So, I'm reading a book called Free time: the forgotten american dream by Benjamin Kine Hunnicutt, and uh...wow. I just had a major breakthrough there.
Basically, the book is about how we shifted so much away from the dream of reduced working hours and why all of this extra productivity never leads to reduced economic powers.
In short, the business community doesn't want it to. They feared a world in which Americans turned away from work. They wanted work to be central to their lives, believing all of this protestant work ethic nonsense about how they would never be able to use their free time effectively. Even more so, they feared that a shift toward less work would mean that workers value things other than work and that they might "recenter their lives" away from work. Given human centered capitalism is, effectively, literally just that, a recentering of human life away from jobs, and productivity, and consumption, and GDP, my ideology is quite counter to this.
So instead, an ethos was developed around working the same amount of time, for higher and higher levels of productivity. And stimulating economic demand to cause people to want new products and services. They dont want people checking out of the economy. They want people HOOKED. They want people buying things and seeking higher and higher standards of living. They want people to produce things. Work, consume, work consume. If we don't do that, people feared the economy would collapse as we'd be able to meet our needs with minimal effort, and people wouldn't seek much more.
This ethos became prevalent among union leaders early on. They were told, okay, you want higher productivity and wages, fine, I'll give them to you, but they resisted giving people less work. So unions struck a compromise. We're get our boys to work, you give us higher wages. As such, unions became an integral part of defending the jobs system, which is how we got the dignity of work nonsense they spew.
And then the depression happened. And....there was a lot of discussion about what should be done. Hugo Black actually pushed a bill for a THIRTY hour work week, known as the Black-Connery Labor Labor Standards Act. You see, people were talking about, in response to the great depression, reducing working hours further than 40 hours. 40 hours had been pushed for by unions for decades, and by the 1930s, people were actually talking less. This spooked business leaders who, given their relatively limited bargaining position were like, yo, FDR, we'll give you what you want, but you can't reduce working hours. Again, they literally feared the future of capitalism if they did and how workers might...have lives outside of work. And might not wanna...buy things that they produced. And FDR...gave it to them. He basically tanked the bill, but passed the other stuff in Black's bill in what we now know as the Fair Labor Standards Act. He did greatly improve the standards for workers, but in doing so, he sealed their fate.
From there, the narrative shifted toward 40 hours a week, forever. Infinite growth, with no further reductions in working hours. And while I still have to read the rest of the book, I presume that there were no significant challenges to the 40 hour work week after that. I mean, we had WWII, couldnt work less then when we had a war effort to win. And then in the 1950s we had the second red scare and anyone deemed too far left was suicided out of 17th story windows or otherwise accused of being communist and anti american...and from there, the new order was established, labor power was crushed, and a few decades later, we got reagan and deregulation leading to the economic crapshow we have now.
Oh, and the system of job creation that I often criticize and point to as why capitalism and jobism can never provide for everyone was established in this time. You see, there was a lot of debate over "work sharing" during the depression. But given the system ended up trending toward 40 weeks forever and full employment, they developed keynesian economics and the federal reserve system of job creation in order to stabilize things and keep us in this circle of never ever reducing working hours. if we run out of work, we'd just have the government lower interest rates and take on debt to encourage businesses to create new jobs. The new productivity and growth associated with them would stabilize the market, allowing them to then raise interest rates to keep inflation in check, and then we will just stay stuck on this cycle of never ending job creation forever, with the discussion of any further hourly reductions off the table.
And it's worked. Americans are addicted to jobs and consumption like it's crack cocaine. We talk constantly about creating jobs, whereas I took one look around during the great recession and was like "WHY?!, i only thought we worked this much because we had to anyway, we have all of this wealth, why do we insist on creating more work just so people have a paycheck? I don't wanna do this crap, businesses don't wanna hire me, why do I have to jump through hoops of this bull#### system when it's not necessary?"
And once I made that breakthrough, I was able to develop the views I had today. And of course because I was on the tail end of an existential crisis and in a state of questioning literally everything, and developed a system of secular humanism to replace my previous religious system based in christianity, i started thinking of the economy in humanistic terms, developing my own iteration of human centered capitalism years before yang did. With my core premises being 1) the economy exists for humans, not humans the economy, 2) jobs are a means to an end, not an end in itself, and 3) we should move away from GDP growth as the end all be all of everything, and balance it with other priorities, ESPECIALLY leisure.
And that's MY iteration of human centered capitalism. Keep in mind, I'm not trying to abolish capitalism. I'm not some flaming marxist who wants to seize the means of production. I dont care about the means of production. I just wanna not be forced to work, and I want everyone to live free and happy lives without poverty. And if that means more people opt out of the rat race, so be it. I WANT people to be able to opt out of the rat race.
But...FDR took another path. And in some ways, his new deal framework may have greatly helped workers, but it also helped seal our fates, keeping us stuck on this cycle of full employment at 40 hours forever like sisyphus rolling a rock up a hill for all eternity. And yeah. I might respect him in some ways, but after finding this out, I also kinda hate the guy. He did us dirty in this one specific way. And I'm gonna have to formally break from him ideologically over this. I always had differences from him due to my hatred of jobs and rejection of his job guarantee nonsense, but now, it's doubly so. Because it's quite clear he did that stuff to save work itself, when work didn't deserve to be saved. Work as a concept should be taken out back and put out of its misery. It is an affliction on humankind and we are prolonging our suffering for no better reason than to keep business owners happy. It's sickening.
I kinda understand why leftists become leftists reading this crap. Not that I think leftism is the solution. I want to be clear, it very much is not. I literally just want capitalism but without all of this forced labor BS, and a universal minimum standard of living without having to work for it. Again, human centered capitalism. Capitalism that serves us, not capitalism we're forced to be slaves to. So yeah. Never thought I'd say it, but F FDR on this one specific thing. He was a decent guy otherwise, he's always had a bit of a mixed legacy among the left, but yeah. This is IMO one of his greater sins, at least in the eyes of my ideology. That and the whole interning the Japanese thing.
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