20 Hour Work Week

[Politico]

"The purpose of production is consumption."

- Adam Smith

Guess what: If you produce half as much stuff, you can only consume half as much stuff (in the long-run).

A much better proposition is switching the standard work week from five days of eight hour shifts to four days of ten hour shifts. That could potentially boost productivity among individuals (people may be more productive doing forty hours spread over four days with three days of leisure at the end of the week being a huge motivation) while cutting unproductive costs for all involved (e.g., less space required in office due to staggering of shifts which implies lower energy costs, less driving to and from work for individual workers, and many, many more examples I am sure).

[Politico]

By the way, some folks on here are espousing socialist/communist ideas. My questions to them:
 
When did you last visit a DMV?
How about a public toilet?
Do you think public toilets are better than the private toilet you access on a daily basis?

Do you really want most everything to be publicly owned with politicians and bureaucrats in charge?

[Politico]

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Absolutely!

So let's see Britain go back to the days of subsidizing bottomless money pits such as paying hundreds of thousands of miners to dig holes in the ground looking for minerals that are no longer there because they have already been dug up? Do you really think it makes sense to take from productive sectors of the economy in the form of taxation and give it in the form of subsidization to numerous people so they can dig pointless holes, a job that produces nothing?

1970s Britain is a great case study on the failures of socialism.

An experiment for all of you socialists/communists: Name a great invention that came out of the Soviet Union. Heck, name any invention created by a government bureaucrat...

[Politico]

By the way, some folks on here are espousing socialist/communist ideas. My questions to them:
 
When did you last visit a DMV?

I've visited them here in Thailand within the last year, and at the USA within the last three years.  In both cases I received prompt, brisk, friendly service.

In rural areas I have had pleasurable experiences at the DMV, but I cannot say the same about urban areas. The custom there is queuing, queuing, and more queuing without even an option of paying a bit more to save myself time.
 

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The point of the question is this: Usually nobody takes care of something when it belongs to everybody, and this is more true the more urban an area is. Nobody takes care of something when it is just "given" to them either (e.g., project housing). In comparison, at least you have a large degree of control over your life and what you own in the free market. It ultimately provides a better standard of living for you if that is what you want.

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Did you come to this conclusion from comparing North Korea to South Korea? Same people with the same history, but dramatically different standards of living...Why do you suppose that is?

[Politico]

Since the second post has been adequately replied to, I'll take the first one.

Guess what: If you produce half as much stuff, you can only consume half as much stuff (in the long-run).

Americans these days would benefit from consuming half of the junk food they eat, among other things. Demand is not a means in itself unless you subscribe to 19th-century theories of rationality.

Americans are not in the business of being told what they would or would not benefit from by anybody, American or otherwise. They would rather be free to choose how to live their own life. And, when you get down to it, as bad as the economy in America is right now one of the biggest problems in America is obesity among its poorest. Now, call me crazy, but I would think this is much preferable than starvation among its poorest, no?

Getting back to the point: The only purpose of producing more is to acquire more money. Otherwise, it is irrational to produce more if there is no reward where the marginal benefits of producing more outweigh the marginal costs. What does acquiring more money really mean? It really just means acquiring more goods/services at some point either in the present or future.

When it comes down to it, the twenty hour work week is not the norm because the vast majority of economic agents pursuing their own self-interest have decided that to do so would incur higher marginal costs than marginal benefits.
 

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Really? This happens all of the time even among full-time workers whose job falls under regulations that require OT for hours worked beyond forty hours. In their case, some employers refuse to pay them OT so they are forced to stop working after forty hours. In fact, people are forced to stop working altogether all of the time. For one obvious example, when they are laid off. For another example, there are millions more who only have part-time jobs where by definition they work fewer than forty hours. Many of these people would like to work even more hours (i.e., they are classified as underemployed seeking full-time employment). The list goes on and on. Why do you suppose most people want to work more than twenty hours per week, anyway?
 

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I am not going to pretend humans are irrational, or that I know what is best for anybody other than myself.

[Politico]

I'm not aware of that ever actually happening. The only thing that would seem to fit - and even then only vaguely - would be the Williamson Tunnels in Liverpool, but they were hardly the product of any kind of socialism and certainly didn't involve hundreds of thousands of miners.

You are not familiar with the history of the coal miners in Britain? If memory serves, over 200,000 miners were employed by the state in the late 1970s (And I believe only something like 10,000 were still around after privatization). It was no longer a profitable endeavor by the end of the 1970s. In fact, there was not a lot of coal leftover by the early 1980s, so basically the state was subsidizing the act of digging holes by hundreds of thousands of miners. In other words, the state was engaging in massive subsidization of an industry that was mostly producing nothing. Is this the type of future you want to see? Tax the productive to subsidize the pointless?

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What do you propose calling yourself? I mean, do you or do you not believe that most economic activity should be planned by the government? Somebody who holds that opinion is, by definition, a socialist at the very least and a communist at worst.

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My question was to name a GREAT invention that came out of the Soviet Union. I would not put the AK-47 in the category of greatness. Perhaps some would. In either case, it is not like it was the first assault rifle of all-time. If you care to share some better inventions than the AK-47, please do so. I cannot think of anything else, can you?

Another exercise for you: Please argue why you support North Korea over South Korea. And please list the wonders that have come out of North Korea, which clearly trump the goods/services from South Korea, right?

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Once again, it was you, not I, who said that bureaucrats/politicians should be largely in charge of economic activity. If that is true, and bureaucrats do not invent anything, then how in the world are we going to progress if nobody is inventing anything in your world of supposed government utopia?

[Politico]

...humans are irrational

If we can be sure of nothing else, we can be sure of this, Politico..  though in fairness the 99% in our society who are slaves are operating under severe conditioning and in ignorance, which makes rationality generally beyond them (even aside from the fact that they don't have the power to do the rational thing - kill the rich - even if they were fully sentient).

Kill the rich? What, like they did in the Soviet Union and North Korea? How did that work out? If I may, why do you want to cut down the tall trees in the forest to the size of the short trees instead of having policies that promote growing the short trees?

Correct me if I am wrong, but your ideology appears to be that command economies are better and more "fair" than free enterprise. If you can name a single historical example where standard of living improved after moving from free enterprise to command and control, please do share. After you are done doing that, then you can explain to me why North Korea and South Korea are so dramatically different by most every way possible (By the way, people are more "equal" in North Korea if your idea of being equal is everybody "enjoying" the lowest common denominator; even the poorest in free enterprise South Korea enjoy a considerably better life than everybody in North Korea other than the upper echelon of the Communist Party).

[Politico]

I'm going to avoid getting embroiled in a debate about the economics of the coal industry in the 1970s and 1980s because I'd need to dig through a couple of boxfiles worth of notes and photocopies and I'm not going to do that just to argue with some prick on the internet, but I think I should correct you on a couple of points. The first - and most important - is that you are completely wrong to suggest that coal had mostly run out by the early 1980s;

The low hanging fruit was clearly gone by the early 1980s. I do not know what the reserves are like today, but surely they are not nearly as large as you think considering the fact we have not seen massive investment in getting it out like have seen, for example, in the Alberta Tar Sands of Canada or the level of investment in mining in Australia.

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Oh really? Then how do you explain the fact that nobody in Europe, or anywhere else in the world, threw gobs of capital at the industry when it was privatized? Gee, maybe because it was the exact opposite of what you describe: inefficient and unprofitable?

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The state was subsidizing "keeping the lights on"? Then how do you explain the fact that the lights were still on even after all of the numerous strikes, and even after the workforce went from approximately 200,000 to less than 10,000?

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And I am proud to point out to you that socialism was a failure in the United Kingdom. But you are more than welcome to cling to a silly belief that going back to socialism will somehow be different this time around. One would not expect that in 1981, let alone 2011, but here we are.

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Fair enough. With that said, I think it is safe to say that you, since anybody else can, would be able to rattle off a list of great inventions, amazing goods/services, that have come from free enterprise countries over the past decade, no? I mean, what has brought us together in this conversation right now as we speak?

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Oh, please humor me with a listing. Does the list of great cultural achievements include the Gulag/NKVD?

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I'm afraid that I don't, me duck. Sorry.[/quote]

A socialist who admits that the free enterprise of South Korea blows the command and control economy of North Korea out of the water? We are talking about the same people with the same history, but dramatically different economies. The socialist way you support leads to North Korea sooner or later no matter where it is implemented. The sooner you can come to this realization, the better.

[Politico]

Why don't we have a 20 hour work week

There is no law that prohibits you from working 20 hours a week or less, if you'd so like. For that matter, nobody forces you to work at all. What, exactly, is your problem?

Thank you! I have been thinking the same thing since stumbling upon this thread. However, I did not feel like I had enough stature, such as the great reputation you possess, to ask something like that.

[Politico]

Those figures were commonly accepted at the time, so it isn't really a question of what I think. Of course much of the coal would be harder to get at now because of the pit closures and the inevitably flooding underground.

Or, perhaps even more likely, the estimates of reserves were blown out of proportion in the 1980s in a desperate attempt to continue pushing for the policy of mass subsidization of an industry that should have never been subsidized to begin with?

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Domestic demand for coal collapsed following (amongst other things) the 'dash for gas' in the early 1990s. But, for what it's worth, there are quite a few opencast pits around these days (they don't last for long and they don't employ many people, of course), and a new drift mine was opened near Neath a few years ago, and vague plans for larger projects elsewhere are proposed every now and again.[/quote]

Let's stick to the 2010s, not the early 1990s. Demand for coal is on the rise. Why are we not seeing the type of investment in coal mining in Britain as we are seeing elsewhere in the world, including the USA? Could it be that there is not much coal left in Britain, and has not been for a long time?

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Efficient and productive yet not profitable? Do you not realize what you are saying?

Look: The British mines, or at least most of them, had reached the end of their useful life by the end of the 1970s. This is why the free market has not brought about a re-emergence of mining in Britain despite the rise in demand for coal recently, and the anticipated high levels of demand for coal moving forward through the 21st Century. In the late 1970s, there was a policy in place of subsidizing hundreds of thousands of miners to basically do work that could have been done by ten thousand miners. In other words, the policy can be best summed up as: tax productive activities to subsidize a pointless activity. Your failure to appreciate this fact is mind-boggling.

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And how do you explain the shape of coal mining in West Virginia during the same time period?

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Numerous strikes? Bollocks.[/quote]

There were more than just one or two strikes, right? Hence numerous.

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I am admittedly more familiar with the strike of the mid-80s.

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Even you have to admit, or should learn, that Scargill and the union's inept leadership ought to give you pause when considering whether or not to espouse central control of an entire industry, let alone an entire economy.

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lol
[/quote][/quote]

Let me rephrase: Wherever the socialist way is implemented, it leads to North Korea eventually if, despite all continued failures, the state continues to push the socialist agenda with greater and greater degrees of coercion. History has displayed this time and time again. The socialist way will either lead that way, or eventually lead to a situation such as the "Winter of Discontent" and what ensued following that calamity. In either case, it is a road I would rather not see America ever go down.

[Politico]

My question was to name a GREAT invention that came out of the Soviet Union. I would not put the AK-47 in the category of greatness. Perhaps some would. In either case, it is not like it was the first assault rifle of all-time. If you care to share some better inventions than the AK-47, please do so. I cannot think of anything else, can you?

As for the rest of the thread, Stop the fight!!!

Stealing research and technology from Nazi Germany, probably only successfully enabled by the good fortune of the German rocket center being located in the Soviet occupation zone following WW II, does not count.

[Politico]

Stealing research and technology from Nazi Germany does not count.

We were talking about the Soviet Union, not America. I am not going to argue with where you are going. Both sides clearly benefited from German scientists following WW II. With that said, we are getting away from the main point: the fact that command and control economies have an atrocious record on innovation, especially compared to nations that largely utilize free enterprise. For example, I can assure you that the list of inventions that have come out of America the past one hundred years as a result of free enterprise, well, that list absolutely destroys the record you will find in any socialist country (including all of them combined). Do you really want to play that game? The list for America is inexhaustible (hell, it is as self-evident as the fact the sun will come up tomorrow), yet not a single person on here can name even a single great invention that came about under the command and control economy of the Soviet Union.

Perhaps an even better game: Compare the inventions of Britain before it adopted socialism with the inventions of Britain during its socialist experimentation. After that, compare the worldwide status of Britain before it adopted socialism with its status during its socialist experimentation.

[Politico]

I happen to support regulated free enterprise.  

However, you can't make groundless arguments to support your cause and not expected to be called on it. The claim that there were no inventions is simply wrong.

I never said there were no great inventions, just that nobody has listed one yet. It really says something about their system.

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I am not going to argue with that, but I am also not going to ignore the "piggy-backing" on Nazi research and resources. Ultimately, it is the only reason the manned space flight and first satellite happened in the Soviet Union. As such, they really cannot be labelled solely as inventions or scientific advances brought about due to the command and control policies of the Soviet Union. You can, of course, list the other "amazing advances across the sciences," if you so wish, but I can assure you that those achievements came at a great cost to their society.

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Ultimately, their advances were always the result of coercion. Any benefits came at a great cost to their society, and I think it is a safe bet that none of it was worth the Gulag, all of the paranoia, all of the disappearances, etc. I have a big problem with the coercion that dominates that system, as should anybody who supports freedom. On top of that, all things considered, I am absolutely one hundred percent confident that the advancements of Russia in the 20th century would have been much greater under free enterprise than the command and control hierarchy they adopted. One just needs to look at the great contributions to American society by Russian-Americans in the 20th century through today.

[Politico]

An experiment for all of you socialists/communists: Name a great invention that came out of the Soviet Union. Heck, name any invention created by a government bureaucrat...

Tetris.

I love Tetris as much as the next guy, but is it really so much an invention as a great video game? If the first video game was an invention, is Tetris really an invention or just another variant? And does Tetris ever exist if video games are not invented? Plus, can you name any other great video games from the Soviet Union? I can name quite a few from Japan and America. What would video gaming be like if people only had Tetris to choose from?

[Politico]

By the way, the Russians involved in advancing science and mathematics, along with Pajitnov for creating Tetris, should be proud of their accomplishments. However, I suspect that most, if not all, of them believe they would have accomplished even greater things in a free enterprise system like America compared to the command and control hierarchy they were forced to put up with.

[Politico]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_inventions#.C2.A0Soviet_Union

Not to mention Soviet visual art and film which were largely terrific and couldn't have existed if their creators had been thrown to the wolves of the free market.

And which of these films, let alone the aforementioned inventions, provide benefits to mankind that outweigh the costs of 25-62 million deaths (men, women and children) by mass executions, death camps, and state-caused famine?

Source for 25 million deaths: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674076082
Source for 62 million deaths: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM

By the way, what you call the "wolves of the free market" are just the consumers of the free market (i.e., those who buy goods/services). In a free market, led by an invisible hand powered by the human characteristic of pursuing one's own self-interest (ultimately providing cooperation without coercion), the consumers ultimately decide what is consumed and therefore what is produced (those who produce good/services that consumers are unwilling to buy eventually end up failing without government intervention).

By the way, here is the American counterpart to your Wiki link (four links rather than one, and none of them brought to the world by mass executions, death camps and state-caused famines of women and children):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_%28before_1890%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_%281890%E2%80%931945%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_(1946–1991)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions_%28after_1991%29

And for a database containing details on great American films (and some pretty awful stuff, too), go to www.imdb.com

[Politico]

blah blah blah

25-62 million killings is "blah, blah, blah"?

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Are you a defender of the mass execution of millions in the name of "fairness"? It is a fair question given your above quote.

If you are such a fan of Soviet-style government, why are you in Washington instead of Pyongyang?

[Politico]

You did the experiment, so you will have to excuse me for concluding that you are a socialist or a communist. If you are neither, please say so. In that case, the paragraphs below are for those who do believe in widespread government intervention in the economy.

If you are a communist, can you explain why the adoption of communism has always led to widespread killings such as the aforementioned figures in Russia?

If you are a socialist, can you explain why all historical examples of moving from free enterprise to widespread nationalization have been met with declines in overall GDP growth in the long-run? Can you also explain why you think South Korea is so different from North Korea?

Whether you are only in favor of nationalization of most industries or favor government planning of all economic activity, why in the world do you think the results of socialism or communism will be any different the next time it is tried?

[Politico]

And here is some food for thought to chew on in the meantime:

Source: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?oe=UTF-8&hl=en&q=cache:8yoxqaDI2PUJ:www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2301525/posts

"An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that socialism worked and that if enacted, no one would be poor and no one would be rich. It would be a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism."

The Professor decided that all grades would be averaged together and everyone would receive the same grade. No one would fail, but no one would receive an A either.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone received a B.

The students who studied hard were upset, but the students who studied little were happy.

As a result of the averaged grade, both the students who studied hard as well as the students who studied little decided to study even less for the second exam.

The average score this time was a D and no one was happy.

When the 3rd exam rolled around, the average score was an F.

The scores never increased and students blamed each other for the overall poor performance of the class. No one wanted to study hard for the benefit of another student.

To their great surprise, all students failed the course. The professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when the government takes all of the reward away, no one will try hard or want to succeed.

[Politico]

Did you seriously just link to and quote from freerepublic.com?  You do know that's an infractable offense, right?  

No, I did not or I would not have done so. I actually linked a Google cache. I did not even check the source before doing so (I was on a portable device at the time). I simply wanted to find a brief version of the story. It is a legend that has been passed along through e-mails and such for a long time. Snopes is unable to verify the author. Of course, it is not copyrighted.

Source: http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/socialism.asp

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Shall we discuss the story or not? Do you think it has no point, or is unrealistic? Do you think if a professor had such a grading scale that the results would be any different than described?

[Politico]

Bernanke apologized to Friedman with Friedman in the audience in 2002 and said because of Friedman, the the Fed would never screw up again. Friedman's great accomplishment was inflation targeting and that is still the regime being followed today.

What does the contraction of the money supply by the Fed in the early 1930s have to do with any part of this thread? I have tried to stir discussion about fiscal policy, not monetary policy. Considering the widespread support for socialism on this forum, I think it would be good to have an exchange of ideas about free enterprise compared to socialism. Nothing is really accomplished when we resort to name calling, or try to divert attention away from inconvenient truths that do not support a viewpoint that favors socialism/communism.

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I have done no such thing. I simply pointed out that mass genocide was committed in the Soviet Union in order to create the inventions listed. I followed that up with questions after the killing of 25-62 million people was brushed aside, as if those deaths were no big deal because they gave us the great achievements of Soviet film and visual art.

[Politico]

Well my ideal form of government (ignoring a good enlightened monarch) is anarcho-syndicalism,

And how do you suppose you achieve the aim of full ownership of the means of production by the public at large? Do you think it just happens by itself? Of course it does not. It requires a level of command by an authoritative body (i.e., the government). Otherwise, it cannot work. In other words, you are supporting massive government intervention in the economy. So you are now more than welcome to answer the questions posted at the top of this page, prior to the College Professor story.

[Politico]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_inventions#.C2.A0Soviet_Union

Not to mention Soviet visual art and film which were largely terrific and couldn't have existed if their creators had been thrown to the wolves of the free market.

It is really sad that there have been no great films produced in the Western world. Ever.

Including The Godfather Parts I and II? Wow...

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I would love to agree, but you would be surprised. All empirical evidence shows that mass genocide is what happens every time that communism is attempted yet people still continue to support communist ideas and believe that the next time it is attempted the results will be different.

[Politico]

Is Lief actually pro-Soviet or did he just post that article in response to Politico's query? I thought the later.

I did start my query with "an experiment for all of the socialists/communists." In other words, the experiment was a challenge for socialists/communists. Couple that with the fact he did not respond to the query with a disclaimer of something along the lines of, "well, I am not a socialist/communist, but here:" and I had no choice but to conclude he lumps himself in with socialists/communists when it comes to economics.

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It is the other way around: I am shocked that people continue to support socialist ideas that I thought were thrown into the dustbin of history altogether by 1991. Apparently I was wrong. Those people really ought to check out North Korea if they really do believe everything would be better if only the government ran everything, or at least most things, in the economy. If you compare North Korea to South Korea, you have evidence that putting the government in charge of everything is NOT necessarily going to lead to better results than free enterprise. Unfortunately for those who cling to the idea of government running everything, there is not a single real-life example like North Korea/South Korea or West Germany/East Germany that supports their argument with real, tangible evidence.

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Well put.

[Politico]

Lief is on record as pro-dictatorship in general and also in favour of killing innocent civilians if they're on the wrong side.

I sincerely hope this is sarcasm.

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Absolutely, and I cannot even count how many people I have encountered over the past decade who believe that "Cuba and Venezuela are awesome," as you put it. Hence my provocative approaches in this thread. I am really just being provocative to stir a greater exchange of ideas.