The 40hour workweek trap

The 40hour workweek trap

It's hamster wheels all the way down

Ever asked yourself why people can't set the number of hours they have to work in a week? As discussed in my post on bullshit jobs, most people could probably work 30 or even 20 hours, and their total productivity wouldn't really go down. Moreover, some people don't need as much money to cover their expenses, and even if some sectors provide part-time jobs or the ability to work on a contract by contrast basis, the majority of people have to deal with the 40 hour week - which quickly becomes more if you take into account commute time and anything needed to maintain your job like administrative tasks by the way.

Economists talk about the 'job market', but if it really was a market, you would expect the supply and the demand to have somewhat symmetric power: those who supply labor can dictate how much of their time they're willing to sell, and those who buy it decide how much they need, and the equilibrium dictates wages. The situation isn't like that at all. So what's going on?

As you might expect, this is a very significant part of jobs and the economy as a whole. The first person experience of a 40 hour week is that it doesn't leave much time during your workdays to do anything meaningful when you get home. And even with more time, most are too tired to do anything besides turning off their brain and be in front of a screen (see also another post of mine: Death by apathy). There is still the weekend, the wonderful and oh so welcome weekend that many constantly look forward to. "Can't wait for the weekend !". Yet again, the experience is one of not having enough time. "The weekend flew by so quickly, I don't even remember what I did".

Now, there is a thing to be said about how most people are terrible at using their time, which I will come back later to, but there is still something worth exploring when it comes to how the week is setup, and how much it works against the average person. My main point is that 40 hours per week is enough to lock most people from doing any activity that would break them out of their cycle of work - consume - sleep that our economy is so dependent on. There might have been points in time when the economy truly provided for things that people needed, but in the present day, most of the economy is utter bullshit: does anyone actually benefit from all the distraction and crap that is marketed to us?

The main force that shapes the economy is the growth of the technological system, not how helpful it is for people. As mentioned in the post on bullshit jobs, it simply can't afford to have people not working, because that would lead them to question their consumption habits and even their life. This means they would start questioning whether all of the stuff they've bought actually made their life better, and would likely come to the conclusion that actually, no. Thus there needs to be a mechanism to get people stuck in their unconscious loop of work - consume - sleep, and the 40hour workweek does that very nicely. People might have worked longer hours in the past - although I'm not sure they had the commutes that the people of today have - but that number will not significantly decrease in the future, to keep that loop running.

There is another perverse effect of the 40hour workweek. I've discussed so far the effect on time, and how people do not go for avenues that would break them out of their loop, such as developing other income streams or finding fulfillment without spending money, and the other effect is on money itself. What does someone with not a whole lot of time but a decent amount of money coming from their job do? They consume obviously. From ordering food daily because they don't have the time to cook, to impulse buying, to all the stuff the economy provides to deal with the stress of the job: holidays, relaxation books, bath salts, etc.
All of those are expenditures used to recuperate from one's job. The so-called service economy is one giant game of trading things for one another, except that the whole operation just wastes people's time and lives in the process, again because the technological system requires it.

To understand the actual income and cost of a job, one would need to take into account all of the secondary effects that arise from it: the time and price of commute is an obvious one, since cars are a massive expense. But there are also more intangible ones like the effects on health - humans weren't meant to sit all day and eat mass-produced ‘food’ - the opportunity cost of doing the same thing all day and never learning skills or meeting new people, the effect on your soul from your time spent fueling a senseless system, etc.

The sad reality is that office jobs probably create as many problems as they supposedly solve. Many people who quit their office job report that it left them with much more time that they could now use to take care of themselves: going on long walks, meditating, cooking, relaxing, living in affordable spaces and traveling. This resulted in their monthly expenses being drastically reduced, since now they didn't care about the consumer economy: they were out there doing what they wanted, so what would they spend money for anyway? And as soon as they came back to work, they noticed how quickly expenses piled up. It became a lot easier to justify the occasional purchase now that they had a lot more money coming in every month.

This leads me to another perverse effect of having lots of money but not a whole lot of time or freedom, which is lifestyle inflation, the way in which expenditures tend to rise to earnings. It is not at all rare to meet people who make a decent amount of money but who still live paycheck to paycheck, because they've become so accustomed to their expensive lifestyle. Unsurprisingly, this once again plays into the loop of consumption, since those people now feel like they must maintain the lifestyle supplied by their job, and that anything less than that is a 'sacrifice'.

So the loop so far can be summarized as such:

  1. People have to work 40 hours a week
  2. This leaves them with little time and energy, and thus they will probably not do anything to break out of that in their free time
  3. Having little time but lots of money leads people to consume more, often to compensate from what their job takes from them
  4. They now have less money, which is recuperated by working again, thus looping back to 1.

Fortunately, the loop is far from perfect. It works because people are mostly unconscious and never question what they spend their time or money on, and what belief systems they inherit from the societal program. It also works because people are pretty bad at using their time well, which is another consequence of working at a bullshit job. When your main activity consists in being incredibly slow because nothing in your job incentivizes you to be productive, then it shouldn't come as a surprise that those same people do not use their time effectively.

For instance, even though people tend to go to restaurants and order food when they have a nice income, no one is forcing you to do so. You could decide to cut out time in front of a screen and spend it on meal prepping. Not only is it far more rewarding than apathetic consumption, you also end up saving money and developing important skills. Cooking is also a good bonding activity, so it even has benefits in creating new possibilities and relationships.

When you start looking at your life this way, much of the ‘allure’ of the consumer economy disappears. You are not 'sacrificing' anything by deciding to not engage in it. If anything, this is what living life is about: consciously deciding what you spend your time and energy on. Those who are making tons of money and splurging it on whatever society has convinced them is important aren't 'living the life', they are puppets to a program they've inherited and never questioned.

If you are interested in this mindset to change your life, I couldn't recommend the book "Early Retirement Extreme" by Jacob Lund Fisker more. He also wrote free blog posts if you want an idea of the philosophy and lifestyle changes without paying for the book. But my example on cooking describes the main idea fairly well: doing things for yourself creates genuine fulfillment in life, opens up new possibilities through relationships and saving money, makes you more engaged in Life, and also removes the number one reason why people spend money: boredom. As a result, it is not even necessarily harder, though it is certainly very different, and the people around you might not get it, but then again you can also find other people to hang around with.

Funnily enough, even though the internet is part of the enslaving technological system, it might be one of the best tools to break out of it, since it allows you to build an income online, which is thus independent of where you live. It also allows you to find like-minded people to contact and build things with, find resources you could never have access to otherwise, etc. So I don't want to give this idea that the "only way" is to leave civilization overnight and start living in the woods - though if you believe you are prepared to do that don't let me stop you.

There are many ways in which the system restricts our actions, but the move that is always available and that always makes a difference is to live consciously. It’s rather generic advice, so to be more concrete: questioning every single purchase and finding ways to find fulfillment without spending much are two good ways to start. Mechanisms like the 40hour workweek ultimately try to extinguish conscious living and make you a passive consumer, but it seems to me that more and more people are waking up to the reality that there are far better ways to live, and that those ways might not be as far away as the system would like us to believe.


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Normalcy     Consumerism     Economy     Bureaucracy     Apathy

2023-11-07