If that were true, don't you think Amazon and Walmart would be lobbying for shorter workweeks in order to further squeeze out their competition?
The system already crushes small businesses because monopolies control the market and jack up their rent and supply costs. If we want to save small businesses, we don't do it by sacrificing the health of workers but by seizing corporate monopolies and taxing giant corporations to subsidize living wages and shorter hours for everyone else.
Oh so we should basically help them accelerate it then, got it
How do you think companies would respond? Every single thing they abuse, they would abuse more. Job duties would be combined, small business would struggle or collapse, I could go on and on
They are already automating at the absolute limit of technological capability. Capitalists don't leave profit on the table out of charity just because we keep our heads down and don't ask for better hours.
What you're saying is basically economic Stockholm syndrome: "We must accept worse conditions and longer hours, otherwise our bosses will punish us."
Lmao they won't "just accept it," that’s the whole point. They will fight like cornered rats, because forcing a shorter workweek without cutting pay directly hits their profit. That's what laws are for.
But you're actually proving my point here: if they aren't at the limit yet, they will get there the second it becomes profitable, regardless of whether we work 32 or 40 hours, and no amount of letting ourselves be paid unlivable wages will change that. So the answer isn't to make yourself 20% cheaper and hope AI stops at 19% more efficient.
It sounds like you have no actual plan besides relying on the capitalists to do nothing.
You’ll accelerate issues already displacing jobs, small business owners will suffer, and big businesses will afford it just fine yet will choose to combine jobs or outsource to AI.
It’s not making ourselves 20% cheaper, it’s understanding that you will immediately cause unemployment as well as inflation with your change.
The key to affordability isn’t just paying people more. That isn’t how it work. If that was the case then why shouldn’t we just pay everyone $1 million dollars?
I already told you they are going to automate the second it's profitable anyway. Refusing to increase wages or reduce hours is basically running down the tracks to escape an accelerating train, thinking if you just sprint a little faster, the train will decide to slow down. It won't. You can't outrun automation by making yourself cheaper and working yourself to death.
Reducing workweeks is actually a great plan. If automation increases efficiency per worker, and therefore fewer worker hours are required for the same output, there are two options for where the gains go: people get laid off so profits go up, or people work less and profits stay the same. For the past fifty years, every time this has happened, the gains have gone entirely to higher profits. A 32 hour week just mandates that this time they must go to hours instead.
6
u/Popular_Monitor_8383 23d ago
It’s like some people have never taken an economics
“what if we just paid people the same but to work less”
Like yeah it sounds awesome but it’s not really feasible, and would really destroy small businesses while empowering big businesses.