This Is Gabby

Hooters Waitress: Please sir, you're causing a fuss and disturbing the other customers-

115 colonists: okay

governor: ends up spending 3 years in england bc of a naval war with spain or some shit

governor: gets back to the colony to find everyone gone

governer: sees the word “croatoan”, the name of a native american tribe, carved into a post

croatoan tribe: has members and children with blonde hair/blue eyes, pale skin

roanoke folks: actually these really nice people took us in? we left you a note about that? so please stop telling everyone we’re dead?

This is a good response to that question, in case anyone wanted the q&a paired together. 15 would be the social average — some people might work more, some less, but that would be up to them. This is also presupposing a change in the way the economy effectively functions, in the sense that 15 hours would be the social average for necessary labor, and after that point you’d probably see tons of people participating in “unnecessary” labor out of interest. There’s an idea in socialist theory that basically says once you reach a point far enough along after capitalism you’d just start seeing a blurring of the lines between what’s defined as “work” (or as “a job”) and what’s defined as “a collective activity”, especially with regard to the arts, science, etc.

The 15-hour week presupposes a change in the economy first. Obviously capitalism requires long hours for people to survive, but in terms of pure stats it’s not necessary for society to be working that much. There’s enough resources for everyone, and so much work is pointless bullshit that only exists to line the pockets of the rich. The ecosocialist project demands a new way of looking at and distributing work. Get rid of the bullshit jobs, divvy up the necessary jobs, and we’d free up people’s time immensely to engage in pursuits they actually want to do to contribute to society.

This does not even include time spent commuting or getting ready for work.

What we see here is that technology has increased human productivity while median compensation for that productivity has been lagging behind.

In other words, somebody (a small minority) is making a bunch of money they weren’t making before.

Since 1978 human productivity has, thanks to technology, multiplied by 2.5x.

Standard of living has (calculated from spending and accounting for inflation) NOT CHANGED.

This means that we are not living more expensively, and in some areas, particularly housing, healthcare and education, we are now actually having it WORSE than they did 50 years ago.

So let’s do the math I was missing:

If we got rid of this paradoxical group that is making so much more money, we could have the same standard of living as in 1978 while working 2.5x less!

As the typical work week in 1978 was 40 hours, that corresponds to 16 hours (16 × 2.5 = 40).

And human productivity didn’t start increasing through technology in 1978! If we accounted for farther back than that we could cut it WAY more!

On top of that we have all of the previously mentioned factors, which get a lot more complicated to calculate, but it’s not even necessary!

The IWW was campaigning for a 16 hour work week in the 1910’s for crying out loud!

You really think we can’t do any less than 15 in 2018?

Also, let’s talk about how exactly capitalism makes this not work:

In capitalism, you have an employer who needs to profit from what you do.

This means that you create a certain amount of value for them. They pay you a wage in turn.

This wage is ALWAYS lower than what your work is worth.

If it was equal or higher, your employer would lose money from hiring you!

And this surplus value that your employer takes isn’t a little. It’s a lot.