here, for example (http://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedmsr/397.html).

And how many people actually work those 40 hours, as opposed to 60? 80? There is a limit to what labor laws can accomplish, and reducing the American work week to 30 hours would be a really bad idea in the current global economy.

And fuck, man, I'm a liberal and I'm telling you this.

I'm not sure what you're getting at on the hour distribution thing - I think "exempt" employees is a bad idea too. I'm also not sure why reducing the work week would automatically be so bad you don't have to provide an argument as to why.

[lesslucid]

Name a hard limit on continued growth. Please, I'd love to hear one. No real scientist could point to one, but I'm sure that you, in all your infinite wisdom, know the truth.

Because your argument that our previous success as a species in overcoming changes to our environment and limits to our growth can't possibly continue really isn't very convincing. It's like arguing that, even though the hare beats the turtle every time, this one time the turtle will win!

A hard limit on continued growth is provided by the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy always increases. I suspect we'll run into a "softer" limit than that long before we reach it, but still, it's a hard limit which is what you asked for. ;)

Incidentally, your analogy reminds me of this analogy: have you ever died before? No, not even once? And yet, you somehow think that at some point in the future this event which you've never experienced is going to happen to you? Very implausible...

[ravenight]

I'm also not sure why reducing the work week would automatically be so bad you don't have to provide an argument as to why.

I think the argument was made clear by the contrast between saying "the Amercian work week" and "the current global economy". If we work less, we get out-compete by those who work more.

On the other hand, if we work the same amount, but consume less and get paid less, then there will be less incentive to ship jobs overseas. Our lives will be worse, though. It is all fine and good to say, "people were happy with less 60 years ago", but I'm kind of partial to these internets and a steady supply of games, movies, books, TV shows. I think it's easy to romanticize it by saying that without all this corrupting consumerism people would spend more time strolling around town, or telling stories to their kids. Really, though, if you want to do those things, you can - trade one product you might otherwise purchase for 1 hour of entertaining yourself per day. If it makes you happier, then you've gotten the benefits without any need for massive changes.

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the free market."

Fixed that for you.

[ravenight]

A hard limit on continued growth is provided by the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy always increases. I suspect we'll run into a "softer" limit than that long before we reach it, but still, it's a hard limit which is what you asked for. ;)

That isn't a limit in a properly shaped universe - the time it takes to reach a state of maximal entropy can be infinite.

Incidentally, your analogy reminds me of this analogy: have you ever died before? No, not even once? And yet, you somehow think that at some point in the future this event which you've never experienced is going to happen to you? Very implausible...

Except for the whole gathering evidence based on similar situations aspect. What is the similar situation to reaching a hard limit on population growth that compares to the clear evidence that there's an upper limit on human life spans?

[Gordon Cameron]

I'm not sure sustainability is germane to the original post, which has more to do with quality of life.

I could reduce my cost of living fairly substantially if I ditched the car and the computer upgrades and such. I'd still probably grub every penny I could manage, because the woeful state of America's social network makes me constantly paranoid about not having enough savings in the bank. I'd need a 6-figure savings account to even begin to breathe easier on that front, and at my current rate of income that is years if not decades away. Knowing myself, when I got to that point, I'd probably say, "well, what's the harm in putting away a little more?" We don't all have jobs where we can just throttle down the work to 60% of what it was before. Many jobs are an all-or-nothing proposition.

I will say that, if the quoted material is accurate, it is chilling to think that certain individuals foresaw a more leisurely society and took conscious steps to quash it by creating artificial need. The story is no doubt more complex than that; stories always are. Still, unsettling.

It basically sucks. We're all running around in little hamster wheels driving ourselves insane. I don't know where it fits in the overall scheme of human history. Some societies have been happier and some have been more miserable. We do have awfully nice stuff, though. Even the relatively poor among us can purchase devices that Socrates could not have dreamt of. I take a certain consolation in that. It doesn't make me happy, but I probably would have been complaining all the time in 5th century Athens too.

I doubt this is the best way we can organize our time and energies to the optimal amount of happiness and emotional health. But there's always that competitive dynamic that drives things faster/taller/better. If all the trees in the Amazon agreed to grow 20 feet shorter, they would all save energy. But then one tree will decide to grow an extra foot and on you go.

[Damien Neil]

Name a hard limit on continued growth. Please, I'd love to hear one. No real scientist could point to one, but I'm sure that you, in all your infinite wisdom, know the truth.

Heat. Eventually, the oceans boil.

(And then you move off planet, but eventually the speed of light gets you.)

[mouselock]

Rather than realizing the enriched social life that Kellogg’s vision offered us, we have impoverished our human communities with a form of materialism that leaves us in relative isolation from family, friends, and neighbors. We simply don’t have time for them.

If this is true, then it can't be true that we can afford to cut back to 25 hour work weeks, can it? I mean, if the idea is that we're 40% (or whatever) more productive now in the same 40 hour work week, then we have the same amount of time after that 40 hour work week that we would have 17 years ago after that 40 hour work week.

Sure productivity has gone up, but the actual amount worked has gone up too.

[Elton]

I've been reading this for a long time, the notion that people don't naturally want to consume a lot of stuff, but that the masses are helpless lemmings being preyed upon by Big Industry and their Irresistible Advertising. My gut feeling is that the natural human state is to want more than what you've got, whatever the starting point.

If it were possible to implement a school program that instilled critical thinking in people so that no one ever again would fall for stuff like "Obama is a Muslim" or "Drinking Coors will get me laid", that would be great. But failing that, you people who disdain capitalism, what's your solution? Mandate a 30-hour work week? Strict controls on advertising? What steps would you impose to replenish "human communities"? I doubt there's any top-down cure that isn't far deadlier than the disease. If there was a big grass-roots movement towards more volunteering and community-minded activities, that would be cool, but nobody wants to give up their toys and neither do any of you guys. People are naturally greedy, period.

[Aeon221]

A hard limit on continued growth is provided by the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy always increases. I suspect we'll run into a "softer" limit than that long before we reach it, but still, it's a hard limit which is what you asked for. ;)

Incidentally, your analogy reminds me of this analogy: have you ever died before? No, not even once? And yet, you somehow think that at some point in the future this event which you've never experienced is going to happen to you? Very implausible...

Global warming isn't a hard limit -- I'm fairly sure we're all aware of the significant work being done to halt and even reverse it. Food certainly isn't, nor energy, nor any other limiting factor other than perhaps the absolute size of the planet.

Also, your analogy utterly fails. A one time event that is experimentally confirmed has little to do with the ability, or lack thereof, of a species/culture/ethnic group to overcome challenges facing it. Since you seem to be having trouble pointing out counter examples, I'll offer you two: the collapse of Easter Island and Mayan societies due to deforestation and an inability to overcome other challenges posed by their respective ecosystems.

Similar challenges were faced and solved by Japan in the early 17th century simply because it recognized the warning signs and actively confronted the problems at hand, much as our society is doing.

Positing hard limits is silly. They don't exist, as has been proven time and again. Soft limits, such as the 18th century concern over the arithmetic growth of food, are only waiting for science to eliminate them as it has all other such limits before.

[Aeon221]

If it were possible to implement a school program that instilled critical thinking in people so that no one ever again would fall for stuff like "Obama is a Muslim" or "Drinking Coors will get me laid", that would be great.

Drinking Coors does get me laid, so I don't see how critical thinking will solve that. Maybe if I were better at it, I'd know =(

[Midnight Son]

Name a hard limit on continued growth. Please, I'd love to hear one. No real scientist could point to one, but I'm sure that you, in all your infinite wisdom, know the truth.

Because your argument that our previous success as a species in overcoming changes to our environment and limits to our growth can't possibly continue really isn't very convincing. It's like arguing that, even though the hare beats the turtle every time, this one time the turtle will win!

Ponzi schemes always fail eventually.

[lesslucid]

Global warming isn't a hard limit -- I'm fairly sure we're all aware of the significant work being done to halt and even reverse it. Food certainly isn't, nor energy, nor any other limiting factor other than perhaps the absolute size of the planet.

Also, your analogy utterly fails. A one time event that is experimentally confirmed has little to do with the ability, or lack thereof, of a species/culture/ethnic group to overcome challenges facing it. Since you seem to be having trouble pointing out counter examples, I'll offer you two: the collapse of Easter Island and Mayan societies due to deforestation and an inability to overcome other challenges posed by their respective ecosystems.

Similar challenges were faced and solved by Japan in the early 17th century simply because it recognized the warning signs and actively confronted the problems at hand, much as our society is doing.

Positing hard limits is silly. They don't exist, as has been proven time and again. Soft limits, such as the 18th century concern over the arithmetic growth of food, are only waiting for science to eliminate them as it has all other such limits before.

Energy isn't a hard limit? Really? You think that after the heat death of the universe, we're still going to be truckin' along, same as always? I'm happy to agree that there is a lot of enery around, and if we were to increase our efficiency in using it, we could sustain a much bigger population than we currently have - depending on just how efficient we become, perhaps a much, much bigger population. I find it hard to imagine a situation where there's 100 trillion human beings happily sharing the planet, but sure, given enough whiz-bang technology it might be possible.

But entropy always increases. I don't understand how a "properly shaped" universe can solve that problem; unless you have an infinite supply of non-chaotic energy, then the transformation of non-chaotic energy into chaotic energy eventually results in all the energy being chaotic.

My analogy wasn't meant to be an analogy of human society or human species, it was meant to be an analogy of your analogy, which come to think of it, is probably a bit of a confusing thing to do. Argument by analogy is pretty much bunk, anyway. But as for species (what's the plural of that? the plural possessive? anyway...) being able or unable to meet challenges facing them: well, sure, there are plenty of examples of both. There are lots of species that have been successful for a while, then become less successful - or extinct, or have evolved into new forms that have replaced the old forms, or continue to exist alongside of them. I think the situation with human beings is qualitatively different to that of other species because of our greater intelligence, but if you want to look around for the closest parallel you can find, other animals would be it.

I've read Collapse and I like it a lot, but I don't think I'd draw the same conclusions that you do: as I see it, Diamond is saying that there are good examples of particular societies both anticipating and responding to imminent collapse, and of failing to do so: and that as we have become very numerous and inter-connected, we have become more and more like a single big society, which is capable of producing a "collapse" on a much bigger scale than has ever been recorded... so we need to make sure we follow the path laid down by the societies that anticipated correctly what was coming up, rather than those who didn't.

Oops, sorry, I lost track because this is a bit long and I realise now you weren't explicitly referring to Diamond's book. So just ignore that last bit if you weren't.

[Machfive]

The job's not done until we have consumed the entire planet! Then, we spread beyond!

Earth-That-Was could no longer sustain our numbers, we were so many. We found a new solar system: dozens of planets and hundreds of moons -- each one terraformed, a process taking decades, to support human life. To be new Earths.

[Midnight Son]

Guess we better increase our pure science R&D spending sometime soon or we're just gonna rot in this gravity well..........

[Mordrak]

Heat. Eventually, the oceans boil.

(And then you move off planet, but eventually the speed of light gets you.)

Isn't there something in the Bible about that? OMGZ it predicts teh FUTURE.

Now we just need some nerd to calculate when the oceans are likely to boil and that's when armageddon and the rapture happens. You can turn around and sell it to religious crazies.

Positing hard limits is silly. They don't exist, as has been proven time and again. Soft limits, such as the 18th century concern over the arithmetic growth of food, are only waiting for science to eliminate them as it has all other such limits before.

Umm, entropy exists. Sorry to burst your bubble.

[Jason McCullough]

I think the argument was made clear by the contrast between saying "the Amercian work week" and "the current global economy". If we work less, we get out-compete by those who work more.

What does hours worked have to do with international trade? Note we already work more than everyone else on the planet.

Also, I'm not sure why everyone has to set fire to the internet just because we work a few less hours per work. Theoretically people could make individual decisions about what they do and don't want to buy, and I doubt internet access is the marginal cut.

But failing that, you people who disdain capitalism, what's your solution? Mandate a 30-hour work week?

Uh, yes? By the way, how is "mandating a 30 hour week" a sign of disdaining capitalism when current....capitalist....law mandates a 40 hour work week, at least for non-exempt employees.

Jesus Christ himself didn't order us to work 40 hour weeks; it's something society determines. Yet people treat the France 35 hour week like the end of the world; I don't get it.

[Reldan]

I actually would be more concerned about food and energy.

Science's solution to the food problem in the 20th century has been to convert oil into fertilizer, and then into corn. Modern agriculture is a machine designed to turn oil into food we can eat. A farm without artificial fertilizer is capped at producing a quarter of what it can produce with it, simply because that's how fast natural processes can replenish the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in the soil.

Oil is millions and millions of years worth of composting that we're burning through at an insane rate.

We've hit peak oil, and we don't have a good machine just as yet that turns electricity directly into edible food.

[JeffL]

My personal experience in the sectors in which I've worked - once the Iron Curtain went down, and the world became much more global, there was a pretty big change in attitude in terms of how hard we had to work in the U.S.

For example, when the big global company I was working for primarily competed against other U.S. (and some European) companies we got very big, fat, and happy. But when the competition became much more global, and you were competing hard against companies like China, Russia, etc. the entire balance changed. You just could not afford what you could afford before in terms of your overall costs. For example, this company led the world in high quality magnesium production and had for decades. There really wasn't any real threat to that part of the company. After the wall went down, Russia was able to purchase the technology and was willing to take $0.10 in Western currency on the dollar - i.e., for them, ten cents was worth what we'd need a dollar for. Within a year a business that we'd had forever and which was a backbone of the company went down and was closed (but not until after trying all manner of productivity improvements, people working their asses off, etc.)

Another example - when I was working for a U.S. company competing in a technology market against a specific Japanese company, we found that they were producing 10 research samples for the customers to test in the time we were able to produce 1. It wasn't a matter of better equipment, etc. - we knew what was required and calculated they must be working around the clock, 24/7 to do that. Our chemists and engineers then tried to compete by working extra hours, weekends, etc. but that just wasn't sustainable. Later, when we partnered with that company, I visited their labs. Their chemists were indeed working 6 - 7 days a week, and in fact many younger chemists had super tiny apartments - really, rooms - that were attached to the labs.

In todays' global markets there are many sectors in which the competition in some other nations are willing and happy to work far more than 40 hours a week, and to compete with them means you certainly can't cut back on your productivity. You can try to beat that with various types of technology, but that only covers certain types of efforts. It is difficult enough to compete with how cheaply places like India and China can deliver certain products and services.

[Mordrak]

For example, when the big global company I was working for primarily competed against other U.S. (and some European) companies we got very big, fat, and happy. But when the competition became much more global, and you were competing hard against companies like China, Russia, etc. the entire balance changed. You just could not afford what you could afford before in terms of your overall costs. For example, this company led the world in high quality magnesium production and had for decades. There really wasn't any real threat to that part of the company. After the wall went down, Russia was able to purchase the technology and was willing to take $0.10 in Western currency on the dollar - i.e., for them, ten cents was worth what we'd need a dollar for. Within a year a business that we'd had forever and which was a backbone of the company went down and was closed (but not until after trying all manner of productivity improvements, people working their asses off, etc.)

Another example - when I was working for a U.S. company competing in a technology market against a specific Japanese company, we found that they were producing 10 research samples for the customers to test in the time we were able to produce 1. It wasn't a matter of better equipment, etc. - we knew what was required and calculated they must be working around the clock, 24/7 to do that. Our chemists and engineers then tried to compete by working extra hours, weekends, etc. but that just wasn't sustainable. Later, when we partnered with that company, I visited their labs. Their chemists were indeed working 6 - 7 days a week, and in fact many younger chemists had super tiny apartments - really, rooms - that were attached to the labs.

In todays' global markets there are many sectors in which the competition in some other nations are willing and happy to work far more than 40 hours a week, and to compete with them means you certainly can't cut back on your productivity. You can try to beat that with various types of technology, but that only covers certain types of efforts. It is difficult enough to compete with how cheaply places like India and China can deliver certain products and services.

And this will continue to happen. There's no working harder that will overcome a 10:1 value difference, rather, our economy will decline until things begin to even out. This is terrible news not only for such heavily consumption based societies like ours, but the people that exploit those value differences for profit. Either that, or governments will try to prop up the status quo, but that probably won't work.

[Robert Sharp]

So maybe isolationism was a good thing?

In any case, it's almost impossible to compare different time periods without significant loss in the analogy. Maybe people were successful working 30 hours per week at some point. Maybe people needed 60 at other points. None of that tells us what would work today.

[Qenan]

And how many people actually work those 40 hours, as opposed to 60? 80? There is a limit to what labor laws can accomplish, and reducing the American work week to 30 hours would be a really bad idea in the current global economy.

And fuck, man, I'm a liberal and I'm telling you this.
I don't see how that follows. If we work less and get paid correspondingly less, I don't see it making us particularly less competitive.

The problem is that while Jason is well paid and could afford to do this, most Americans couldn't. There is no real demand for fewer hours.

[Anti-Bunny]

I don't see how that follows. If we work less and get paid correspondingly less, I don't see it making us particularly less competitive.

Uh.. you do know that, given less time to work, you would produce less, right?

This thread makes me sad.

[Qenan]

Duh. So? How does producing less make us less competitive? Are you claiming small countries (which must produce less) are intrinsically uncompetitive?

Our competitiveness is more a function of price per service or good produced. Working less doesn't mean that the price of goods would go up. We'd get paid less, too.

[Jason McCullough]

The problem is that while Jason is well paid and could afford to do this, most Americans couldn't. There is no real demand for fewer hours.

There were lots of people without enough money back in the 60 and 80 hour a week days, too. It wasn't working even more hours that got them out of it. I think fixing that is a separate issue, but you'd obviously want to push for a unified package of pro-worker reforms, not just 30 hour max and nothing else.

In todays' global markets there are many sectors in which the competition in some other nations are willing and happy to work far more than 40 hours a week, and to compete with them means you certainly can't cut back on your productivity.

Productivity is output divided by hours worked. In general, it declines as the hours increases. So I'm not sure what you mean.

[James Gutierrez]

Duh. So? How does producing less make us less competitive? Are you claiming small countries (which must produce less) are intrinsically uncompetitive?

Our competitiveness is more a function of price per service or good produced. Working less doesn't mean that the price of goods would go up. We'd get paid less, too.

That's all well and good if you're producing something fungible like mining coal or whatever, but competitiveness in a modern economy depends on innovation as much as price. If you're working less, you're not just producing fewer widgets, you're slower in developing widget 2.0. Obviously it's not linear, but just relating productivity to unit quantities is an oversimplification.

[Fooey]

The average German works many fewer hours a year than the average American. German productivity is at a similar level as the U.S.. Germany's average income per person is obviously significantly lower than the U.S., though, since working fewer hours at about the same level of productivity means less stuff to go around. They've simply made a choice to be poorer than us but have more leisure time.

[JeffL]

Productivity is output divided by hours worked. In general, it declines as the hours increases. So I'm not sure what you mean.

I was not using the strict definition of the word productivity; the more precise word for what I was talking about was output. You can have the best productivity in the world by the strict definition of the word, and much lower product output than a competitor with lower productivity, and you can lose the battle. There are quite a few companies in this country that have closed down in the last few years for just that reason (I have the resumes of some chemists from a couple of those companies on my desk at work right now, companies that have been shut down because they can't compete in industrial coatings with China.)

This isn't all that complicated. Of course people can work less hours if they want to make less money and not be able to purchase as much. But we are a very materialistic country, in general. Witness how many couples feel they must rely on the income of both to have the house the size they "need", the two new cars, the flat panel HDTV, the satellite TV, the three PCs in the house, etc.

Our parent company is in France and I often visit to exchange technology and have strategy discussions (though not for the six weeks starting around August in which they all go on vacation.) They used to work the standard French 35 hour work week, but most evenings now, when I'm visiting, I head back to my hotel room or dinner and many of them are still in the office. What I have seen is that the companies in France that primarily compete in France or compete in areas in which output is unimportant work lower hours than in the U.S., in general. What I have also observed is that, for companies that have to compete globally, they tend to work more hours today than they used to. Being essentially a socialist country has some impact, of course.

The business world is a brutal place. If our customer requires samples of products from the labs to qualify for their use, and it's an iterative process they use for testing, and we give them two samples and it takes two weeks to make them, test them internally, narrow down to the two that we think have the best chance to meet their needs, and ship them, and a competitor is providing them 6 samples and getting them to them in 3 days, we'll very likely lose. If it takes me a year to develop and get a product to market and my competition beats me to the market by six months we'll lose. If my time to respond to a customer's problem and fix it is significantly longer than my competition, we'll lose. And so on. We try everything we can to be smarter, automate, use the most advanced technology to speed up our capabilities, but so do our competitors. In the end, in general, if we work significantly less hours than our competitors, we lose. In some cases, we understand we are going to no longer be able to compete in certain areas because we, with a Western approach, are simply unwilling to work the hours some of our Asian competitors are willing to work.

[lesslucid]

I've been reading this for a long time, the notion that people don't naturally want to consume a lot of stuff, but that the masses are helpless lemmings being preyed upon by Big Industry and their Irresistible Advertising. My gut feeling is that the natural human state is to want more than what you've got, whatever the starting point.

If it were possible to implement a school program that instilled critical thinking in people so that no one ever again would fall for stuff like "Obama is a Muslim" or "Drinking Coors will get me laid", that would be great. But failing that, you people who disdain capitalism, what's your solution? Mandate a 30-hour work week? Strict controls on advertising? What steps would you impose to replenish "human communities"? I doubt there's any top-down cure that isn't far deadlier than the disease. If there was a big grass-roots movement towards more volunteering and community-minded activities, that would be cool, but nobody wants to give up their toys and neither do any of you guys. People are naturally greedy, period.

People "naturally" want to eat chocolate and ice-cream all day and not have to do any exercise or eat any complex carbohydrates, things like brown rice and millet, because they're boring and taste like cardboard. People who entirely follows these "natural" inclinations, though, are in my opinion worse off overall than those who learn to moderate their desires and to do some things which are good for them in the long run even if they're not much fun in the short run.

I agree that it's pretty ineffective to say, hey everyone, let's all consume less stuff and love each other more, because that would really rock, yo! Because the desire for "stuff" runs a lot deeper than a message like that is going to reach. But if you want to look around for people who are happy - especially, people who are happy in ways that don't depend on the unhappiness of other people - my bet is you'll find a lot of people who believe all that kooky stuff about consuming less and loving each other more.

Incidentally, your questions above about strict controls on advertising - I have to admit, I don't see any problem with that. Why should advertisers be allowed to lie to me? Or seek to create misleading ideas or associations? If the rules governing advertisements were to be made much stricter, wouldn't the gains outweight the losses?

[Crispus]

The average German works many fewer hours a year than the average American. German productivity is at a similar level as the U.S.. Germany's average income per person is obviously significantly lower than the U.S., though, since working fewer hours at about the same level of productivity means less stuff to go around. They've simply made a choice to be poorer than us but have more leisure time.

Good for them. But why are we even talking about this when it's never going to change? The culture is pretty much set in stone at this point, and there's never going to be any support to change it, not with corporate lobbyists being so influential and not with people scrapping for every dollar they can get in order to pay for gas nowadays. I admit, as someone who isn't fond of work and who makes more than he ever spends, I'd personally like a 30-hour work week...but it's never going to happen.

[Jason McCullough]

Got to start somewhere. I think society's a lot more changable than people think, too; today would be practically unrecognizable from 1950.

I was not using the strict definition of the word productivity; the more precise word for what I was talking about was output. You can have the best productivity in the world by the strict definition of the word, and much lower product output than a competitor with lower productivity, and you can lose the battle. There are quite a few companies in this country that have closed down in the last few years for just that reason (I have the resumes of some chemists from a couple of those companies on my desk at work right now, companies that have been shut down because they can't compete in industrial coatings with China.)

Cost of producting for international trade = cost of capital + cost of labor + cost of shipping; China has a much lower cost of labor in this field and shipping is very low, therefore, China will take the international contracts. I don't see what hours worked has to do with it.

[Elton]

Why should advertisers be allowed to lie to me? Or seek to create misleading ideas or associations?

Having a government agency decide which ads are legal based on whether or not they create misleading associations doesn't sound desirable. Either all ads would be barred from implying any sort of association and would just become a list of features, or there would have to be some kind of arbitrary and fuzzy boundary between "good" association ads ("I'm a Mac and I'm a PC"?) and "bad" ones (cute kids tucking into McDonald's french fries?) Either way, a pretty huge limit of free speech in the name of protecting uncritical consumers.


Uh, yes? By the way, how is "mandating a 30 hour week" a sign of disdaining capitalism when current....capitalist....law mandates a 40 hour work week, at least for non-exempt employees.

Jesus Christ himself didn't order us to work 40 hour weeks; it's something society determines. Yet people treat the France 35 hour week like the end of the world; I don't get it.

MSNBC in 2005: (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7265807)
PARIS - French lawmakers effectively abolished the country’s 35-hour workweek Tuesday by allowing employers to increase working hours — and pay — as the country struggles with high unemployment and stagnating living standards.

In a final vote, the National Assembly approved a government-backed bill permitting employers to negotiate deals with staff to increase working time by 220 hours a year in return for better pay.
...
Many French workers have become accustomed to taking longer holidays and regular weekdays off under the 35-hour law, and a recent survey by polling agency CSA showed that 56 percent of salaried employees oppose the bill.

However, jobseekers, retirees and unskilled workers approved of the change.
The 35-hour work week in France was one of those laws that was great for the employed, and not so great for the unemployed (not to mention the effect on employers -- if you recall, the work week was cut from 39 to 35 hours but wages were not allowed to be cut accordingly). But the outcome now is not too bad, where employees and employers have more flexibility to negotiate working hours. The ideal system which would please both of us would be if any employee could negotiate for whatever work-week they want (with pro-rated salary and benefits), but if the government mandated this as a universal right it seems like it would be a pretty big monkey wrench for many employers. Even if the per-hour costs of employment stay the same, managing more people all working different amounts of hours would be a jigsaw-puzzle management mess in a lot of industries. Maybe more advanced scheduling software would alleviate this though, and we can find the happy compromise.

[Jason McCullough]

Good point, flexibility would be the ideal outcome.

On a related note, I'm continually confused by how hard employers have fought hour reductions throughout the history of industrialism (which implicitly means hiring more workers) or hiring more workers in general. I really don't understand what the concrete cost concern they have is; managing more employees is not this massive cost to my knowledge.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

Getting more hours out of individual workers is good for job seekers? Seems like companies will have to hire fewer people. And the "freedom" to negotiate any total hour figure just means the company will dictate its terms to the workers, at the cost of their jobs if they disagree. Maybe that's not the case in France, depending on how much strength their unions retain, but there's no reason to take away the regulatory safeguard against long hours.

Edit: Jason, the fewer people they actually need, the easier it is to fire and replace the ones they've got, the threat of which keeps them in line and the actually of which deals with the exceptions.

[Robert Sharp]

Of course it is, Jason. You seem to be thinking about employees based solely on hours worked, unless I'm misunderstanding you. But that's no accurate. For example, if you had one employee working 40 hours per week or 2 working 20 each, the 2 would cost you more given the same benefits. The insurance you would need (both their insurance AND yours for having more employees) would be higher. Training costs, book keeping (minor, but it's there), etc. would all be higher with 2 employees instead of one. Again, that assumes they get the same benefits as the 40 hour person. Obviously, many companies hire two part timers instead of one full timer because they don't have to pay benefits. But if you change the work week in order to allow more employment, it won't be the simple zero-sum game it might at first seem.

[StGabe]

The average German works many fewer hours a year than the average American. German productivity is at a similar level as the U.S.. Germany's average income per person is obviously significantly lower than the U.S., though, since working fewer hours at about the same level of productivity means less stuff to go around. They've simply made a choice to be poorer than us but have more leisure time.

Europe is a very good model for this. On the one hand, they are definitely successful at reducing overall hours worked (French and German workers both work an average of 400 hours less per year, or ~8 hours per week). On the other hand, this is definitely something they've struggled with and in recent years they've moved more towards a US model.

How do they do this? Well mostly it's a case of citizens demanding it. Europeans believe very strongly in their right to enjoy life. A lot of things shut down in the summer as Europeans are traveling and vacationing. Not only do European workers tend to demand 6 weeks vacation but they demand better employment protection with things like maternity and paternity leave and far stronger laws against wrongful termination. On the other hand, they also are willing to accept lesser consumer options. Europeans are accustomed to serve-yourself style stores, getting their groceries from multiple shops, walking instead of driving, doing without things like air conditioning and paying a lot more for luxuries. During the times when I've lived in Europe, whether the dollar was strong or weak, I've always noticed that groceries and other necessities were quite cheap while luxuries such as restaurants and electronics were strikingly expensive.

I hope it will last. Nevermind Asia, the opening up of Eastern Europe has created a strong and nearby challenge to Western European competitiveness. Many European countries have had economic stumbles in past years and while they're still far from American culture, many policies have been leaning towards a more American model and large supermarkets, etc., are increasingly becoming the norm. In many cases it's hard to fault the logic -- there are clear market inefficiencies -- but then when comparing the lifestyle I think you realize that the Europeans had to have been doing a lot of things right as well. I think generally the European economies are healthier than they're given credit for and that the culture there will continue to demand a society that focuses on happiness of its citizens as the most important form of "output". It's really inspiring to be in countries where entire cities will shut down if they feel the need to protest laws that do not put citizens' happiness first (whether the issue is social security or drinking in the tube *grin*).

[JeffL]

Got to start somewhere. I think society's a lot more changable than people think, too; today would be practically unrecognizable from 1950.

Cost of producting for international trade = cost of capital + cost of labor + cost of shipping; China has a much lower cost of labor in this field and shipping is very low, therefore, China will take the international contracts. I don't see what hours worked has to do with it.

Actually, you're correct in that case - it is infrastructure cost for that particular market. Bad example.

However, there are still many areas in which hours worked = significantly higher output and just working 40 hours puts you at a disadvantage against them. Even within the U.S. - if you're a company that decides, hey, lets cut back how much we work, if you are a company that has to compete via any type of output, whether it is product development, R&D, etc., you are going to be disadvantaged against companies who work harder. That just doesn't take an MBA to figure out.

And I saw someone beat me to it, but yeah, two people cost a LOT more than one person. Benefits in the U.S. are a huge part of their cost.

Worked for a large global company that decided to get enlightened and went to a 9/80 work schedule. Basically, the concept was that you worked 9 days in two weeks and got every other Friday off, and you made up those extra 8 hours in the other 9 that you worked. People LOVED it - getting every other Friday off was extremely cool. We all got used to it, and sure enough, all output measurements showed that output was dropping, customer response was measurably slower, time to market on products dropped, etc. We started losing in areas that in which we took winning for granted. I was in there with the best of them, arguing that they extra Friday off made people happier, happier people produced more, etc. but the actual numbers just didn't hold up. Of course, taking it away once people got used to it REALLY sucked.

[JeffL]

By the way - I do think that the materialism in the U.S. that drives people to feel that must "HAVE" so much is essentially a bad thing overall. I know people who are quite well off with tons of "stuff" who work their ass off in the office, etc. and people who have small homes and older paid off cars and basic cable, etc. who come home and don't stay away worrying about work and the latter are almost uniformly the happier of the two groups (in my observation.)

[Unicorn McGriddle]

Of course it is, Jason.

I think you're responding to me, not Jason; either way, I'm going to respond to YOU. So there.

You seem to be thinking about employees based solely on hours worked, unless I'm misunderstanding you. But that's no accurate. For example, if you had one employee working 40 hours per week or 2 working 20 each, the 2 would cost you more given the same benefits. The insurance you would need (both their insurance AND yours for having more employees) would be higher. Training costs, book keeping (minor, but it's there), etc. would all be higher with 2 employees instead of one. Again, that assumes they get the same benefits as the 40 hour person. Obviously, many companies hire two part timers instead of one full timer because they don't have to pay benefits. But if you change the work week in order to allow more employment, it won't be the simple zero-sum game it might at first seem.

Parts of your post make sense to me, such as the idea that two part-timers cost more than one full-timer unless the part-timers don't get benefits. But I don't see what bearing that has on the French situation. Hell, if anything, it supports what I wrote originally. More work from fewer people for less money isn't a victory for the workers.

[Jason McCullough]

Of course it is, Jason. You seem to be thinking about employees based solely on hours worked, unless I'm misunderstanding you. But that's no accurate. For example, if you had one employee working 40 hours per week or 2 working 20 each, the 2 would cost you more given the same benefits. The insurance you would need (both their insurance AND yours for having more employees) would be higher. Training costs, book keeping (minor, but it's there), etc. would all be higher with 2 employees instead of one. Again, that assumes they get the same benefits as the 40 hour person. Obviously, many companies hire two part timers instead of one full timer because they don't have to pay benefits. But if you change the work week in order to allow more employment, it won't be the simple zero-sum game it might at first seem.

Oh obviously there'll be extra costs, I'm just find it hard to believe training and overhead (maybe task specialization given up?) is really that significant. Health care is a disaster regardless, obviously, but I hope the fix for that is coming this fall.

However, there are still many areas in which hours worked = significantly higher output and just working 40 hours puts you at a disadvantage against them.

Can you describe one? No really; your example is a problem with the declining marginal productivity throughout in the workday (the ~9th hour is far less productive than the second, and when you replace a full day with it output goes down). You seem to be describing a scenario where a company:

1) The international trade market is won through sheer volume of hours input.
2) The company can't hire any more employees to contribute hours, or the tasks inherently can't be split up between people.

[Sarkus]

If you don't mind, I'm going to use this thread in my Obama/McCullough '08 campaign literature.

:-)

[Idar Thorvaldsen]

How do they do this? Well mostly it's a case of citizens demanding it.
In some countries, it's just as much (if not more) a result of a strong labour movement and strong (usually national) unions in the decades following WWII. Their power is declining now, with the dwindling numbers and reduced importance of industrial workers, but especially in Scandinavia, they basically ran the countries for several decades following the war.

[Aeon221]

Energy isn't a hard limit? Really? You think that after the heat death of the universe, we're still going to be truckin' along, same as always? I'm happy to agree that there is a lot of energy around, and if we were to increase our efficiency in using it, we could sustain a much bigger population than we currently have - depending on just how efficient we become, perhaps a much, much bigger population. I find it hard to imagine a situation where there's 100 trillion human beings happily sharing the planet, but sure, given enough whiz-bang technology it might be possible.

I think I mentioned that I was willing to concede that, yes, the physical size of the planet is indeed a hard limit.

Oh heck, I'll save you the effort of looking it up.

Food certainly isn't, nor energy, nor any other limiting factor other than perhaps the absolute size of the planet.

Assuming, of course, that we don't move to one of the Jovian moons (at least one of which has liquid oceans (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/europa_ocean_000824.html)) or Mars or the Moon or something of that sort, which is what I was hoping to indicate by using the word "perhaps".

But hey, I'm feeling generous, so I'll score that as one incredibly absurd hard limit on further expansion. Feel free to give me a phone call and tell me "I toldja soo" when we reach a global population of eleventy trillion or whatever number it is.


But entropy always increases. I don't understand how a "properly shaped" universe can solve that problem; unless you have an infinite supply of non-chaotic energy, then the transformation of non-chaotic energy into chaotic energy eventually results in all the energy being chaotic. Trillions of years from now, when the last brown dwarf finally goes out, we will probably no longer be capable of sustainable survival. I'll be sure to make a note in my day planner, right next to "Things To Do: Feed Star". Two absolutely absurd limits. Congrats?

If my banal jokes haven't made it abundantly clear, I don't think you've been successful in proposing meaningful hard limits. These limits are almost as incredibly irrelevant as a law against storing food at absolute zero or a speed limit of the speed of light + 1. They simply aren't relevant when it comes to deciding what an acceptable population is for teh erf.


My analogy wasn't meant to be an analogy of human society or human species, it was meant to be an analogy of your analogy, which come to think of it, is probably a bit of a confusing thing to do.
Argument by analogy is pretty much bunk, anyway.
I'm more than happy to split the difference and call it a bad analogy. Let's have less of them.


But as for species (what's the plural of that? the plural possessive? anyway...) being able or unable to meet challenges facing them: well, sure, there are plenty of examples of both. There are lots of species that have been successful for a while, then become less successful - or extinct, or have evolved into new forms that have replaced the old forms, or continue to exist alongside of them. I think the situation with human beings is qualitatively different to that of other species because of our greater intelligence, but if you want to look around for the closest parallel you can find, other animals would be it. Last I checked, I am not a bear. Nor are any of my friends. I can't think of anyone I know with a little bit of dodo in him either.

In essence there's a limit to the applicability of lessons learned from animal behavior. Humans are just plain different -- that's why I'm upstairs acting like an twit on the internets while my dog is downstairs licking her ass. More importantly, humans can consciously alter their environment in ways that beavers can't even begin to concieve. If the globe starts getting too hot, we have options! Animals don't! It is especially silly to be drawing conclusions from animals, which face fundamentally different problems with regards to their environment, when there are plenty of examples of human societies that failed and succeeded.

If you want to keep drawing examples on how to run a society from bacteria and ants and meerkats, that's fine. But I'd prefer to pick from creatures a tad more similar to myself, if that's okay with you.


I've read Collapse and I like it a lot, but I don't think I'd draw the same conclusions that you do: as I see it, Diamond is saying that there are good examples of particular societies both anticipating and responding to imminent collapse, and of failing to do so: and that as we have become very numerous and inter-connected, we have become more and more like a single big society, which is capable of producing a "collapse" on a much bigger scale than has ever been recorded... so we need to make sure we follow the path laid down by the societies that anticipated correctly what was coming up, rather than those who didn't. I don't think I could have been any clearer in stating exactly that without repeating you. I love quoting myself, so I'll do it right here:

Since you seem to be having trouble pointing out counter examples, I'll offer you two: the collapse of Easter Island and Mayan societies due to deforestation and an inability to overcome other challenges posed by their respective ecosystems.

Similar challenges were faced and solved by Japan in the early 17th century simply because it recognized the warning signs and actively confronted the problems at hand, much as our society is doing.

Feel free to indicate what I could have done to come across more clearly there, because it's tracking well for me.


Umm, entropy exists. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Wow! You are insightful! I'm so glad I took the time to read what you wrote! Especially since someone else said it first, said it better, and said it without being nearly as bitchy as either of us! You go, girl! You have a future!

[Aeon221]

I think you're responding to me, not Jason; either way, I'm going to respond to YOU. So there.

Parts of your post make sense to me, such as the idea that two part-timers cost more than one full-timer unless the part-timers don't get benefits. But I don't see what bearing that has on the French situation. Hell, if anything, it supports what I wrote originally. More work from fewer people for less money isn't a victory for the workers.

Hiring two part timers for more money to do the same job as one full timer is wasteful, and it doesn't really benefit anyone. Why not have the same number of people working at twice as many companies, producing twice as much stuff, and give them health benefits from the money saved by each company having to hire half as many people?

The French clearly want to work more, since Sarkozy was practically campaigning on extending the work week, so they clearly see some kind of benefit in it for them.

[Mordrak]

Wow! You are insightful! I'm so glad I took the time to read what you wrote! Especially since someone else said it first, said it better, and said it without being nearly as bitchy as either of us! You go, girl! You have a future!

You're not the first to sarcastically note I'm an idiot. Get in line or put me on ignore. Your choice.

If only we could power the world on your ego.... *shrugs*

[lesslucid]

Name a hard limit on continued growth. Please, I'd love to hear one. No real scientist could point to one, but I'm sure that you, in all your infinite wisdom, know the truth.

A hard limit on continued growth is provided by the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy always increases. I suspect we'll run into a "softer" limit than that long before we reach it, but still, it's a hard limit which is what you asked for. ;)

Note that the wink-smiley there is not intended as a "fuck you" but as an acknowledgement of the fact that the hard limit I am proposing, while providing a correct (if rather over-literal) answer to the question asked, is in some sense rather distant from the concerns of consumption initially raised in the thread.

If you'd like more on the subject, I'd recommend "Collapse" by a Mr. Diamond.

Ah, there it is, in the title of the post. I knew from the examples you were probably talking about his book but when I glanced at your post a second time I couldn't see it.

I think I mentioned that I was willing to concede that, yes, the physical size of the planet is indeed a hard limit.

Oh heck, I'll save you the effort of looking it up.

You said "perhaps" it was a hard limit. In fact I'd say that it's a soft limit: given a sufficiently advanced science, it may be possible for us to live on other planets. And you said that energy was *not* a hard limit. I'd say, given reasonably foreseeable developments in science (and of course many future scientific developments may not be reasonably foreseeable, any more than the current state of science and technology would have been foreseeable 200 years ago) then energy seems much more likely to present a "meaningful" limit to growth than the physical size of the planet does. It certainly seems to be at the forefront of conflicts over scarce resources at present.

If my banal jokes haven't made it abundantly clear, I don't think you've been successful in proposing meaningful hard limits. These limits are almost as incredibly irrelevant as a law against storing food at absolute zero or a speed limit of the speed of light + 1. They simply aren't relevant when it comes to deciding what an acceptable population is for teh erf.

Well, if you'd said "propose a _meaningful_ hard limit, genius" in your original sarcastic post, perhaps I would have refrained from mentioning the second law of thermodynamics. But you go and make an absolute statement like "no real scientist would ever propose a hard limit" then you're inviting people to give responses which, however facetious, show you to be incorrect. Of course, the meaningful limits which we face at the present time are "soft" limits, but the important question is, just _how_ soft are they? Because it's all very well to imagine that in the future there will be star-trek like replicators in every home and a cold-fusion plant on every street corner, but if I go and throw all my groceries in the garbage I'm still going to be hungry tonight because those potential future developments don't mean anything until they stop exisiting in the potential future and start existing in the actual present.


Regarding the Jared Diamond Collapse stuff, you said:

Similar challenges were faced and solved by Japan in the early 17th century simply because it recognized the warning signs and actively confronted the problems at hand, much as our society is doing.

OK, this is the bit I disagree with, just those last six words. If the take-home message you got from Collapse was "don't worry folks, we are responding as necessary, just like the Japanese and the Icelanders did, so let's all stop panicking" I think we might have read different editions of the book. ;) Certainly our society is taking steps, certainly we are doing something to confront the problems which threaten to lead us into a global collapse: but it certainly does not follow from that that we are doing enough, and that we have definitely got this thing sewn up. Diamond says we should take some comfort from knowing that some past societies have got it right, but he seems to me to be considerably less optimistic than you are about whether we are getting it right now or are going to be able to change direction fast enough to get it right in time to stop "the big collapse" from occurring.

[StGabe]

The French clearly want to work more, since Sarkozy was practically campaigning on extending the work week, so they clearly see some kind of benefit in it for them.
When talking about an increase in the French work week is important to understand that they are still working far less, on average, than Americans. It's not like they're rallying for an American style work environment.

In some countries, it's just as much (if not more) a result of a strong labour movement and strong (usually national) unions in the decades following WWII. Their power is declining now, with the dwindling numbers and reduced importance of industrial workers, but especially in Scandinavia, they basically ran the countries for several decades following the war.Admittedly I'm far less informed about Scandinavia and most of my experience is with the UK, Germany, France and Austria. That said, isn't the power of unions basically an expression of the will of the people. In the US unions are frequently derided and looked down upon these days. In Europe they seem to garner a lot more respect with some recognition that an overly restrictive workforce can cause problems for the economy at large.

[StGabe]

Certainly our society is taking steps, certainly we are doing something to confront the problems which threaten to lead us into a global collapse: but it certainly does not follow from that that we are doing enough, and that we have definitely got this thing sewn up. Diamond says we should take some comfort from knowing that some past societies have got it right, but he seems to me to be considerably less optimistic than you are about whether we are getting it right now or are going to be able to change direction fast enough to get it right in time to stop "the big collapse" from occurring.

This seems to be a big problem with conversations like this. There are always "Cassandras" predicting the worst and there are always "Pollyannas" claming that that "the market/government/civiliziation will take care of it" and we needn't worry. On the one had the Cassandras can taken as vastly underestimating human ingenuity. On the other hand, if crisis is averted only because the Cassandra's called enough attention to it in the first place, the Cassandras receive no credit. Furthermore, people assume that "it will be taken care of" instead of "it can be taken care of" and the take home is that we don't need to do anything and it will solve itself (whether this is valid or not). The real answer is that this is a false dichotomy and in any such case we need to critically evaluate the potential crisis AND the potential for us to solve it (with or without changing our current our current strategies).

Generally speaking it's a problem of perception. Future or uncertain problems rarely receive traction among the public. I.e. we don't care about oil scarcity until gas prices hit $4. That's well and good if we are talking about something where the market/society/etc. has time to adjust and solve a problem after it occurs. If it's a crisis with irreparable consequences, however, we need to be able to recognize it BEFORE it starts to significantly affect people or else its too late to avoid those consequences.

[Idar Thorvaldsen]

That said, isn't the power of unions basically an expression of the will of the people.

They're more an expression of the will of specific socio-economic groups. Depending on the level of union membership and the political desires of non-union groups, that may or may not coincide with the will of the people as a whole. For instance, after World War II, many European countries established welfare state systems because their populations agreed with the national labour movements that this would be desirable; in these cases, they represented the will of the people. However, as already discussed, it would be harder to contend that the French labour movement today represents the will of the people rather than their own narrower interests.

I believe that the probably greatest cause of the differences between the US and the European labour market and welfare systems is the failure of the US organized labour movement to gain broad popular support for their agenda in the inter- and post-war years, as happened in Europe.

[Aeon221]

You're not the first to sarcastically note I'm an idiot. Get in line or put me on ignore. Your choice.

If only we could power the world on your ego.... *shrugs*

You're not the first to sarcastically note I'm an idiot. Get in line or put me on ignore. Your choice.

If only we could power the world on your ego.... *shrugs*

Note that the wink-smiley there is not intended as a "fuck you" but as an acknowledgement of the fact that the hard limit I am proposing, while providing a correct (if rather over-literal) answer to the question asked, is in some sense rather distant from the concerns of consumption initially raised in the thread.

Oh, so in P&R I can't be a douche? Gosh, such hate! You're a big meanie :-(
But yeah, I do tend to read smilies as a coded "fuck you", at least here. I remember someone linking to a video some guy did where he used punctuation as coded swear words, so like a semi-colon meant asshat or some such.

But I'll just shoot you this line from the post I was originally replying to:

But science and technology has real, hard limits

Even ignoring the wee fubar in grammar, it's still somewhat of a call to arms. You obviously agree with me that absolute statements chock full of teh crazy should be attacked, so lets form a secret ninja brotherhood.


Ah, there it is, in the title of the post. I knew from the examples you were probably talking about his book but when I glanced at your post a second time I couldn't see it.

Yeah, it's a fabulous little tome, and I tend to be sneaky with the titles.


You said "perhaps" it was a hard limit. In fact I'd say that it's a soft limit: given a sufficiently advanced science, it may be possible for us to live on other planets.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves there. I'd guess, based on the lack of known life on any other planet in our solar system, that it isn't exactly cakes and coffee to do that, and it probably wouldn't be all that effective either. As an aside, I did have an astronomy professor who figured that the Jovian moons would make a great refuge for earthlings when the sun finally went red dwarf, as it would heat warm them up a tad.

Be that as it may, no one from earth has lived out their natural lives on another rock orbiting our glowing ball of plasma. Heck, astronauts can't even spend more than six months up in space without starting to develop medical problems -- what guarantee do we have that the same sort of stuff won't apply on other planets where, like up in space, the atmosphere isn't equipped to protect them from harmful cosmic radiation? And while that can be solved with giant metal plates, permanent supplies of food water and air can't -- at least, not without what I'd assume would entail serious difficulty and a bit of alchemy. So while I'm willing to accept the colonization of other planets as a possibility, I'm not willing to rule out our being stuck on teh erf. This is very different from other limits on continuing population growth here on erf, as we've got ideas in the pipeline to solve everything else.


And you said that energy was *not* a hard limit. I'd say, given reasonably foreseeable developments in science (and of course many future scientific developments may not be reasonably foreseeable, any more than the current state of science and technology would have been foreseeable 200 years ago) then energy seems much more likely to present a "meaningful" limit to growth than the physical size of the planet does. It certainly seems to be at the forefront of conflicts over scarce resources at present.
Oh Reginald! I disagree! I distinctly remember someone else linking to a paper on a similar subject at some earlier point in time in another thread, but since I can't find that thread I googled up this little gem (http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/14543/?a=f) on the subject of exothermic algae to diesel transformations. In my esteemly stoopid opinion, that sounds pretty darn close to a solution to upcoming energy issues. And what with people hatching plots to turn everything from corn to sugarcane into fuel of one sort or another, it's hard to accept the idea of energy as a limit. If you want to accuse me of being bullish on energy, guilty.


Well, if you'd said "propose a _meaningful_ hard limit, genius" in your original sarcastic post, perhaps I would have refrained from mentioning the second law of thermodynamics. But you go and make an absolute statement like "no real scientist would ever propose a hard limit" then you're inviting people to give responses which, however facetious, show you to be incorrect.
Yeah, I can't deny that I was taking a potshot. But we've already established that I'm a twit, and I debunked the idea of the laws of thermodynamics acting as anything other than the most absolutely out there of limits. But hey, at least you've admitted that you're down on my level now, nyaaaaa.


Of course, the meaningful limits which we face at the present time are "soft" limits, but the important question is, just _how_ soft are they?It might be that I'm an optimist or a prophet or a ghost whisperer or I read an article in Nature once or something, but I'd be willing to wager good money that those limits are pretty damn soft. Like, gay guy in a Hooters soft.


Because it's all very well to imagine that in the future there will be star-trek like replicators in every home and a cold-fusion plant on every street corner, but if I go and throw all my groceries in the garbage I'm still going to be hungry tonight because those potential future developments don't mean anything until they stop exisiting in the potential future and start existing in the actual present. If this were tennis, and you were serving, the score would be love-love, and I'd be wondering why you just ate the ball. You were doing so well at telling me things I was willing to agree with, and then you toss this out there. Please, sir, may I have some explanation?


OK, this is the bit I disagree with, just those last six words. If the take-home message you got from Collapse was "don't worry folks, we are responding as necessary, just like the Japanese and the Icelanders did, so let's all stop panicking" I think we might have read different editions of the book. ;) Certainly our society is taking steps, certainly we are doing something to confront the problems which threaten to lead us into a global collapse: but it certainly does not follow from that that we are doing enough, and that we have definitely got this thing sewn up. Diamond says we should take some comfort from knowing that some past societies have got it right, but he seems to me to be considerably less optimistic than you are about whether we are getting it right now or are going to be able to change direction fast enough to get it right in time to stop "the big collapse" from occurring.The message I got from it was that IF a society is cognizant of an environmental problem and IF that society takes action to remedy said problem, THEN that society can keep on truckin'. As far as I can tell, that is indeed the case for those of us living on teh erf. There's a global consensus about the existence of an environmental problem, and there's plenty of useful scientific research and governmental efforts already in play. The way I see it, we've fulfilled the two IFs and we're moving slowly but steadily towards the THEN. Now, the Venusian colonists? They fucked up. They fucked up bad.

[Aeon221]

When talking about an increase in the French work week is important to understand that they are still working far less, on average, than Americans. It's not like they're rallying for an American style work environment.

Aware and granted, but they also seemed pretty sick of being forced to work less than they want without being subjected to punitive taxation. So, as a fellow in favor of freer choice, I think that the whole thing was a step in the right direction.

[JeffL]

Oh obviously there'll be extra costs, I'm just find it hard to believe training and overhead (maybe task specialization given up?) is really that significant. Health care is a disaster regardless, obviously, but I hope the fix for that is coming this fall.



Can you describe one? No really; your example is a problem with the declining marginal productivity throughout in the workday (the ~9th hour is far less productive than the second, and when you replace a full day with it output goes down). You seem to be describing a scenario where a company:

1) The international trade market is won through sheer volume of hours input.
2) The company can't hire any more employees to contribute hours, or the tasks inherently can't be split up between people.

On 2 being significantly more than 1 - the costs aren't so much training as they are benefits - health care including dental, eye plan, etc., insurance, PTO, etc. I'll have to go look at my budget spreadsheets, but a significant percentage of the costs of an average employee is more than simply their salary (I know this pretty well because I have a couple of less-than-fulltime employees, plus I've had budget accountabilities for large groups for a long time.)

Also, I'm also more focused on areas in which training and in-depth job knowledge is required (just because that's my experience) as opposed to the kind of job where you can just hire anyone and quickly train them to stack the shelves or sell refrigerators. In many of those cases, you can't just split a job up because of the nature of the tasks being done - it isn't simply activities.

One very specific example, but it is representative of a lot of areas: I was working for a company recently (left skid marks getting out, but that's another story) that developed technology, specifically certain chemistries, for the semiconductor manufacturers. So, for example, I spent a lot of time in the fabs at Intel, IBM, tsmc, Chartered, Samsung, etc. The way you had to develop these: you knew that the need for copper removal at a certain step in the making of the chips for, say, 45nm, required certain improvements in planarity. You made your hypothesis, developed the chemistry, and the only way to test it was in your cleanroom. Once you had something that looked like it might work, you took the samples to, say, IBM for them to test. The only way to test was to do that part of the wafer manufacturing step in their cleanroom.

Our chemist and engineers were not willing to (and we did not want them to) work 12 - 14 hour days and nights, every day. That limited the amount of samples we could make and test to a certain number. That limited how many samples we could get to the customer, how fast we could iterate and get improvements back to the customer, etc. Our customers told us that company A from Taiwan and Company B from Japan and so on were getting them more technology samples, faster, and were turning around new samples after getting feedback, about twice (or more) as fast as us. I later talked to peers at a couple of other U.S. companies who said they were being told the same thing.

This is where I saw the Japanese competitor up close, later, and the hours they were working, the chemists and engineers sleeping in rooms attached to the company, etc. Ultimately, there were certain accounts we could keep for other reasons, but I saw numerous U.S. companies in this market struggle and several get out of the business because they just could not compete.

We always liked to comfort ourselves by saying "We can't work harder than they do, but we can work smarter!" but frankly, there was some racism in that, I think. I heard, many times, comments like "Oh, the Japanese work a lot more hours than we do, we can't compete on that, but we (U.S.) are far more creative and original than they are."

There are many markets in which getting a new technology and product out the door first gives you an enormous advantage. Speed is extremely important in many businesses. It's not "how many" it's "how fast." Working less hours certainly is a disadvantage in that case, all other things being equal. I'd LOVE to work in a society where I could take 3 day weekends. I wish I could find a job that let me sleep until 9, and have Fridays off.

And if I ran a company and could find a way to be competitive and give my employees 3 day weekends and let them come in at 9 and go home at 4, I'd sure do that. As would a lot of people who run companies - you'd certainly have a competitive advantage in that everyone would want to work for you and you could have your pick of the best of the talent pool!

[Jason McCullough]

However, as already discussed, it would be harder to contend that the French labour movement today represents the will of the people rather than their own narrower interests.

France to keep 35 hour week (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23768884-26040,00.html). Looking around, apparently the socialists pushed for to deal with unemployment, of all things.

As to why the US has gone down a different path, I'd say you can summarize that as the coalition on the left collapsing due to racial issues.

Our chemist and engineers were not willing to (and we did not want them to) work 12 - 14 hour days and nights, every day. That limited the amount of samples we could make and test to a certain number. That limited how many samples we could get to the customer, how fast we could iterate and get improvements back to the customer, etc. Our customers told us that company A from Taiwan and Company B from Japan and so on were getting them more technology samples, faster, and were turning around new samples after getting feedback, about twice (or more) as fast as us. I later talked to peers at a couple of other U.S. companies who said they were being told the same thing.

Why didn't you hire more people, though? Is the amount of work a single chemist can do in a day the limit factor on sample turnaround times, and there's no way to divide up the work to speed up completion times?

[Mordrak]

You're not the first to sarcastically note I'm an idiot. Get in line or put me on ignore. Your choice.

If only we could power the world on your ego.... *shrugs*


I chose ignore. Bye, bye baby.

[Robert Sharp]

I think you're responding to me, not Jason; either way, I'm going to respond to YOU. So there.



Parts of your post make sense to me, such as the idea that two part-timers cost more than one full-timer unless the part-timers don't get benefits. But I don't see what bearing that has on the French situation. Hell, if anything, it supports what I wrote originally. More work from fewer people for less money isn't a victory for the workers.

Nah, I was responding to Jason's point about how managing more workers at less hours isn't really different from management's perspective. I'm guessing that insurance figures (safety/worker's comp) would go up based on how many employees you have, NOT how many hours they work. I basically agree with you on the French situation.

[Kraaze]

As to why the US has gone down a different path, I'd say you can summarize that as the coalition on the left collapsing due to racial issues.


FWIW, I think you have a huge blind spot for cultural differences. You frequently attribute differences between countries to political process reasons. yet I've never seen you cite fundamental differences in cultures.

I think coalitions on the left or labor movements are almost irrelevant to why the U.S. doesn't follow a European model in terms of labor issues. The fact that we have a deeply puritan influenced culture and the puritans considered hard work one of the foremost virtues probably has a ton more to do with it.

[Idar Thorvaldsen]

I think coalitions on the left or labor movements are almost irrelevant to why the U.S. doesn't follow a European model in terms of labor issues. The fact that we have a deeply puritan influenced culture and the puritans considered hard work one of the foremost virtues probably has a ton more to do with it.

Yes, cultural issues are of course a strong reason for why organized labour failed to make the same impact on US politics. I don't know if the lingering influence puritanism is most important, though. After all, these differences arose mainly after World War II. The ideals of individualism and self-reliance are stronger in the US, and the opposition to government regulation stronger and more principled; also, there seems to be a lower degree of class consciousness.

Looking around, apparently the socialists pushed for to deal with unemployment, of all things.

Well, people working less could theoretically create a need for more jobs, particularily if some of the per-employee costs (like medical insurance) are covered by the government or are made a function of wages paid rather than total number of people hired. Of course, if wages aren't reduced along with time worked, hiring more people is a lot harder.

[Unicorn McGriddle]

Hiring two part timers for more money to do the same job as one full timer is wasteful, and it doesn't really benefit anyone.

It does benefit the people who get jobs this way because more people are being employed. Relevant to France, the shorter workweek means more positions.

Why not have the same number of people working at twice as many companies, producing twice as much stuff, and give them health benefits from the money saved by each company having to hire half as many people?

Where will duplicates of existing companies get their startup capital? How will they compete against established companies?

The French clearly want to work more, since Sarkozy was practically campaigning on extending the work week, so they clearly see some kind of benefit in it for them.

Whatever the French want that drove them to elect Sarkozy is bad. Maybe it wasn't his policies on the work week so much as a backlash against the Socialists. (Comment dit-on « our high quality of life sucks » en français?) Maybe it was his pro-American foreign policy. Maybe -- not unrelated -- it was his xenophobia about Muslim immigrants. Sarkozy stands for a lot of things, and they're ALL awful.

Edit: Kraaze: You don't think "racial issues (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=1369997&postcount=75)" are cultural?

[Jason McCullough]

FWIW, I think you have a huge blind spot for cultural differences. You frequently attribute differences between countries to political process reasons. yet I've never seen you cite fundamental differences in cultures.

I think coalitions on the left or labor movements are almost irrelevant to why the U.S. doesn't follow a European model in terms of labor issues. The fact that we have a deeply puritan influenced culture and the puritans considered hard work one of the foremost virtues probably has a ton more to do with it.

For various cultural reasons, yes, the US has always been the most economically conservative first-world country, but the gap now is far larger than it was 1932-1968. Back then, there was a very strong labor movement (peaked at 36% of jobs in the 1950s; it's 12% today) and political coalition driving political changes. It's difficult to picture today; newspapers don't have a labor beat anymore, but they did back then. Walter Reuther (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Reuther) was a feared key political player. As this mentions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_comparisons_of_labor_unions), the labor unionization gap between the US and the rest of the first world was -17 in 1970; it was -37 in 1987; no telling what it is now.

The coalition blew up over race and Vietnam and hasn't been put back together again, and as a result the social democracy stuff has been going backwards since.

[JeffL]

Why didn't you hire more people, though? Is the amount of work a single chemist can do in a day the limit factor on sample turnaround times, and there's no way to divide up the work to speed up completion times?

A couple of reasons. There are certainly budgetary constraints - we had hired as many chemists as we could support financially. And you already split the work up to maximize effectiveness in terms of speed, but unless you are going to go to 24 hours per day/shifts two chemists making the same sample don't usually improve your speed/hour. There is usually a single step being done at a time, i.e. you synthesize the first step, wash and filter and separate, submit for analytical to be able to do the calculations required for the next step, etc. The things you can do in parallel you do already. Believe me, people spend a LOT of time and write a lot of books and do a lot of consulting on how to do it all faster. "Speed based R&D", etc. have gotten a lot of consultants and authors rich. And it's something R&D Directors such as myself spend a huge amount of time trying to figure out.

In short - the simple answers have already been tried. Managers, directors, CEOs, etc. get paid a lot to maximize output and speed to market. In a very, very competitive business world where speed is life, the companies that aren't doing all they can to maximize their speed are probably already out of business. I'd love for my competitors to decide to cut back their hours and thus speed.

[Jason McCullough]

There are certainly budgetary constraints - we had hired as many chemists as we could support financially.

In other words, you couldn't meet China's price, no matter the hours. At root part of that is that your scientists aren't willing to work 16 hour days for dog food, but really, it's about price. I have a hard time picturing a trade market that's so close to the knife edge of folding in the US that a drop in, say, 40 to 35 hours does it.

Obviously they're out there somewhere, but it's just part of the general overhead that people would have decide if they want to pay. Myself, I think the downsides would be pretty small.

[JeffL]

In other words, you couldn't meet China's price, no matter the hours. At root part of that is that your scientists aren't willing to work 16 hour days for dog food, but really, it's about price. I have a hard time picturing a trade market that's so close to the knife edge of folding in the US that a drop in, say, 40 to 35 hours does it.

Obviously they're out there somewhere, but it's just part of the general overhead that people would have decide if they want to pay. Myself, I think the downsides would be pretty small.

Jason, I can only say that you need to be working in the real world in a role in which you actually deal with these matters before you'll be able to see the difference in the theoretical and the real. BTW - 40 to 35 sounds small, but take a moderate sized company with 5000 people, and realize you're talking about cutting your output by 25,000 hours per week. Unless your people aren't doing anything, that's a huge drop. Over 100,000 hours per month. 650,000 hours per year in reduced speed to market, output, etc. That's not the trivial drop in output and speed you seem to think it is.

By the way, the one example I was talking about was Japan, and they paid their people quite well, not dogfood.

[Jason McCullough]

You're also cutting your costs by 25,000 hours a week in wages, so you can hire more people to maintain output, so after everything is done you'd it'd cost you.....no idea. No one's presented an estimate.

To flip it around, do you think hourly work restrictions should be dropped on American chemists so they can out-compete the Japanese? Have their pay cut?

[StGabe]

Jason, I can only say that you need to be working in the real world in a role in which you actually deal with these matters before you'll be able to see the difference in the theoretical and the real.FWIW, I have a bit of experience with this (companies requiring long hours to be competitive, competing with and even hiring companies in Asia and Eastern Europe which rely on cheaper labor). In my case, of course, it's specific to the tech and gaming industries.

It is my experience that companies that start to require increasing hours or crunch-all-the-time usually are trying to force a business model that simply isn't working in the first place. If what you're doing can be done just as easily in Asia then you're probably doing the wrong thing. Fortunately there's still a lot of stuff that Asia can't do very well (contrary to popular belief). I understand what you're saying and I've certainly experienced it myself but I also feel that it isn't indicative of a need to work more insomuch as it's indicative of a need to make sure you have a business that is competitive without requiring cheap labor (and I think there's still a lot of that going around).

That said, Jason's clearly oversimplifying things. I do think that we need to focus more on creating an economy which benefits all participants. And I think this is definitely possible and, given time, we can start looking at things like reducing work hours. Work hours have historically been decreasing through much of the western world (but not the US). However, I think that doing so is going to require a cultural and systemic shift that will be quite difficult to accomplish, especially with so much income inequality and such conservative cultural traditions already entrenched.

IMO we first need people to build consensus around this notion of focusing our society on increasing the quality of life of all of its members. And IMO this means rebuilding trust and reinstating competence to our government. The first step isn't working hours, it's an effective and efficient healthcare system. I think many of us realize that ultimately that's going to have to be some kind of universal healthcare. There's just no way we're going to be able to do that, however, until we can trust our government to do it well. After 8 years of Bush it's hard to fault conservatives for their skepticism on this front. Ultimately, I think we need to overhaul our system of electing officials. This means removing money from politics and (IMO) restructuring our voting process to allow for more than 2 parties. With a healthy political system we'll be far better equipped to start tackling the very complex issues involved with restructuring our economy to focus on quality of life and equality of wealth gains (which is really what we're talking about here -- working fewer hours is just one such gain). Until we do that, those things are really out of reach.

I'm hoping if we can string a few really competent and honest leaders through our federal government (like I hope Obama to be) that we might actually have a shot at this. We'll see. I also think that a lot of these changes are going to require somewhere between 1/2 and 2 generations. Changes like this aren't going to happen by changing people's minds. They're going to happen when a new generation grows up ready to accept them. Contrary to a lot of people, I'm pretty optimistic about the next generation but I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a couple more to get us there.

[Dirt]

Consumption is good until people start spending on credit.

[JeffL]

You're also cutting your costs by 25,000 hours a week in wages, so you can hire more people to maintain output, so after everything is done you'd it'd cost you.....no idea. No one's presented an estimate.

To flip it around, do you think hourly work restrictions should be dropped on American chemists so they can out-compete the Japanese? Have their pay cut?

This actually has nothing to do with legal work restrictions. Chemists and most people in R&D have absolutely no hourly work restrictions. Neither does anyone in management, none of our sales people, marketing people, etc. Currently in my organization, out of a company's entire R&D organization, I have one hourly person, and she regularly works more than 40 per week (of course, she's paid for that and it is voluntary.) So, your question actually is irrelevant.

My discussions are based on the impact of dropping your work output on your ability to compete, not government regulations. As for hiring more people - how many people are going to take a job for 5 hours a week to make up that 5 that is being dropped per person? And I'm going to have, for example, a second part time chemist complete the process of inventing a new molecule that another chemist is in the middle of conceiving? We're already discussed that a huge number of roles are not amenable to one person doing part of the task in progress.

Jason, you seem to be targeting, based on your comments and apparent thought process, jobs which are repetitive, not very skill/competency intensive, the person who is hourly at Home Depot stocking the shelves or mixing paint. Sure, in those cases, you could probably cut people's hours and get some other part-timers to fill in and not hurt their product at all. But those are the exact people who you are apparently trying to help who would throw mud in your face for the "help" you are trying to give them - the last thing they want is their hours cut back (I was one of them at one time and had my hours cut from 40 to 30 and it hurt badly!)

[Jason McCullough]

As for hiring more people - how many people are going to take a job for 5 hours a week to make up that 5 that is being dropped per person?

Why on earth would you hire someone to work 5 hours a week? In a hypothetical 35 hour work week, you make up the 25,000 hours a week deficit by hiring 25,000 / 35 = 714 employees.

Jason, you seem to be targeting, based on your comments and apparent thought process, jobs which are repetitive, not very skill/competency intensive, the person who is hourly at Home Depot stocking the shelves or mixing paint. Sure, in those cases, you could probably cut people's hours and get some other part-timers to fill in and not hurt their product at all. But those are the exact people who you are apparently trying to help who would throw mud in your face for the "help" you are trying to give them - the last thing they want is their hours cut back (I was one of them at one time and had my hours cut from 40 to 30 and it hurt badly!)

As I pointed out farther down, if that's so clearly the case, then how come workers fought for reducing hours from 80, to 60, to 40 over the 1850-1950 period?

[JeffL]

Why on earth would you hire someone to work 5 hours a week? In a hypothetical 35 hour work week, you make up the 25,000 hours a week deficit by hiring 25,000 / 35 = 714 employees.

Because I have 5000 workers who work in all kinds of different areas, and those 714 aren't going to be able to cover for the loss from the 5000 since they don't all do the same thing? Obviously my costs have gone up quite a bit due to the benefits and other costs per person if I'm hiring an additional 714 full time employees. I know you don't have a feel for those costs - when I get back to the office I'll pull out my expense spreadsheets for May and give you some example numbers of what a single employee costs, beyond salary.

Again, in the situations and companies I work in and with, cutting back how many hours someone works only hurts you, and hiring an additional 714 workers is prohibitively expensive, since the people are not being paid by the hour.

As I pointed out farther down, if that's so clearly the case, then how come workers fought for reducing hours from 80, to 60, to 40 over the 1850-1950 period?

So, Jason, how do you think the people in a Home Depot would respond if you told them you were cutting their salaries by 5 hours worth per week? Would they rejoice or be angry? Here's a hint - we tried to get our hourly workers in our 6 plants across the U.S. to cut back their hours by about what you're talking about in order to get some short term savings while we're weathering the reduction in orders due to the current economic situation. The response across the board, in every location (California, Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio) was anger. Not a single person in a single plant said "Hey, great, I can go home 10% more each week now!" Instead, the response was what an unfeeling company we would be if we forced them to work less hours (i.e. take a pay cut.)

[Jason McCullough]

Well, to me hiring more full-timers in each type of work performed/discipline and spreading out the work sounds a lot more logical than hiring all these 5 hour people. I don't know the actual history of how things worked out in this area though; the one academic book I've read on this (http://www.google.com/search?q=work+without+end&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a) (which is excellent, albeit boring) doesn't describe the nuts and bolts economist-style.

Again, in the situations and companies I work in and with, cutting back how many hours someone works only hurts you, and hiring an additional 714 workers is prohibitively expensive, since the people are not being paid by the hour.

They actually are being paid by the hour, it's just implicit in how the market settles on the salaried wage and expectation of hours worked. If you expect 50 hours out of people for a given salary, you're going to have to pay more than for 40 hours expected.

So, Jason, how do you think the people in a Home Depot would respond if you told them you were cutting their salaries by 5 hours worth per week? Would they rejoice or be angry?

I guess I was too oblique by referencing how this worked every single previous time hours have been reduced - hour reductions would be part of a set of reforms to help workers, introduced over a long time span so the market adjusts, not dropped from the sky onto people overnight.

[JeffL]

They actually are being paid by the hour, it's just implicit in how the market settles on the salaried wage and expectation of hours worked. If you expect 50 hours out of people for a given salary, you're going to have to pay more than for 40 hours expected.

Having done this for about 25 years, when I am staffing up I don't really think in terms of expectations of hours; I think in terms of deliverables. I've never worked where my folks punched a time clock or anyone tracked their actual hours. There's a "rough" idea, of course - when I come in on an occasional Saturday and see someone working in the lab, that's obviously an "above and beyond."

I guess I was too oblique by referencing how this worked every single previous time hours have been reduced - hour reductions would be part of a set of reforms to help workers, introduced over a long time span so the market adjusts, not dropped from the sky onto people overnight.

Why not 20 hours a week? That would really be great for everyone!

There's just a big fundamental gap in our thoughts and experiences. Work can be tough, nobody owes me a living, and my company does not owe me the same amount of money no matter how much or little I deliver. The business world is very competitive these days (hey, we can't ALL work for a company who holds a monopoly on their key revenue producer! ;) .) Compared to the life my parents and their parents had, my work life is pretty nice, even with the hours I need to put in. Would I prefer that I didn't have to work as hard as I do to provide my family the life we have? Sure! But I understand the needs of the business world in today's environment.

[Jason McCullough]

Why not 20 hours a week? That would really be great for everyone!

This is an appeal to ridicule (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/), right?

.....my company does not owe me the same amount of money no matter how much or little I deliver

Who said that?

[Mordrak]

Who said that?

There's something to be said for being grateful for your work and the ability to provide for yourself. At the same time, companies have to fill their positions to function, so it might as well be you. The idea that we should all bow down before corporations or our employers in thanks is absurd, because without us, both as workers and consumers, they'd have no reason to exist.

[JeffL]

There's something to be said for being grateful for your work and the ability to provide for yourself. At the same time, companies have to fill their positions to function, so it might as well be you. The idea that we should all bow down before corporations or our employers in thanks is absurd, because without us, both as workers and consumers, they'd have no reason to exist.

And to quote Jason - who said that? ;)

Here's the way I look at it. I look at what I get paid, including benefits. And then I try to determine how I am a good investment: how is the company making at least breakeven with me but more appropriately how am I making the company more money that what they are spending on me.

I don't bow down before my employer in gratitude, but I am grateful for my job and try to provide the company a good return on their investment in me. But my loyalty extends only so far; I left my last job after determining that the company was royally screwed up, the CEO was beyond his level of competency for that type of company, the top execs had their heads buried in the sand and encouraged finger pointing, etc.

[JeffL]

Quote:
Originally Posted by jeff lackey
Why not 20 hours a week? That would really be great for everyone!

This is an appeal to ridicule (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/), right?

Only a little. 40 hours is bad - 35 is better. Why? And if 35 is good, why is 30 not better? Why not 20? What is the criteria?

[Jason McCullough]

What is the criteria?

What people would like? There's no chance in hell the public would go for 20 hours a week, but 35 is conceivable as something to try; you also make changes slowly and marginally, not huge ones. So what about "why not 20, that's ridiculous" discredits 35?

I think if the economic situation for everyone but the rich hadn't sucked so much for the last 20 years you'd see some movement in hour reduction or flexibility - but currently the working class just piles up ever-more-hours to make up for their stagnant wages and declining purchasing power.