The only reason people still work 5 days a week is because of bullshit jobs. Basically, our economy is set up in such a way that jobs increase to fill the labour market, even if those jobs really don’t matter. People thought in the 50s that the 3 day work week would become standard, but it didnt happen for this reason.
If we had a society that was built by and for people rather than capital, we could eliminate a huge amount of the work we do. People would be free to have leisure or to train and reskill. We could have more medically trained people - either full doctors or nurse practitioners, OTs, physios, etc, spending less time on the job. It’s obviously better for society to have more skilled people with more time on their hands. Plus they could learn other skills and do other things rather than spending all their time in one job, cross-pollinating and gaining experience in more areas.
Plus, a huge amount of doctors’ time is spent in bullshit jobs, writing certificates just so a person can get time off of school or work or for welfare. This is all in service of an economy that demands that everybody be “productive” at all times, even though that just means moving imaginary tokens around. This isn’t to mention the increased level of health that would exist if we weren’t getting up at the crack of dawn, getting through rush hour and working for 8 hours then coming back home to collapse and do it all again for most of our lives.
The only reason people still work 5 days a week is because of bullshit jobs. Basically, our economy is set up in such a way that jobs increase to fill the labour market, even if those jobs really don’t matter. People thought in the 50s that the 3 day work week would become standard, but it didnt happen for this reason.
If we had a society that was built by and for people rather than capital, we could eliminate a huge amount of the work we do. People would be free to have leisure or to train and reskill. We could have more medically trained people - either full doctors or nurse practitioners, OTs, physios, etc, spending less time on the job. It’s obviously better for society to have more skilled people with more time on their hands. Plus they could learn other skills and do other things rather than spending all their time in one job, cross-pollinating and gaining experience in more areas.
Plus, a huge amount of doctors’ time is spent in bullshit jobs, writing certificates just so a person can get time off of school or work or for welfare. This is all in service of an economy that demands that everybody be “productive” at all times, even though that just means moving imaginary tokens around. This isn’t to mention the increased level of health that would exist if we weren’t getting up at the crack of dawn, getting through rush hour and working for 8 hours then coming back home to collapse and do it all again for most of our lives.