[nhaehnle]

> Hoo boy are you wrong.

> You are so, so wrong.

...

> You've effectively described a blend of National Socialism and Stalinism.

Hyperbole much? It saddens me to see this kind of nonsense on HN.

Also, let me point out that your disagreement is not on the highest level of the disagreement scale. In particular, your parent brings up the very reasonable point that mankind introduced the two-day-weekend at some point during the industrial revolution. It's likely difficult to find anybody who says that that's a bad thing. So what's wrong with drawing an analogy here between the introduction of the two-day-weekend and reducing the maximum length of the regular work week?

I'm not saying that all your points are without merit, but you have not addressed the parent's point, and your comment is so full of rhetorical bullshit, it's disgusting.

By the way: too many people are paying back too much debt, and that equates to negative savings.

This is factually incorrect (or perhaps you misstated). The savings rate is the ratio of disposable income that people do not spend. Since paying back debt means that you use some of your disposable income to pay back the debt instead of spending it, it actually equates positive savings.

You can see that the savings rate had a huge spike upwards in the US after the mortgage bubble burst, for precisely that reason: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/PSAVERT

And - as you say - that's largely responsible for the economic mess we're in right now, because larger savings have translated to lower aggregate demand, which has lead to net layoffs. It's the paradox of thrift at work.

[brc]

The OP asks for control of wages and working hours. The plan is to use a simultaneous forced raising of wages and restrictions of working hours so that everyone can have a job. Apart from being unworkable and ridiculous, this is the starting point of a completely planned economy.

Hyperbole? Maybe a little, but too many people sleepwalk into agreeing with this type of idea without thinking through the full consequences.

Sure, they wouldn't start out that way, they never do. But as businesses fail, they need support or nationalisation. Which brings in more planning. National Socialism took over 10 years to get to it's full zenith, this doesn't happen overnight, but there is no reason to even begin down the path that leads to that. You can dance around it all you like, but the only way to make this sort of rubbish work is by overarching state power over the individual. You can't try and whitewash the misery of millions caused by planned economies just because it is a cliche to do so.

It saddens me that people still think this way after a century of misery from trying to command and plan economies. And on HN of all places, which is supposed to be about startups and technology. You mightn't like my way of putting things, well, that's the way I talk and write.

Re savings rate : we are in agreement. People are using disposable income to pay down debt, which means it goes into neither consumption or new investment. Which causes the slump. This has to be worked through before things will improve.

[notahacker]

I think the last half century of European history proves that the sub-Hayekian argument implying any increased government intervention necessarily leads to dictatorship is even more intellectually bankrupt than those in favour of a fully planned economy. 35 hour working weeks and high minimum wages are not a radical or untried idea. Arguably excessive regulation of working conditions has contributed to many of Europe's present economic and social problems, and that's a subject worth discussing, but the imagined threat of mass-murdering autocrats isn't one of them. In HN of all places we shouldn't be invoking Godwin's law at this stage of an argument.

[brc]

If you think that's Hayeks argument, I suggest you go and read his works again.

He went to great pains over his career to point out that he never said that imposing increasing controls over people necessarily leads to dictatorship. His point was that, in order for a centrally planned economy to work, you necessarily had to capture increasing amounts of activity under the control of the government. And that increasing control by government was by no means

It's true that Hayeks original ideas have been characterised by many different people and groups to the point where it is impossible to know what they mean unless you go back and figure them out for yourself. It's also important to know that Hayek wrote his original works while socialism was still a bubbling, living idea in the western world, and not the failed anachronism it is (should) now regarded as.

My point here is that you always have a choice in the way you want to run things. Down one path is increasing amounts of control, and there should be no argument about what lies at the end of that path. Of course it's not inevitable that, once you start down that path, that it's impossible to reverse. Down the other path is not increasing amounts of government control over people.

35 hour weeks are not a radical idea, sure, lots of people have agitated for them for a long time. But the way the thread was written was that everyone was going to be forced to work a 35 hour week. Maybe the OP didn't presume to force people, but if it's not forced, it won't be obeyed and thus will be pointless. Besides that, the entire thread showed a complete lack of understanding of what creates real jobs and wealth, with statements like 'we produce too much'.

If the last half century of European history gives us anything, it's that the welfare state is doomed and that you can't magic up productivity and wages growth by government intervention.

Sure, conjuring up mass murder was probably overdone for this forum, probably a case of being a bit hot headed when I originally posted. But whenever I see outbreaks of this type of thinking among what appear to be young people, I get anxious that they get some history and context into the fact these ideas have all been tried and failed in the past.

[notahacker]

I think the last half century of European history proves that the sub-Hayekian argument implying increased government intervention necessarily leads to dictatorship is even more intellectually bankrupt than those in favour of a fully planned economy. 35 hour working weeks and high minimum wages are not a radical or untried idea. Arguably excessive regulation of working conditions has contributed to many of Europe's present economic and social problems, and that's a subject worth discussing, but the imagined threat of mass-murdering autocrats isn't one of them. In HN of all places we shouldn't be invoking Godwin's law at this stage of an argument.

[colanderman]

> The OP asks for control of wages and working hours.

So you're saying minimum wage and overtime are bad things? I'm not proposing new laws, just new numbers in existing laws.