
South Korea has limited a working week to 52 hours, in order to stop overwork - dsr12
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/south-korea-is-trying-to-stop-overwork-by-limiting-the-maximum-workweek-to-52-hours
======
torpfactory
The amount of work we do is such a complicated issue. Here are a few primer
questions to get you started:

How do we quantify amount worked on the continuum of knowledge workers vs.
physical laborers?

How much are working hours determined by personal preferences and desires
(getting promoted, actually enjoy job, etc) vs. demands imposed by
management/project requirements?

How much of time worked depends on the culture (of a company, of an industry,
of a country)?

How to quantify work "in the office" vs. at home "answering a few emails? Some
people like being really flexible. I personally prefer very binary working/not
working lifestyle.

How much should we work throughout our careers (I prefer the idea that we can
"turn down the volume" on work during child rearing years, but this is in
direct opposition to typical career advancement timelines)?

Is there any reasonable definition of a "full work week"? What is it (40
hours?)

Should we have a minimum wage at all? Does a minimum wage increase
productivity by artificially making labor more expensive?

~~~
themagician
All of these come after the question: “What is life worth?”

In both the US and in most Asian cultures work is worth more than life for the
vast majority of the average lifespan. Working long hours is considered a
badge of honor. In the US you work towards retirement—that’s the goal. That’s
the endgame.

The fundamental question is: is that right? Is it worth it? Should we spend 40
years trying to make as money as we can so that we can then do nothing? The
entire system, from top to bottom, is designed for this. And we give little
breaks in between those 40 years so people don’t become depressed and kill
themselves.

Whenever I hear about people justify why they work so hard it’s almost always
because they want to become rich so they won’t have to work. It makes me think
of that line from Office Space, “You don't need a million dollars to do
nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin. He's broke and he don't do shit.“

We do what the media tells us because we never stop to think about what we
actually want.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
You need to consider what work and, more generally, what society is. Society
is fundamentally a group of people working together to satisfy each others
needs and wants. Work, or productivity, is making progress towards this goal
and is something we tend to reward with money, though not always.

I think a fair analogy for society's productivity is a grocery store. Imagine
there was a grocery store, the only grocery store in existence that also
happened to be the only way to get food. Everybody would come in and take
whatever they needed, but you didn't necessarily have to pay. If only some
people don't pay this isn't that big a deal - the grocery store as a whole
eats the losses but continues working more or less fine. And for those that
simply cannot pay at all, well - there's not really any other option. But then
there are those that could pay, but for whatever reason, do not. If enough
people did this - the store would eventually go out of business as it would
not be making enough to sustain itself. If everybody just did as they want,
society would collapse.

More generally here money is an indicator of how much you've contributed to
society. People look at disbelief at how much Jeff Bezos is worth, yet somehow
think nothing of how much Amazon has completely revolutionized the world of
purchasing things as well as brought prices to lower than ever levels. The
reason he's worth as much as he is is because he has contributed _immensely_
to society.

Of course the system isn't ideal and some people manage to make enormous
amounts of money while contributing next to nothing to society - people who
deal with finance are the prototypical example here. And similarly there are
also people that contribute immensely to society, yet never see much in the
way of reward from it. Herman Melville is now seen as one of the more
important individuals in our literary history, yet received no recognition
during his life and died without his work ever really being recognized, let
alone rewarded.

Yet for all of its flaws, our system does generally do a good job of creating
a system where people who contribute to society are rewarded which creates a
strong incentive system to contribute to society, even if only to make
yourself rich in the process.

~~~
msiyer
If Jeff Bezos' contribution to society is so immense that he deserves all the
billions he has amassed, what about the scientists and mathematicians of the
world who died in poverty, but on whose shoulders the modern world is built
upon?

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Can you give me just a few names of important scientists who died in poverty
for reasons outside their own actions?

~~~
msiyer
Tesla, Ramanujan, Gutenberg...

"Poverty" is a strong word. I could have used a different word.

What I really wanted to convey is that Gutenberg, Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi,
Tesla, Gauss and plenty others deserved to be billionaires if Bezos deserves
his billions.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
Your choice of names is not compelling.

\- Tesla was a multi millionaire during his life who decided to risk, and
lose, his wealth pursuing ideas that did not work out.

\- Gutenberg was granted royal title along with all the privileges of such
including an endless stipend and industrial volumes of grain and wine during
the 15th century. Works from his press sold, during his life, for what was
years of salary per copy. He was almost certainly a millionaire, though my
point was primarily related to capitalist societies. The 15th century was
still more feudal come mercantalistic.

\- Curie won the nobel prize which entailed a prize of hundreds of thousands
of dollars and a solid gold medal - almost certainly totaling in the millions
of dollars as well.

And so on. And in many ways a billionaire of today is what a millionaire of
times past was. I don't mean because of inflation but in terms of relative
scarcity and effective 'power.' Ramanujan is the closest to a reasonable
example, but there are significant extenuating circumstances there. He was
religious to the point of bordering on insanity, grew up in colonial India,
and had no interest in anything other than the private pursuit of his mostly
abstract mathematical works. Whatever he may have 'deserved', he certainly was
able to live his life as he wanted.

The big point here though is that this is not a coincidence. When people
contribute to society, they tend to be rewarded. There are certainly some
exceptions, but the great thing is that they are now a days, without doubt,
the exceptions.

~~~
msiyer
"The big point here though is that this is not a coincidence. When people
contribute to society, they tend to be rewarded."

Getting rich and contributing to society are very different things. A
footballer is almost always going to be richer than a professor in a top-class
university. Drug barons are rich, but I doubt they are contributing to
society.

Bankers are getting richer. They created the recession and profited from it.
The hardworking common man paid for their success. I do not think it is as
simple as you say it is.

As I said, "poverty" was the not the right word. Otherwise, the examples are
just fine. Curie in particular. She refused to patent Radium. It is hard to
comprehend in an era where even simple geometric figures, colors and fonts are
being patented.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
You're conflating contributing with some sort of subjective utilitarian type
view. People want drugs, drug barons facilitate their availability - this is a
substantial and highly productive contribution to society. To emphasize how
arbitrary value systems can be, you might consider an opera singer to be
contributing to society. But they're providing the exact same product to
society that a footballer does - entertainment.

But back on the scientists, poverty was not just the wrong word - it was the
wrong idea. Most of the people you listed lived lives as pleasant as they
desired and could have retired in complete comfort at various points in their
career. Of course that would not make these sort of people happy. Instead they
mostly lived normal lives (in terms of standard), and put their money back
into furthering their research and in many ways right back into society.

The same is true, though in a different way, for Bezos. He will likely never,
in his entire life, spend more than a tiny fraction of a percent of his wealth
on himself and his family. The vast majority of it will end up going back to
society working to do his part to try to bring humanity into the space age.
This isn't to say he lives modestly, but rather it exposes an interesting
difference. When most people think of being a billionaire most don't think of
what they could create, instead they think of what they could buy. Yet the
former mindset creates wealth and the latter destroys it.

When Bezos was in his teens he worked one summer at a McDonalds. He hated it.
The next summer decided to found the 'Dream Institute' which was a 10 day camp
for younger kids. He only got 6 signups, but at $600 a child he probably
earned vastly more than he did at McDonalds and provided a great service to
society at the same time. No doubt his idea was heavily incentivized by money
and that's the beautiful thing about our system. When you create things, you
tend to be rewarded. And on that note, I'm going to dodge the banker issue. I
do agree with you there and while productivity tends to be rewarded, it's not
an exclusive relationship. E.g. - those that are nonproductive can also find
substantial reward at times. However, I think the issue with banks is far more
complex than 'they create [and profit from] recessions so they're bad' or
'they lend money to create businesses so they're good'.

------
scotchio
I was just having a dumb convo with a friend about how JUST a simple 3-day
weekend can make you way more productive for like the next 2 weeks.

Refreshed, on top of personal life stuff, and ready to go. Why do we work 5
on, 2 off? How did that _naturally_ become the standard.

I'd argue that if our economy did a rolling 5 on, 3 off for everyone the whole
output would net MORE productivity overall

~~~
erkaes
I think this might work for cognitive-based works like programming but not for
muscle-based works like doing constructions.

~~~
scotchio
Yep, true

------
jadedhacker
Hopefully a tighter labor market will result in higher wages for workers,
reducing the necessity of overtime. There's some evidence that in the united
states that employers are so powerful that even the tightest labor market in
years isn't increasing wages.

EDIT: However, can you imagine such reforms being implemented here? This is
the power of a leftist coalition capturing the state. As mild a reform as this
is, it stretches the imagination for what is possible here.

~~~
dev_dull
What evidence do you have that it's employers who are powerful holding down
wages? Being a small business owner in America sucks. You can barely afford to
employ anybody.

~~~
yulaow
Honestly, that's what says any employer in any part of the world. I am
currently in a SW-EU state and I hear the same exact words every day, and here
the work market is far more heavy regulated and taxed.

------
stockkid
It is one thing to enact a policy and another to actually see to that it is
enforced.

And I feel that it will be particularly hard to enforce the reduced working
week in the South Korean culture that often puts group ahead of individual.
Perhaps any movement to follow the regulation will be construed as a selfish
as attempt to defy the common good of the group.

~~~
mcrae
Large companies actually enforce this fairly well.

For instance, there is software on employees' computers which will hard
shutdown the computer after a couple warnings. Companies which offer transport
for employees have curtailed bus service from last departure at 12am to last
departure at around 9pm.

It is implemented in a fairly interesting way though. Before the new
regulation, the overtime policies were calculated on a weekly basis. Now it is
done on monthly basis. I think this is done to allow you to 'burst' above the
52h limit in some weeks while staying in compliance on monthly basis.

Note that companies will deduct an hour a day for breaks whether you use it or
not. So even a 52h week can mean 52+5=57/5=11.4h per day. So 5 straight nearly
12h days is technically not considered overtime.

~~~
aaronmdjones
From the article; it's a 40-hour week plus 12 hours of overtime, so under your
model, 5 straight 9-hour days is not considered overtime, and anything more
is.

------
fourthark
> Being forced to soften the rollout of the policy indicates how much the plan
> was driven by the government, rather than workers themselves that rely on
> overtime to earn enough money.

That changes the story, doesn't it? With so many of us ineligible for overtime
in the US, being "management", we may wonder why anyone would work quite that
much.

~~~
njarboe
It seems that in the US that having to pay more for overtime is hurting people
more than it helps them at this point. Especially people on the lower end of
the wage scale. If you want/need to work more then usually you have too have
two jobs with all the extra commuting and scheduling. It would be better if
people could work 60hr for one employer instead of two.

~~~
throwaway2048
Shouldnt we be focusing on the fact that people need to work 60 hours rather
than accomidating the system that enables it.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Shouldnt we be focusing on the fact that people need to work 60 hours rather
> than accomidating the system that enables it.

"Need" is relative. Programmers don't "need" to work 80 hour weeks, but if
it's the difference between getting paid $80,000 and $160,000, some people
will choose the longer hours, and there isn't inherently anything wrong with
that.

So why is it wrong when someone whose base salary is $25,000 makes the same
choice?

~~~
throwaway2048
because the programmer has a real choice to choose to make less money, and not
work as much, at a different job.

The person who's base sallary is $25,000 has no choice to work a different job
for less money, esp when every job is making the same demands (you could be
100% certan every service job would be)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
How does the lower wage person not have the same choice? Working 40 hours pays
$25,000, working 80 hours pays $50,000. Why should a person not have this
choice?

------
msiyer
Being a workaholic is not much different from being an alcoholic. These are
different forms of addiction. All workaholic societies are destroying
themselves due to health complications and declining birthrates. Also, the
problems of poverty and absolutely ridiculous wealth distribution patterns
seem unsolvable. What more is needed to understand that the economy in its
current form does not work in the long term?

------
sandworm101
Unless they have also come up with a solid definition of "work", this will be
meaningless. Does it include work done from home? Work done on your own time?
Will it allow us to turn off the cellphone all weekend?

I say this as a government worker spending his Saturday night doing an online
course I need to complete before a training day on Tuesday. I'm on salary and
so do not get overtime. But to compete I have to pull the rabbit from the hat
and somehow get everything done. That means doing work-related tasks in my own
time. (This is a busy month. Things will get easier later in the year and
everyone knows it. Nobody is complaining.)

~~~
hocuspocus
Having worked 5 years in Korea I'd say the worst offenders don't let people
work from home anyway. The main issue is that there's typically _already_ a
maximum overtime per week you can clock in. But this doesn't stop anyone to
work beyond the limit and not claim those hours.

Edit: HN is funny sometimes, I'm downvoted for stating simple facts. At least
you could elaborate on how I somehow offended you.

~~~
OSButler
Not to mention company outings/excursions during the weekends and additional
courses/education after work. Japan is usually coming up when talking about
crazy work hours, but South Korea appeared to be just as bad, so I'm curious
how such regulation would actually apply if all those extra hours are not
being counted to your actual work hours.

------
Bahamut
An aside to the main content of the article, I found interesting that Mexico
topped the list - Mexicans seem to uphold the stereotype that they’re super
hard workers.

~~~
philliphaydon
Japan is listed lower than the United States, and even New Zealand, so I can't
really tell how valid this information is.

Japan culture for working long ours is insane, you simply do not leave the
office before your boss, people sit at the desks doing nothing until the boss
leaves. This mindset exists in Korea too.

~~~
Bahamut
This probably includes more than just office jobs.

------
therajiv
Seems like this could have dramatic effects on some professions where 60+ hour
workweeks are typical even outside of Korea, e.g. being an early startup
employee or adhering to the strenuous pro gamer practice schedule. While it's
probably not healthy to work that much, in the short-term, throwing more time
at a job depending on the profession can sometimes optimize your reward
function.

------
mancerayder
The modern work week is a sort of (21st century version of) indentured
servitude for some, and a fantastic opportunity for learning/advancement for
others. Unfortunately, you don't really get to choose and must try to coax
yourself into believing the latter if you really want to be an FTE. In nowhere
is this more obvious in tech where over the course of 15+ years I've
experienced:

"This is NOT a 9-5 role, we expect you to do what it takes to keep things
running"

"You're a highly paid engineer, therefore you should expect overtime"

"This is a 24/7/365 shop, and everyone is expected to be available at all
times"

"This is a startup, and everyone is expected to be available at all times"

"This is a financial company, and everyone is expected to be available at all
times"

(fellow team members) "Yup, this is a tech role, what do you expect. That's
just the way it is"

And so on and so forth.

My thoughts on this are:

1) Some people like working long hours, some people don't, but all must
conform to the long-hours lowest common denominator. Without realizing it,
we're conforming to an ideology that benefits senior
management/founders/shareholders. Is that good or bad? It depends on your
position in life, but let's call it what it is.

2) Employment contracts don't contain hours, so sometimes you don't know
you're going to have unpaid overtime in the form of on-call or crunch time
until several weeks after you've started. This is indentured servitude because
while you CAN quit the job (unlike the 17th century variant), you lose health
care and ability to pay your mortgage/rent.

3) Salaries are high in tech, but if you take someone making, for example,
$200,000 US, which is considered a lot, and you divide it by someone working
50 hours a week, they're only making $77 an hour.

4) I decided to become a consultant, which means I make significantly more
than that, I get to keep myself physically fit because I have time to do so,
and I'm a much happier person as a result. Want me to work overtime? With
pleasure.

5) When you're a consultant, people think twice before putting you on-call or
asking you to work 50-60 hours. When you're an employee, however...

[Edit:] My philosophy in life is: you can make more money later, but you can
NEVER get your time back. Keep that in mind before signing dotted lines.

* Everything I've just said is US-specific. Europeans have slightly better laws to protect against certain abuses.

------
mrhappyunhappy
It's clear by reading comments who here has children and who does not. If work
is more fun to you than spending time with your children then there's
something wrong. When I see comments like "I can't imagine anything more fun
than work" I tend to think about my personal reflection upon my own standing
in life in relation to work, which is "if I didn't have to work, I would spend
all of my time being the best dad that I can be". Lucky for me I am home all
day so I count my blessings already. I work so I can have a more comfortable
home for myself and my family. Sure, sometimes - a lot of times that work is
fun and addicting but nothing compares to the joy of being around my son.

~~~
sneak
Children are optional and expensive, which makes them a luxury. Not everyone
chooses to spend their time and money on luxuries such as children.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Children are optional on an individual basis, but not on a societal basis. A
society that does not produce sufficient numbers of children now will collapse
in a few decades when the ratio of retirees to working age adults becomes too
high.

~~~
sneak
That’s okay. Societies that continue to have fucktons of children will also
collapse in a few decades, but in a markedly different way, with a lot more
suffering.

------
fareesh
How does this work exactly?

If you are an employee and your boss calls you and asks you to work the 53rd
hour, what do you do?

~~~
pboutros
Your response is presumably somewhere between: (1) what you'd do if your boss
asked you to murder someone (2) what you'd do if your boss asked you to make
them a coffee.

(In all seriousness, you probably just go to their labor board website and
fill out a form or something.)

~~~
fareesh
I guess my point was that it's complicated from a relationship point of view.
Let's say I've worked 3 years at a particular job. This law goes into effect.
The following week my boss asks me to do 53 hours of work.

What do I do now? I don't want to do the 53rd hour. Do I say no to the boss?
Sure maybe he can't _legally_ do anything punitive, but that doesn't mean he
won't. What happens to my relationships at work? What happens when my peers
decide to do the 53rd hour of work and so they are seen as more valuable to
the company? Do management folks start seeing me as less of a team player?

What if I go to the labor board? Now the company is chastized for asking me to
work beyond 53 hours. What does that do for my relationships at work? My
reviews? Promotion prospects?

Let's say I move to another job. Word gets around that I'm a litigious sort of
guy who goes to the labour board when I'm asked to work more than 52 hours.

Does this law protect me in a practical way? Is enforcing this law possible in
a practical way, which does not cause other problems for the employee?

~~~
jackvalentine
Changing cultures requires courage - if you can’t be the one putting
themselves on the line then the least you can do is not be the one oppressing
them for doing so.

------
zavi
What if I want to work a lot? For example, if I want to do something with my
life and my job fulfills that need. Do they just force employers to pay
overtime or am I not allowed to work beyond those hours anyways?

------
miguelrochefort
This is ridiculous.

It all depends on the person and the job. Some people can work a lot more than
others. Likewise, some jobs are less demanding than others.

This is just as bad as minimum wage laws.

How do these people come up with such absurd laws?

~~~
yongjik
> How do these people come up with such absurd laws?

52 hours per week is 7.5 hours every day, including weekends, or 10.4 hours
every day assuming you work Mon-Fri. If the society (or the mythical free
market) could regulate itself so that people don't have to work this crazy
hours to earn living, we wouldn't have this "absurd" law.

Unfortunately, the South Korean society has failed to regulate itself. Hence
the law. The very fact that some pundits and employers are crying loudly shows
why this law was necessary.

You know, when you go to any restaurant (in the US), "Maximum Occupancy 140"
signs look just as absurd. What will happen when the 141st patron walks in?
Will the building crumble down or what?

...Except that these regulations were written with people's blood.

~~~
miguelrochefort
If Koreans really want to work less, then some company would reduce the work
week to 40 hours and get flooded with all of Korea's best employees.

The fact that this hasn't happened means that something else is preventing the
market from regulating itself.

Perhaps people prefer to work longer hours and possibly earn more. Perhaps the
market is very competitive and this is the only way to stay relevant. Perhaps
something makes it difficult for companies to hire more employees. Perhaps
Korean people can work 68 hours with little diminishing return. Perhaps the
taxes are too high. I don't know.

~~~
yongjik
> If Koreans really want to work less, then some company would reduce the work
> week to 40 hours and ...

... another big company that deals with them will call them on 5 pm Friday,
request an extra shipment by 10 am next Monday, get angry ("What do you mean?
Weekend? Do I look like your friend?") and cancel the deal. The company goes
bankrupt.

You don't know much about Korean work culture, do you.

------
8bitsrule
6.5 8-hour days, huh? Welp ... guess that's a tentative start.

------
dogruck
This is bad regulation. Moving on.

------
swfsql
It will work for sure since bureaucrats always know better how to make
everyone happy.

Maybe workers will get less net income (and on a per hour as well) since
employers will have to robotize or spend time training newcomers, but we can
attack evil employers so who cares.

------
tomohawk
The best limit for something like this would be to just move to hourly pay. If
people were paid for each hour worked, it would be self limiting.

I've heard that in some countries, such as France, they actually post police
outside of office parks to arrest people who work "too many hours". Makes it
hard to start a business when you're limited in how much sweat equity you can
put into it.

And I'm sure police have better things to do than to prevent people working.

------
zebraflask
These are the same people who overpay for BTC and, if I remember an HN article
from a little while ago, have "death ceremonies" where their employees are
made to imagine their own deaths to prove loyalty to the company.

Make of that what you will.

------
benatkin
What if John McCarthy or Richard Feynman had been limited to 52 hours a week?
Or more recently, pg or sama? Or less recently, Albert Einstein or Alan
Turing?

Edit: I posted it without reading the article, but it's worse than expected.
Execs can go to prison.

Edit 2: Having a working hour limit applied across the board could result in
knowledge workers having to track their time, which works great for some but
not for others.

~~~
claudiawerner
I don't think it's wise to be against this law _because_ some people might be
limited; by and large, this is a good thing - it means that workers are
exploited less, it means that there will be consequences for those who force
workers to work so much overtime in a culture in which you're not seen as
being dedicated enough if you refuse to do overtime.

I immediately thought "the people you've named would just continue to work
anyway, because they're 'the greats'", but I also realised that some of them
would need specialised equipment, the sort that would be closed off outside of
the hours permitted. Perhaps there should be some system in which such people
can apply to use the eqipment outside of hours. But it could be that bosses
(or even employees themselves, feeling pressured) would apply to use them,
citing personal reasons rather than "work reasons".

But in the end, I really don't see it as a bad thing that "execs can go to
prison"; I think that unless there are serious consequences, and the law only
has monetary fines (which matter less and less so long as they aren't large
proportions of revenue) then the law will be skirted or simply violated.

In the end, I really think this law does more good than it does potential
harm. Overwork is a serious issue, but your proposal that we shouldn't have it
raises important questions. Employers discovered in the 20th century that it
would be efficient for the direction of the employee's conatus aligns with the
company's, such that the employee will feel joy and even want to work longer
hours - this of course being more effective than the older system (usually
employed in manual labour with few levels of management) of taking advantage
of the basal desire for material reproduction. With longer hours, it's easier
for an employer to push this desire to the employee.

And by the way, I was much more convinced of your argument with regard to
people like McCarthy, Feynman, Einstiein and Turing than our friends pg and
sama :-)

~~~
sokoloff
> I don't think it's wise to be against this law because some people might be
> limited; by and large, this is a good thing

I don't like infringing the freedom of individual workers to contract as they
see fit. Pursuit of happiness and all that...

(I'm also opposed to minimum wage and pro-sustenance-UBI.)

~~~
claudiawerner
Although I doubt we'd come to any agreement (I don't subscribe to liberalism
nor the same ideas of contextual freedom you do), I'm curious: what would you
say about the freedom to sell oneself into slavery? Is there such thing as
"voluntary servitude" to you?

I think a more nuanced view is required: how do these freedoms arise, what
makes one person work for another, is the subjecitvist-individualist
philosophy the end of liberal politics, how do desires form and conatus aligns
under modern capitalism, and does the pursuit of happiness entail the
requirement for the desire to employ others for a goal that they don't have an
_interest_ in (in the Spinozist sense of desire), what is the role of money
(or money-capital) (and its pursuit) in the desires, and what role does the
education system play in nurturing such desires? All these are questions of
interest, and I don't think they can be whisked away with a sentence accusing
the law of "infringing freedom". There are much greater injustices with regard
to our freedom right in front of us in this mode of economic organisation.

~~~
sokoloff
Stopping me from choosing to work 60 hours a week in order to get myself and
family ahead seems quite different from stopping me selling myself into
slavery, so I'll assume the question was merely exploratory.

I don't believe that selling oneself into slavery ought to be legal.

I do think that educational loans are fairly close to "voluntary servitude"
and that educational lending ought to be legal.

~~~
claudiawerner
Of course it's different to sell yourself into slavery, but it still asks the
question: are you in favour of "the freedom for individual workers to contract
as they see fit", or are you not? I'd say that the qualitative difference
between longer and longer work weeks ("freely contracted", as you might say)
and slavery tends to zero. The fact that you _need_ to work 60 hours a week to
get you and your family ahead is precisely the problem that the law is trying
to solve - and any social law, for that matter. It's a worker's rights law,
set amidst late capitalism in a modern "democratic" country, as such it will
target two things: allowing employers to keep employing people (but not
excessively) and allowing employees to survive (but not "for nothing"). This
is the goal of any capitalist mode of organisation, and this is but a tug of
the rope in favour of labour rather than capital, but capitalism is
characterised by the endless tug here and there between capital and labour.

~~~
sokoloff
If you put a gun to my head and force me to choose between "individuals can
freely sell themselves into slavery" and "individuals do not have freedom to
work as hard as they want", I'll choose the former.

