So, I'm still going through Adam Chandler's "99% perspiration" book and at this point, we're finally shifting from him writing about America's wierdo mythos surrounding work, to finally focusing on the pragmatic side. And he starts by going into France and their work culture. How they have a 35 hour work week. And how they have longer vacations, far more lax office culture, they don't have to answer emails after hours, and how they just seem happier there than over here.
And that's what I've been saying. i took note of the fact that they mentioned at one point that we and France had roughly the same GDP per capita at some point, but they went into the more work life balance direction while we went more into growth at all costs. They're happier than we are it seems, they "work to live" rather than "living to work."
It should be noted that in my model, if we put like 50% of our GDP gains into leisure, we could have similar GDP per capita as France. But, I had us working at like 26 hours a week or something. Why the discrepency? Well, it's because the benefits of working less don't have to take the form of hours. Yes, they do have shorter hours. But again, longer vacation time. They literally have a month of vacation time over there. 30 days, that's a month. Here, you're lucky if you get 2 weeks, or 14 days, or really, what amounts to 10 days with weekends. So in essence, with weekends, that could be 6 weeks. I'm not sure.
With lunch, while it's unpaid looking it up, it can't be done at the desk like in the US, they want to enforce work life balance where you can actually go off and of what you want. Lunch might also take an hour. As opposed to the 30 minutes here.
One thing I love about France is that you also don't have to answer work calls or emails after hours. here, your phone is basically your leash. Youre expected to be available at all times, and I know my dad got scolded by a manager once because he left his phone at home and wasn't available on a sunday. You shouldn't have to be. There should be strong barriers between working hours and off hours. In the US we have this weird always available thing all the time that literally makes work feel like slavery.
I mean, all of these add up. And while they mean less GDP, they still live quite well in a quite modern country. I wish we were more like France. I'm not saying they're perfect. I mean, my own model for human centered capitalism basically also includes the idea of giving people freedom from work, doing away with the overt requirement we seem to expect of people that they work, and giving people more freedom not to. That in itself can eat into GDP, but the freedom it provides would be rather minimal and far worth it. As that "working through the work disincentive" paper I often cite points out, the reduced productivity gains from UBI would be comparable to some European style comforts like a shorter work week or longer vacation time.
There are many ways and many models that we can take to take advantage of increased productivity through capitalism and the labor saving gains that they provide...if we want to. But thats the thing. American culture is toxic and shames you for being "lazy" if you DONT. As the chandler book points out, we once were in the same spot, but since say, the 1960s, we've gone in radically different directions with work culture, and we can see the two countries and the differences between them in action. Sure, the US is richer, but france is still rich and FAR more laid back. It honestly seems like a more pleasant place to live than the US in a lot of ways. It's not perfect, but again, it's all culture. That's the thing. This work protestant work ethic is cultural. It's the right's cultural values. It goes back to religious fundamentalism and calvinism and protestantism. We can change our culture any time we want. It just means standing up to the right and their bullcrap.
And as for "well what would i do if i didnt have to work all the time?" Bro, if you think like that, youre literally indoctrinated. Go have a long hard look about your life. Sure, christianity might teach you that you're here for god to fulfill a certain purpose, but in reality, life is a sandbox, and you can do whatever you want. And to rebut the question of god, well, in my spiritual beliefs, I'm here to teach you guys to stop working so hard. Okay? Okay. Checkmate, Christians.
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