This was fantastic. I'd really enjoy reading the full version if you still have it around somewhere.
The catch that "it ALWAYS appears that things have miraculously gone so well that they haven't needed it" reminds me of a thought I once had about people like Warren Buffett.
Probability theory tells us that in a long enough string of events we'll find a certain number of outliers-- landing on heads 100 times in a row on coin toss, for instance, is very unlikely but is bound to happen given enough trials.
What if certain "extraordinary" people are merely beneficiaries of dumb luck? What if Warren Buffett has no actual investiment skill, but appears so because we never put him in the context of the many thousands of similar individuals who eventually "landed on tails", so to speak?
Getting even further out there-- What if Jesus or other prophets were similar "outliers"? What if their miracles were the one in a million chance, while the other 999,999 times people tried to walk on water, they failed? An extreme example, I know, but it's an interesting thought experiment, I think.
While taking every other Friday off might be beneficial for other reasons, a reduction of worker-hours is unlikely to produce an equal increase in the number of hours available for others. The labor pool is not zero-sum.
One problem is that in many cases two employees working at 50% is less efficient or more expensive than one employee working at 100%.
I really do like the idea of a shortened work week, but the argument that it will reduce employment is a tough sell, and (I believe, but I could be wrong) was tried and failed during the Great Depression.
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This was fantastic. I'd really enjoy reading the full version if you still have it around somewhere.
The catch that "it ALWAYS appears that things have miraculously gone so well that they haven't needed it" reminds me of a thought I once had about people like Warren Buffett.
Probability theory tells us that in a long enough string of events we'll find a certain number of outliers-- landing on heads 100 times in a row on coin toss, for instance, is very unlikely but is bound to happen given enough trials.
What if certain "extraordinary" people are merely beneficiaries of dumb luck? What if Warren Buffett has no actual investiment skill, but appears so because we never put him in the context of the many thousands of similar individuals who eventually "landed on tails", so to speak?
Getting even further out there-- What if Jesus or other prophets were similar "outliers"? What if their miracles were the one in a million chance, while the other 999,999 times people tried to walk on water, they failed? An extreme example, I know, but it's an interesting thought experiment, I think.
While taking every other Friday off might be beneficial for other reasons, a reduction of worker-hours is unlikely to produce an equal increase in the number of hours available for others. The labor pool is not zero-sum.
See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
One problem is that in many cases two employees working at 50% is less efficient or more expensive than one employee working at 100%.
I really do like the idea of a shortened work week, but the argument that it will reduce employment is a tough sell, and (I believe, but I could be wrong) was tried and failed during the Great Depression.