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me_irl (thelemmy.club)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/me_irl@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 2 months ago* (11 children)

Its not that simple

Even if people are more productive in less time, that doesn't mean you can earn the same money. Many businesses operate on "hours spend" per task. As an example, let's take hairdressers. If your hairdresser is now working only 6 hours instead of 8, that's a potential 25% loss in revenue. And they won't be magically faster now just because they work less. So if salary reduction is not an option, the only option is increasing prices.

What you're saying is fine for office jobs, but just not an option for most service jobs. Waiters aren't magically going to serve tables faster, cashiers won't make customers move faster, etc.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (10 children)

    You don't see the long-term effects on Health, Education, and so on. Less mistakes are made. Yes, I understand that it's harder for a small business to make up for the lost hours, but for a big business, the cost of an extra employee is nothing compared to the gains of extra productivity.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago

    Healthcare has its own problems, but the 12 hour shift model was adopted because it improved patient outcomes. Only having 1 shift change per day provided less opportunity for patient context to get lost in the shuffle. In short, overworked doctors/nurses were better (for patients) than uninformed doctors/nurses.

    Moving to 6 hour shifts/4 changes per day would quadruple that risk.

    Now, there are plenty of ways to imagine changing procedures, policies, and tooling to reduce this risk, but it would require planning.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    but for a big business

    I'm not worried about big business. They will survive. I'm worried about the small bakery around the corner, about the hair salons down the street, the flower shop in the mall and basically every small, independent shop that exists which is a crucial part of every community it's part of. And those small businesses make up a significant portion of the job market.

    A 6 hour day at the same pay would absolutely annihilate any retail consumer B2C business that exists anywhere in the western world.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    I think it's worth us paying some tax to support a small business, at the cost of having less things, but more time for ourselves.

    The market corrects to match the available income of the consumer, usually. They want you paying, not hoarding.

    Less goods and less work is ultimately better, leaves us with more time for people, for self-improvement, for the things that really matter, not the cheap plastics.

    This is however, an opinion, and a matter of consensus, the economics are what they are.

    As for why I'm suddenly writting entire paragraphs and am more literate, it's because I got some good news, and the kind of misery knocks your IQ down.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    Most of that can be fixed with scheduling. Are all of those bakers and barbers fully booked for 8-12 hours every day? They don't have gaps where they sit around waiting for business? When you offer shorter hours, people will have to schedule within those hours or go without the service. This should translate to less wasted time babysitting an empty store. And it's totally possible to still accommodate all the customers. I know a chiropractor who is open 6-12 three days a week and 12-6 the other two days. He doesn't have to work 12 hours a day, and it's still easy for customers to schedule when they want.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    Lmao, have you even remotely thought this through?

    As an example: Bakeries. They already compete with large corporations, namely supermarkets. Every supermarket offers a bread section. If you now force consumers to adapt to your worse hours, they will rather go to the supermarket, despite the worse product. Consumers will not change their behaviors for things they can obtain in another way.

    And that's for almost any consumer-facing service that has a "big business competition". Your local bakery will die, your local butcher will die, your local apothecary will die, your local bookshop will die, and so on.

    Your example is pretty bad because it's a doctor. There's no large medical corporations that could fill that need. So people will have to adjust their days for doctor visits.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    You don't see health care outcomes improve when you remove 40% of hours. Come on now.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Yeah just continue to overwork doctors and nurses, I am sure its fine.

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