this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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You want to work??
Yes. I want something to do routinely otherwise I'll go crazy. I want to contribute to society's production and do my part. I want to put my time and effort into inventing, creating, and generally making life better for everybody. I don't want to have to do it under threat of starvation, and I damn sure don't want to do it for some asshole who just wants to watch number go up.
Yes, I want to contribute to a project, a product, a group. Every week, and most days of that week.
I don't want to sit around in leisure often, just sometimes.
Be clear, I didn't say I want to further corporate profits, necessarily.
Hell yeah! Nothings better than a hard days work and keeping the profit I created. Working is great! Being exploited by corporations is not great, it is bad and why we correlate work with being bad, because we correlate work with being Exploited. It doesnt have to be this way.
We can discuss semantics all day long (like antiwork vs work reform) but the 4 days week is by no means revolutionary. You do something fulfilling, then the number doesn't count; you have a minde numbing job than any number is too much.
you like doing stuff, making things, and helping people; not work
Or some combination of these things, and you may even like doing them an amount that most people would consider to be absurd overworking, but hey, you do you
Basically none of us should need to toil like how basically all of us are made to in order for society to meet the needs of the people and keep things turning, keep the lights and wifi on. We could do 2 or 3 days a work easy and be fine, because most of this shit is pointless, could be automated, or is actively unproductive (insurance, etc). 4 isn't the end goal, its an incredibly basic demand, slightly beyond raising the minimum wage, but certainly nothing liberating
Add to that people who really love to work a whole lot and actually get mad if they can't work, will do their things
It's really interesting for me coming into threads like this. The vast majority of people that I see discussing these things seem to have office jobs consising of largely arbitrary objectives and deadlines. And for these people it would almost certainly be true that society could get by with minimal change if they only worked 2 or 3 days a week. It's an interesting perspective to me because I work in a veterinary medicine where (just the same as with human medicine) long weeks and long hours are practically a necessity. Very, very rarely do I find myself doing anything that is an unnecessary task, something that could be done later, or something that could be automated. While it would technically be possible to just hire more people and rotate shifts through the hospital to allow shorter work days for everyone, cutting days decreases the consistency of care (i.e. increases the number times a patient is transferred between doctors) which dramatically increases the chances for medical errors. Plus that doesn't even take into account that there is a dramatic hiring shortage so good luck ever finding enough people to make that work in the first place.
While I agree that a lot of people work jobs that have more hours than things to do during them, I notice all the time in these threads people claiming that "no one ever needs to work more than a handful of days a week" while not acknowledging that a lot of jobs exist where that just isn't possible.
Well that’s because those jobs are managed and staffed for “capitalist efficiency” if we had more people with access to veterinary training we would have WAY more vets than just those who can afford the schooling, and I assume, low pay. then you could work 2 or 3 days a work on shifts with 2 or 3 times as many coworkers and support staff
It’s the whole rotten system that makes things shitty for those of us with actually important meaningful jobs, but it doesn’t have to be that way
100% the problems in our society start to make alot more sense, when you ask yourself if removing the profit motive would solve the problem
Did you read my comment at all? There are a lot of reasons beyond "capitalist efficiency" that a 2 or 3 day work week is impractical in a medical field. I even brought up a major one that you conveniently ignored.
I'm not at all trying to say that there aren't problems with work culture, especially in medicine. I'm simply pointing out that the claim "no one ever needs to work more the 2 or 3 days without capitalism" falls apart when you start looking at jobs outside of pencil pusher desk jobs.
oops, sorry, I did miss that part of your comment accidentally. You're definitely not wrong about that part not being as simple as availability of skills
It could at least be alleviated by having some sort of rotation system where you get extended periods of lighter duty or time off so you aren't just ground into dust. I didn't mean to make it seem like I was saying categorically no one will work more than 2 or 3 day weeks, but a similar effect could be worked towards. Basically, I'm just saying shit doesn't have to be fucked.
I should also mention, I also work a job that even in an ideal communist space future, I would still probably work 4 or 5 days a week by necessity, my life just wouldn't be hellish
you mean the 1% of it that your boss will pay you?
You missed the point of my comment, what I was trying to convey was that work is only good when you are not being robbed of your labor by your boss.