KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU (12/23/86)
From: Richard A. Cowan <COWAN@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
... I say why not go to a 30-hour week.
I say who is stopping you? Nothing prevents you from making
arrangements with your employer to work 30 hours a week, or 30
minutes, or 80 hours, or whatever you would like.
Or are you saying the rest of us should be forced to work no more
than 30 hours per week? What is to prevent us? Should people be
imprisoned or put to death for working too much? Should employers be
forced to pay people the same wages for 3/4 as much work, even if it
drives them bankrupt? Or should employees be forced to accept 3/4 the
wages, even if it drives them to poverty?
Ten hours more free time to be creative beats the advantages of
the wasteful products that work would create any day.
Who decides which products are wasteful? On what grounds?
Perhaps this is going out to the wrong audience, because we are
members of a privileged elite that is allowed to be creative.
Others are forbidden from being creative? By whom?
Am I to take it that members of this elite are to be allowed to work
40 or more hours a week? It is only the peons that are to be denied
their freedom?
What will guarantee that these commoners spend their ten extra hours
being creative, rather than drinking beer and watching TV? Is there
to be a Thought Police checking up on them? Will the Thought Police
also be restricted to 30 hours weeks, or are they part of the C.E.?
Never trust a man who proclaims himself a member of an elite.
Especially if he includes you in the elite and excludes most everyone
else.
...Keith
-------