The Work Week

via Joanna

Another strange proxy for me is the traditional work week. In more industrial times, with a less diverse market and more standardizing forces like unions and labor laws, establishing a workweek was useful. Now it’s not. Forty hours of factory work is forty hours of factory work. Forty hours of office work can easily be 10 hours of productive, revenue-producing time padded with 30 hours of nonproductive busywork, goofing off with coworkers, and YouTube watching. Take a look at government agencies (or just hit yourself in the head with a hammer) and you get zero revenue-producing time because there are no revenue incentives and you’ve got maybe 10 hours of increasing the size and scope of government and 30 hours of the same things as cubicle farms. Or if you’re an ambitious bureaucrat you’re entrenching The State for closer to the full 40 hours (shudder).