[habosa]

So absurd. As if your boss is going to let you go play tennis during the day because Jules is doing your work.

If all of these tools really do make people 20-100% more productive like they say (I doubt it) the value is going to accrue to ownership, not to labor.

[disqard]

Shhhh... don't tell the plebes what it really means to "2x their productivity".

Seriously though, this kind of tech-assisted work output improvement has happened many times in the past, and by now we should all have been working 4-hour weeks, but we all know how it has actually worked out.

[GreenWatermelon]

Hell, when the industorial revolution happened, working hours increased, not decrease. And especially with electricity, Factory owners forced workers to work deep into the night. A constant 16-hour shift was the norm, so much that it requires legal intervention [1]

> In 1833, the Factory Act banned children under 9 from working in the textile industry, and the working hours of 10-13 year olds was limited to 48 hours a week, while 14-18 year olds were limited to 69 hours a week, and 12 hours a day. Government factory inspectors were appointed to enforce the law.

Constant work day in and out, morning and night. At least before the industrial revolution farmers only had to work as long as there was daylight, and winters meant shorter work times.

This video [2] from Historia Civilis is very relevant. The gist of ot is that to this day, we work more hours than medieval peasants did.

[1] https://www.striking-women.org/module/workplace-issues-past-...

[2] https://youtu.be/hvk_XylEmLo?feature=shared

[igorbark]

not sure if you will still see this 7 days later, but the claim "we work more hours than medieval peasants did" jumped out at me so i looked into a bit and am curious if you have more thoughts on it!

i found this lively criticism of the video on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/16y233q/histori....

my brief takeaway was that the claim might be true if "work" means "working for an employer for wages", but not if "work" includes "necessary labor for shelter, food, clothing, survival".

but it's an interesting thought though so i'm curious if you have other related resources to dig into.

[netdevphoenix]

As a business owner, why would give up some of the profits? You started a business to make money not to do charity. Expecting businesses to act against their interests make no sense

[bendigedig]

This is the kind of attitude that leads to revolutions.

[xpe]

Blame the system, not the actors. See a recent HN submission, The Evolution of Trust by Nicky Case: https://ncase.me/trust/

    If there's one big takeaway
    from all of game theory, it's this:

    What the game is, defines what the players do.
    Our problem today isn't just that people are losing trust,
    it's that our environment acts against the evolution of trust.

    That may seem cynical or naive -- that we're "merely" products of our 
    environment -- but as game theory reminds us, we are each others
    environment. In the short run, the game defines the players. But in
    the long run, it's us players who define the game.

    So, do what you can do, to create the conditions necessary to evolve trust.

    Build relationships. Find win-wins. Communicate clearly. Maybe then, we can
    stop firing at each other, get out of our own trenches, cross No Man's Land
    to come together...

My take: don't blame corporations when they act rationally. (Who designed the conditions under which they act?) Don't blame people for being angry or scared when they feel unsettled. A wide range of behaviors are to be expected. If I am surprised about the world, that is probably because I don't understand it well enough. "Blame" is a waste of time here. Instead, we have to define what kind of society we want, predict likely responses, and build systems to manage them.

[achierius]

Was he blaming anyone? He just pointed out the mirror of what you did: as the owning class acts one way, it will naturally produce material conditions that incentivize the working class to act in a way that would lead to the destruction/dispossession of the existing owning class (i.e. a revolution).

[xpe]

Maybe the author was -- or maybe not -- but for a large number of people there is an implication that one could "blame" corporations for being selfish, self-serving, criminal, clueless, self-destructive, leading to social ills, and so on. But who established the rules for the corporations? It depends how you ask: previous people, previous systems, the progression of history.

My claim, put another way, is that if you trace the causality back a few steps, you land at the level of the system.

Anyhow, the question "who do we blame?" can be a waste of time if we use it only for moral outrage and/or a conversation stopper. Some think "what caused this?" is an improvement, and I agree, but it isn't nearly good enough.* Still, it isn't nearly as important as "how do we change this with the levers we have _now_?"

* Relatively few scientists understand causality well, thinking the randomized controlled trial is the only way to show causality! The methods of causality have developed tremendously in the last twenty years, but most scientific fields are rather clueless about them.

[netdevphoenix]

> we have to define what kind of society we want, predict likely responses, and build systems to manage them.

Nailed it. At the end of the day, companies are automatons. It is up to use to update the reward and punishment functions to get the behaviour we desire. Behaviourism 101

[spacemadness]

What a clever way to resolve responsibility. Companies are made of people who strategize to rewrite the rules in their favor. They’re not “automatons.”

[bithive123]

You talk as though a company exists in its own right independent of the humans. This is a fictional way of thinking. This attitude of "if you want me to stop acting poorly, make me" is an abdication of all responsibility.

It's the idea that individuals and institutions must somehow fix society from the top down or the outside in, which history has shown doesn't work. No one is going to come along and make you be sensitive or intelligent, either you see the predicament we're all in and act, or you rationalize your selfish actions and make them someone else's problem.

[bendigedig]

Got it: I was just following orders.

[erikerikson]

For many, profit is only one of the purposes of the business.

[blitzar]

So long as I time the game of tennis just right I wont bump into my boss while they are playing the back 9.