4/4/4: 4 hours a day, 4 days a week, 4x the compensation.
Sounds incredible. What book is this?
OP is correct, this is from Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. Here's a link on the anarchist library: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs
Highly recommend the book, really changed how I view work.
I build satellites and actually enjoy my job. Sometimes I am disappointed when my 8 hours is up and I have to go home. What about those people?
With significantly more capital and free time, you would be able to develop and manage your own projects outside of the workplace, allowing you to continue developing yourself, your skills, and your contributions to your field. If you prefer to put the majority of your efforts into a single project or workplace, incentive structures could be developed to acknowledge your outsized contributions while not imposing such as necessary for everyone.
I think you have a great question though, and things like that would best be answered collectively, through discussion and experimentation.
What do you think? What would you prefer? What would be fair to you to recognize your extra efforts? What checks and balances would be needed to have a 16hr week as the basis for a livable wage, while still allowing for people to work more when desired?
I think definite exceptions would have to be made. For instance, some operations take more than 4 hours to complete, such as getting the satellite ready for install in the launch vehicle, or the work has to be done in a tight finite timeline, such as "you have 1 week to fully test, prep for launch, and install the satellite in the launch vehicle." Of course, these are edge cases.
With my personality, I feel like my work ethic would suffer since I'd spend so much more time at home than at work and I wouldn't want to do shit when I am actually there. I also think my skills would degrade, and I'd spend a lot of time trying to remember where I left off and what I was doing. Perhaps it's just my career, and other careers/jobs wouldn't have my issues.
I pride myself and my high work ethic, quality products, and kick-ass attitude, but I also need structure, routine, and discipline to function as an adult. When left to my own devices for too long, it all falls apart. Again, perhaps that's just me.
I won't turn down a bigger sack of money though. I do like money.
These sorts of proposals always seem biased toward white collar work. If you can accomplish all of your work for the day in 4 hours and spend the rest of the day "sitting in cafes arguing about politics" then that's great for you, but wouldn't someone need to work in that cafe to bring you the coffee? And if more people are going to be going to cafes, wouldn't those workers need to work even harder? And wouldn't the people who harvest the coffee beans and the people who ship those beans halfway across the world and the people who inventory these shipments and divide them up across multiple retail spaces based on demand all still need to work the exact same amount, if not more? To me, it seems like blue collar or retail workers will get the short end of the stick while the people with bullshit jobs that contribute nothing to society get rewarded with even more free time. But of course that's nothing new. People with essential jobs have always been the first ones to get shafted.
This guy: "Oh gee golly, all of this pretending to work all day sure is hard. I wish I had more free time :( " The girl bringing him coffee who makes minimum wage and just learned she'll need to work a double shift today and will now need to make arrangements to have her kid picked up from day care: "Wow that must be super hard, I literally cannot imagine having to deal with that"
I don't know man, I'm not going to pretend I have any better ideas but we need to start framing these things better. Obviously I would love for all workers to have as much free time as possible, but when people keep talking about work in terms of "going to pointless meetings all day" or "typing stuff into spreadsheets" then it's hard to take their ideas seriously.
I have worked in construction, landscaping, electronics repair, IT, customer service, retail, food service, and I’m in assembly of and testing of robotics now. Not in a single instance of any of those jobs have I ever felt that I needed to work nearly as hard or as often as I do, were we adequately staffed, and properly compensated. You’re extrapolating the chronic understaffing of the current times to this hypothetical I have posited. If your boss has to pay you 3x overtime for every minute you work over 4hrs, do you think he’s going to make you work doubles, or hire more people? Why wouldn’t that be possible otherwise.
Edit: If you’re one of the owners of a collectively owned coffee shop, and you decide to work more hours because you want more money, why would that be negative? You all benefit, you all gain increased payout from increased revenue. If you have a kid, why would you choose that over your kid when you have enough money to live already?
Why does your conception of third places only include commercial entities? Why wouldn’t a society with a sudden glut of free time be incentivized to create places in which they can exist without continual and perpetual consumption? Even if consumption is your goal, I don’t see why it needs to be done through and in commercial areas. I Can currently go to city park with beer and drink it in peace, legally, without ever requiring anyone to “service” me, and without incurring any additional costs for existing in that area. Third spaces should not be primarily consumption places, they should be community spaces.
You also ignore that this points out that the productivity for such work schedules is already here. The reason the barista makes a shitty minimum wage is because 90+% of all of the value she generates is being leeched by a parasite class, who do not produce anything. If productivity gains had been redistributed as wage gains for the workers, we would already be working less hours. Including that barista. Min wage is trash because the powers that he want it to be, and not enough people fight it for it to be anything else. A minimum wage tied directly to cost of living (and thriving, not living in abject poverty), would mean that that worker would have enough funds saved up to say FUCK YOU to her boss if they tried to make her work a double, because part of a living wage is having enough saved up to cover you in the event you need to quit working for whatever reason. Not to mention that removing many of the entirely pointless levels of middle management who’s only job is to make their boss look good, or to oppress the employees they’re hired to “manage”, suddenly massive amounts of capital would be freed up from almost every corporation on the planet that could go towards the actual workers, such as those baristas.
