Comment by Nasrudith

I noticed there wasn't so much as a word about labor substitutability and the tyranny of logistics. Just like the famous example of how nine fertile women can't produce a baby in one month, there are task differences between hiring say one programmer for eight hours or two programmers for four hours. More communication overhead at the very least, let alone other logistical changes. In order for such changes in practice they would need to demonstrate that the change would be better for such a retooling to take place.

All this is before getting into scarcity of labor as a factor for making such changes unviable to undesriable. Even if we had fully automated basics provided for it wouldn't make sense to cut down on the hours for the remainder that are in high demand and limited supply due to reasons like requiring talent and/or other personality qualities (most people don't have it in them to be a surgeon cutting people open even if their skill level is irrelevant), and have a high lead time in "production". We just plain wouldn't have enough qualified top end people to deal with the number of people who need say brain surgery to have brain surgeons working fifteen hour weeks. Even if it was somehow the norm elsewhere in the economy they would be paid/incentivized up to work longer hours than others.

And this is before touching the final issue of "would there be enough productivity produced with a fifteen hour week" to support the resulting society? You have to do the math here, you can't just assume "it's the CEO's fault for being paid so much" when if the math actually says that even if you could do that they would actually get $2.52 more a year.

Unfortunately upon closer examination the projection of fifteen hour work weeks amounted to just wishcasting.