This is what I mention when I’m covertly pushing “radical” ideas such as 4 day work weeks. We have all of these technological advancements - Why can’t the workers see some of those benefits instead of them being funneled to the top in the form of extra profits?
The machine must be fed.
The goal was never leisure. The goal was always profit. And so we feed the profit machine, and when we run out of resources, we’ll start throwing in sacrifices.
Because the machine must be fed.
If chatGPT was marketed towards workers filing reports for idiot bosses that won’t know the difference it would have been made illegal within the month
Executive bonuses
Who, funnily enough, seem able to take a day off whenever they like.
Stop pushing the idea of four day work weeks. Begin promoting the idea of three day weekends.
I bet you’ll start getting different responses.
Fuck that. 4 day weekends.
My organisation does 4 day work weeks. But we chain our staff so only some of us have a 3 day weekend. My day off is usually either Tuesday or Wednesday (by choice, I could take Monday if I wanted).
It works for me because I have a normal weekend with my friends and family to do weekend stuff, and then my day off doesn’t really feel like a true weekend so I use it to catch up on errands, housework, medical appointments, etc. Meaning unlike most of my peers who have to do it all on the weekend, my real weekend is pure fun. I don’t do any serious housework on my weekend, I have a weekday where I work on myself and my home.
Honestly I just like the idea of it because if someone decides they really want to grind for a bit they can now take up a second up to full time job without worrying about most of the shit employers will give you for that.
What I think should be the standard is a “full time” job being 18 hours in a week of work time, including commuting, with any time above every additional multiple of 18 immediately paying out as 2.5x the pay that’s been earned so far. Doesn’t just give people their free time back in spades, it also significantly discourages extorting workers for overtime instead of staffing adequately because now it’s literally more expensive to pay out any overtime at all than it would have been to just hire the additional worker at equal pay, and that effect ramps up exponentially too, by the time you’re at the soul grind of a 40 hour week you’ve already tapped your employer so hard it would have been cheaper to hire 5 additional workers than it was to make you work that 40 hour week.
You should focus more on the orgies and figs.
Going to take this into account… I may have been approaching this the wrong way
Try 30 hour week. It’s superior to 4 “days” of random length. I had a couple of Philippines based contractors on my team who had 4 day weeks, but they still needed to work 40 hours
We almost had a 4 day work week implemented at my job, but some Big Brain said “NO! We need to be shipping 5 days a week!”
90% of the time we don’t ship things out on Friday…
Because the Greeks you hear about were the aristocracy. You don’t hear how some estimates of the population breakdown were more than 80%-90% slaves.
Just like how you hear of the 300 Spartans, but not the several thousand Thebians, most of whom were slaves, who also defended the pass.
The machines were to replace the slaves.
You mean to become the slaves. Viva la Robo-lution!
Not to mention all the thespians
I think he meant Thesbians
Thesbians
Is that what we’re calling them now?
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cough helots cough
To be fair 1/3 of women don’t die in childbirth, 1/2 of children don’t die before they are ten, we have weed and booze they could never have dreamed of, freaken chocolate and aspirin, and you are highly unlikely to become a sex slave. It was paradise for a very small fraction of the population and rape/slavery/castration for the rest.
Still I could go for an orgy and some figs if anyone is in the mood.
But I’m still castrated and want to be a sex slave uwu
Still I could go for an orgy and some figs if anyone is in the mood.
Yeah, I’m down too.
weed
Weed is better today, but you wouldn’t get arrested for it back then
chocolate
Ah yes, the industry that depends on child labor, human trafficking, and slavery…
aspirin
Chew willow bark
It was paradise for a very small fraction of the population and rape/slavery/castration for the rest.
Yeah, today you don’t buy agrarian slaves, instead you just magically get cheap bananas, chocolate, oil, lithium, etc.
Out of sight, out of mind?
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The Ancient Greeks weren’t actively trying to turn the strawberries in your fridge into a SaaS subscription.
I am from now on referring to local produce clubs as “Strawberries As A Service”. Thank you.
This actually points to the root of the problem. You couldn’t do that kind of retail subscription nonsense in ancient times because the bookkeeping, identity management, and fraud prevention would have been a nightmare. Since we found out how to automate all of those problems away, here we are.
Sort of, my point is really that there are new kinds of work that were not really conceivable at the time, most of which has no direct influence on whether you’re fed, clothed, housed, and healthy. (Indirectly is another matter, North Korean’s wisest minds centrally decide what really matters and look where that gets them… Not a 3 day work week)
Shit should be free, or cheaper at least, if you’re poor, trying to draw blood from a stone is how the poor stay poor and the elite fall to pieces and lose their entire hierarchy
…and then ordering their slaves to bring them another flask of wine
Wait, weren’t machines supposed to be our slaves?
That’s actually exactly why it took the Romans so long to technologically advance. “The slaves do the job well enough”.
The idea of water powered mills and general aqueducts were mind-blowing to them and took a while to catch on. It seemed utterly unfathomable when everyone relied so much on slaves
Which is similar to my theory of why the industrial revolution took place in the west. High populations in the east meant that labor was always cheaper and more efficient than trying to get compliacted machinery to do the job. It’s why a lot of manufacturing still happens in the east, because machines can’t do everything and the best robot is still a human being with a good jig.
And within the West it was in the places without slavery. As countries gave up their colonial slaves, serfs, peasants, etc. they started advancing. The countries that reverted back via fascism and the like saw themselves broken.
A slave works to the point where they are no longer whipped. An employee, in theory at least, is rewarded with higher pay for being more productive. Sometimes I wonder if anyone has researched the industries that pretty much pay everyone the same minimum wage and their output over time. I go to client sites and some of them everyone is paid terribly and the efficiency is staggering low.
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So you’re saying we should have maenads chase them down in a forest, rip them apart by hand, and eat then?
When I went freelance, it was hard not having a boss at first, now I’m totally into it. It took around a year for me to get everything to where I felt good about it. I think a lot of people don’t realize that the uncomfortable feeling of not having a boss usually doesn’t last forever. The people who liked working from home probably get it. We are taught to have bosses from a very early age.
Not having a more senior person to go to when you get stuck could be a problem.
I always have Mr. Stackoverflow as my senior person.
That is, until he slaps me in the face and tells me my questions are always repeated.
This is answered in the previous thread. Marked as duplicate.
Wut?
Fffffffffffffffffffff
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Also was a freelancer. I felt like I had more bosses. Instead of one person to keep happy it was an entire client staff to keep happy. I gave it up for a lot of reasons and went back to corporate.
I freelanced for about a decade, and frankly, I like having a steady gig now instead lol but I’m still really glad I did it that’s for sure. It had its advantages.
There’s security in a paycheck and there’s security in knowing you’re not the boss. I agree, being freelance or an employee both have advantages. I think it took me awhile to realize that there is some security in being freelance, I didn’t know that and had to relearn a lot of things.
Good luck! Rooting for you.
And still half of us can’t even afford figs
*probably way more than half
And there are five of us who can afford figs for everyone for eternity, but decided to use that money to lure underaged teens for orgy outside in some secluded islands.
Sounds like a good bargain for figs! Where?
I mean the rich people are eating figs, on their yachts, on their way to their winter home, to go skiing with their family.
Yeah…
But what about the orgies?
Just like any other party, host it yourself
Or eating figs on their private plane on the way to an island for…an orgy …
welcome to crapitalism
I mean, precisely because of that people indeed now do have fig orgies outside. Just don’t count workers as people.
To be fair it’s like 30 degrees outside so the orgy might need to be postponed
It’s just a bit warm, have the orgy in the shade
Set up a couple misters and fans and you’re golden
I’d like a couple misses as well thanks
You mean mistresses?
They can come too
Interesting that you can interpret “30 degrees” in either C or F, and either way you wouldn’t want to have an orgy outside.
It’s perfectly orgiable in either.
That’s what bath houses are for!
What better way to warm up than being under a mass of sweaty, writhing bodies?
Depending where you are 30 is either really cold or really hot.
Not really, where I’m at 30C is just slightly hot and 30F is just slightly cold. Goes much higher and lower than that.
Bruh 30F is slightly cold to you? It’s below freezing
Yes? If it’s below freezing every winter night, if not all day, you get used to it. -5C (or windy) and the gloves and hat come out. -10C is genuinely cold. It’s all a matter of what you’re used to. There’s no universal, global answer to what is cold and what is hot, it all depends on what’s normal where you live/you’ve lived.
Tell me you’re from the Midwest without telling me you’re from the Midwest
30F seems like it’s outside the ideal temperature range for an orgy
I don’t like being outside for either one. Actually, I don’t like outside.
Well its a bit warm but it should be fine.
WE BUILT THIS CITY
WE BUILT THIS CITY
WE BUILT THIS CITY ON GRIM AND TOLL.
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LoL. Currency has nothing to do with scarcity.
Currency is an invention of necessity. It permits bartering at a much greater scale. It’s been a feature of pretty much every society, ever.
