In 1930 Keynes famously predicted that by 2030 we’d be four to eight times more productive, and we’d use those gains to work far fewer hours. Though we could get by on less, we might work fifteen hours a week just to feel useful.
This is kinda pointless speculation. We don't work fewer hours because, when we are more productive, consumer costs rise back to the point where a forty-hour week provides a socially-acceptable lifestyle. It seems pretty clear by now that some law of economics ensures that, in a free market, employees will always have to work as many hours as they can work, and only cultural standards (in which the whole labor force is a kind of super-union) can hold that down to, say, 40-hour work weeks and 5 work days.
two things:1) rate of mutation - most will be harmful2) number of offspring.- aleast some mutations per generation will be beneficialModelling product variations using evolutionary theory may be useful.
While by definition attempts at innovation are "variations", most attempts to vary a product in order to let customers express their differing identities are not useful for long term accumulating innovation. Most attempts to make cars different, for example, aren't new safety features or drivetrains, they are new body shapes and colors and decorating styles.
I suppose the theory behind my comment is that every improvement to a given invention is in some respect a variation on the original invention. Some variations prove to be almost universally accepted additions to the original invention, but others don't. Without the variety, though, people would be stuck improving the process of building the currently-best version of an invention, without much room to improve upon it, since each improvement would mean greater variety in the product landscape, and an increase in per-unit costs.
Yearly changes to the every car model seem excessive and incur unneeded costs, but of all of those variations, many prove to be useful, and are eventually incorporated back into other car models, whether it's a safety feature or an improvement to the drivetrain, or something else entirely.
Without the large variety of the market, I think we'd stumble upon far fewer of these improvements.
If innovation is limited to the production process, then costs go down but the quality of the end product is static.
Thanks for taking the time to read & respond to my original comment.
Doesn't this ignore the way that variety creates room for improvements? The high-quality products of today largely wouldn't have been possible without the variation that led to their invention at earlier stages.
I'd think the same is true for the "just as high of quality" products of the future, as well.
I thiought the last paragraph about the human status treadmill was inspired. Much time and effort in our lives is devoted to trying to maintain/improve our status, and we wouldn't have to bother if we all agreed not to do it. And yes we do have to do it now, by any reasonable definition, given our inherited imperatives, and the extremely high costs of being very low status.
Sure, but that's usually (skyscrapers are exceptions) not where most of the cost goes. People do spend a substantial amount of their incomes on just outbidding other people to own a certain surface area that has always been there and will always be there.
I'm wondering how a shorter standard workweek would work for schools and colleges/universities. All the personnel would work fewer hours but we can't just cut education hours. From the personnel side this is easily fixed by hiring more personnel, but what would it be like for the students who know they have to put in way more hours than people with jobs (a society where parents cannot tell their kids to stop complaining about school and homework since you actually get more spare time when you get a job)? Or is there a way to bring time spend on classes in line with the short standard workweek while still producing qualified graduates?
Land cannot be made but inaccessible land can be made accessible through the building of roads and this is important. Living space can also be made by building up.
That's not a shorter workweek, that's the same workweek and with more time spend commuting. A real shorter workweek would change the definition of part-time work. If a 20 hour workweek became the norm then minimum wage would be paid for 20 hours of work instead of 40 and we would not view 20 hours as part-time any more than we view 40 hours as part-time today (the standard workweek was longer than 40 hours until the early 20th century). The ACA would require employers to provide health insurance coverage to employees who work more than 15 hours per week.
The Affordable Care Act may drive an increase in the number of employees in part-time worker status, and that might be a good thing.
Employers with more than 50 employees must provide health care to most full-time employees. Employers who have fewer part-time employees will not need to provide as much health care coverage. An employer could structure his business to have no full-time workers.
A shift to part-time work may increase quality of life and productivity. It would certainly alleviate traffic congestion (public good) and provide more leisure time (private good). Individuals having multiple part-time jobs would have more variety of life experiences while reducing the negative impact of losing one job.
A President wanting to 'nudge' the US to more part-time work would incentivize businesses to do so through legislation such as the ACA. Part-time work is currently defined as 30 hours per week; but since that is a regulation, the President could lower it in the future without congressional action - nudging the norm to fewer hours of part-time work. This would also reduce the downward-inelasticity of worker salaries which has been an issue for business (and economic models).
It's not really a prisoner's dilemma: the minimum wage in most countries is legally based on a certain length of the workweek, that length has been changed in the past and can change again. Basically what you have to do to make the standard workweek 20 hours long is change the law so that minimum wage is paid for 20 hours of work. Then you have to give civil servants, government contractors and semi-government workers 20 hour-per-week contracts to speed up the adoption of a 20 hour workweek throughout society. This strategy has been carried out successfully in many countries over the last century.
"If eliminating Chipolte led their customers to each cook their own, the savings is illusory."
Yeah, but if there are 15 brands of Chipotle then removing 10 of them would not be a problem (there are probably only 3 or 4 parent companies behind all those brands anyway so fears for less competition are unfounded).
This is kinda pointless speculation. We don't work fewer hours because, when we are more productive, consumer costs rise back to the point where a forty-hour week provides a socially-acceptable lifestyle. It seems pretty clear by now that some law of economics ensures that, in a free market, employees will always have to work as many hours as they can work, and only cultural standards (in which the whole labor force is a kind of super-union) can hold that down to, say, 40-hour work weeks and 5 work days.
two things:1) rate of mutation - most will be harmful2) number of offspring.- aleast some mutations per generation will be beneficialModelling product variations using evolutionary theory may be useful.
While by definition attempts at innovation are "variations", most attempts to vary a product in order to let customers express their differing identities are not useful for long term accumulating innovation. Most attempts to make cars different, for example, aren't new safety features or drivetrains, they are new body shapes and colors and decorating styles.
I suppose the theory behind my comment is that every improvement to a given invention is in some respect a variation on the original invention. Some variations prove to be almost universally accepted additions to the original invention, but others don't. Without the variety, though, people would be stuck improving the process of building the currently-best version of an invention, without much room to improve upon it, since each improvement would mean greater variety in the product landscape, and an increase in per-unit costs.
Yearly changes to the every car model seem excessive and incur unneeded costs, but of all of those variations, many prove to be useful, and are eventually incorporated back into other car models, whether it's a safety feature or an improvement to the drivetrain, or something else entirely.
Without the large variety of the market, I think we'd stumble upon far fewer of these improvements.
If innovation is limited to the production process, then costs go down but the quality of the end product is static.
Thanks for taking the time to read & respond to my original comment.
This doesn't make much sense to me. Do you have some data or theory that supports this claim?
Doesn't this ignore the way that variety creates room for improvements? The high-quality products of today largely wouldn't have been possible without the variation that led to their invention at earlier stages.
I'd think the same is true for the "just as high of quality" products of the future, as well.
Fixed; thanks.
Factual error: Malvina Reynolds, not Pete Seeger wrote Little Boxeas-- a reflection on the landscape of Daly City, CA
I thiought the last paragraph about the human status treadmill was inspired. Much time and effort in our lives is devoted to trying to maintain/improve our status, and we wouldn't have to bother if we all agreed not to do it. And yes we do have to do it now, by any reasonable definition, given our inherited imperatives, and the extremely high costs of being very low status.
Sure, but that's usually (skyscrapers are exceptions) not where most of the cost goes. People do spend a substantial amount of their incomes on just outbidding other people to own a certain surface area that has always been there and will always be there.
I'm wondering how a shorter standard workweek would work for schools and colleges/universities. All the personnel would work fewer hours but we can't just cut education hours. From the personnel side this is easily fixed by hiring more personnel, but what would it be like for the students who know they have to put in way more hours than people with jobs (a society where parents cannot tell their kids to stop complaining about school and homework since you actually get more spare time when you get a job)? Or is there a way to bring time spend on classes in line with the short standard workweek while still producing qualified graduates?
Land cannot be made but inaccessible land can be made accessible through the building of roads and this is important. Living space can also be made by building up.
That's not a shorter workweek, that's the same workweek and with more time spend commuting. A real shorter workweek would change the definition of part-time work. If a 20 hour workweek became the norm then minimum wage would be paid for 20 hours of work instead of 40 and we would not view 20 hours as part-time any more than we view 40 hours as part-time today (the standard workweek was longer than 40 hours until the early 20th century). The ACA would require employers to provide health insurance coverage to employees who work more than 15 hours per week.
The Affordable Care Act may drive an increase in the number of employees in part-time worker status, and that might be a good thing.
Employers with more than 50 employees must provide health care to most full-time employees. Employers who have fewer part-time employees will not need to provide as much health care coverage. An employer could structure his business to have no full-time workers.
A shift to part-time work may increase quality of life and productivity. It would certainly alleviate traffic congestion (public good) and provide more leisure time (private good). Individuals having multiple part-time jobs would have more variety of life experiences while reducing the negative impact of losing one job.
A President wanting to 'nudge' the US to more part-time work would incentivize businesses to do so through legislation such as the ACA. Part-time work is currently defined as 30 hours per week; but since that is a regulation, the President could lower it in the future without congressional action - nudging the norm to fewer hours of part-time work. This would also reduce the downward-inelasticity of worker salaries which has been an issue for business (and economic models).
Walmart?
It's not really a prisoner's dilemma: the minimum wage in most countries is legally based on a certain length of the workweek, that length has been changed in the past and can change again. Basically what you have to do to make the standard workweek 20 hours long is change the law so that minimum wage is paid for 20 hours of work. Then you have to give civil servants, government contractors and semi-government workers 20 hour-per-week contracts to speed up the adoption of a 20 hour workweek throughout society. This strategy has been carried out successfully in many countries over the last century.
"If eliminating Chipolte led their customers to each cook their own, the savings is illusory."
Yeah, but if there are 15 brands of Chipotle then removing 10 of them would not be a problem (there are probably only 3 or 4 parent companies behind all those brands anyway so fears for less competition are unfounded).