[Jedd]

Well, the devil doesn't exist, but I think I get your allusion.

If you go back a century, people in Britain, Europe, USA, Australia etc were probably working 70 hours a week.

If you asked a random selection of people in those countries now if they think we should all move back to that figure as a standard work week -- you know, to save society from itself -- I'm guessing you wouldn't get a lot of support.

[SuddsMcDuff]

That's true of course, and I'm not saying that more work is necessarily more desirable any more than I'm saying that less work is necessarily desirable. My point is that the premise of the article assumes that spending less time at work is automatically better, and I would challenge that premise.

[Jedd]

Why? (Serious question.)

It seems to me that the common (Western) standard of ~ 40 hours a week is something we inherited a generation or two ago, and consequently is considered to be normal, average, ideal, expected, realistic, fair, reasonable, etc.

As noted, societies have previously had very different norms which have been changed without societal collapse.

Applying the scientific method to the ~40-hour assumption is something we should, as rational actors, embrace. What few experiments conducted so far suggest at least some positive outcomes, but more importantly indicate more experiments are worthwhile.

Personally, submitting to 5 x 8 hours a week, 11 months a year, repeat until I'm too old to continue (or indeed to anything else) just because that's what dad did, isn't a compelling case.