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We're lucky that our bodies require sleep, otherwise our cultures would have us working 16-20 hour days.
(self.showerthoughts)
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Yep, 16 hour workdays were not uncommon historically (there’s a reason non-US countries remember May Day).
If you search up 16 hour workdays now, you’ll depressingly find people framing it in a positive light. Capitalism is trying to make workaholism the norm and required to survive.
When I lived in the UK I always found it interesting how people tought "working hard" was a good thing, especially as most of my professional experience until then had been in The Netherlands, were the objective is to work SMART.
Working hard as an objective is almost literally the opposite of being efficient: it's wanting to work more rather that work less and produce the same or work the same and produce more.
Then again it's not surprsing that a society were the Owner class is almost 100% composed of people who were born in wealth would glorify the most shortsighted, short-termist and incompetent way of looking like employees are producing more.
Unsurprisingly the productivity per capita figures of the UK are way worse than those for The Netherlands.
Time not spent generating revenue for yourself and/or someone else is unacceptable.