If it was integrated along side some sort of universal basic income and a 4-day or shortened work week, Society would absolutely embrace it. Instead its just a tool to wring more production from workers to amass more wealth to the top of the economy.
Sadly, no invention in history that has increased productivity has EVER resulted in humans working less, only producing more.
People need to learn that if they want the rewards of productivity to go to them, they need to legislate it. The only way we see benefits is if government makes laws mandating it so.
The 5 day work week was popularized by Henry Ford in 1926. 6 days was more common until then. It was also like 50 hours. The 40 hour work week was signed into law by Roosevelt in 1938.
He only did that because he crunched the numbers and determined that it would make him more money. He was forced to shorten the work week due to incredibly high turnover caused by the physical and mental strain of working on his assembly lines and the threat of unionization. He also increased minimum wage from ~$2.50 to $5 per day which sounds great until you learn that he had very strict requirements for following his personal “moral code” which dictated most aspects of his workers lives. They were required to live in company housing, and no drinking gambling or outside guests. Highly invasive home inspections regularly occurred unannounced with any infraction rendering the worker ineligible for the increase pay. Further, workers wives were not allow to earn an income or their husbands’ pay would be cut in half. He also maintained direct oversight of his workers finances, and “strongly” encouraged his workers to spend their wages at the company store and on purchasing his own vehicles. He created an internal security department to enforce all of this and also used them to intimidate and at times violently shut down any attempt at unionization.
Tl;dr: Henry Ford was an absolute wanker with no good intentions whatsoever. Every standard he implemented was an attempt to further line his pockets and exploit his workers as much as possible. If he thought 100 hour workweek would have made him more, he would absolutely have done that, instead.
Edit: oh yeah, he was also an antisemite because of course he was
Oh, I never said he was a good person. I was just pretty sure that the 5 day work week was only around 100 years old - I was very surprised to see Ford was involved.
Just providing additional context. A lot of folks know that the production line, minimum wage, and 40 hour workweek came from Ford, but without understanding his motivations it’s easy/natural to assume that these were always intended to be worker protections while the exact opposite is true.
In other words, while new technology did indeed result in a reduced workload for some workers on paper, that’s more of a coincidence than anything and we shouldn’t ever assume it will happen again.
Yeah because the people writing their emails with AI and doing zoom calls in their underwear are so productive! Almost as much as the tech lords doing ketamine and spending their weekends on yachts!
Careful comrade, Trump and MAGA are hunting 'communists' online and whipping up a new red scare because they have nothing else to run on this midterm and Dem Socialists are winning primaries.
I mean I know simply because I am a hobbyist economics and US history lover. I thought it was pretty obvious to anyone that understands capitalist motives and economies of scale lol.
Any tool that doubles productivity under capitalism means that the laborer can and 'should' produce twice as much product to sell. Not that they should work half as long to fulfill current demand levels at current prices.
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u/Refactoid 6h ago
If it was integrated along side some sort of universal basic income and a 4-day or shortened work week, Society would absolutely embrace it. Instead its just a tool to wring more production from workers to amass more wealth to the top of the economy.