Banning Private Jets and Going to a 4-Day Work Week Are Radical – and Popular

https://gizmodo.com/banning-private-jets-and-going-to-a-4-day-work-week-are-1851221050

by rntn • 2 years ago

33 64 2 years ago

fasthands92• 2 years ago

Four day work weeks are popular in the same way it is both popular that taxes should be lower and public spending are both popular. Degrowth/anti-capitalism are popular to many but even among this subset of people they are very upset (as we have seen) when prices of things go up slightly.

I understand the arguments for the four day work week as it relates to reforms (such as the hours threshold for receiving healthcare could be lower) but that does not seem to be what this author is talking about here.

toomuchtodo7• 2 years ago

Data shows productivity is maintained in the pilots so far. Reverse Parkinson’s Law.

https://www.4dayweek.com/casestudies

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=4+day+week+success

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

https://www.economist.com/news/1955/11/19/parkinsons-law

(Prices will rise and neutral inflation rate higher than historically regardless due to structural demographics globally; importantly, labor has power to enact change as the working population cohort shrinks)

danbruc7• 2 years ago

What about someone driving a bus, working on a production line, ... everything would become almost 20 % more expensive.

fasthands92• 2 years ago

As far as I can tell all those links you posted were case studies involving public administration jobs and bureaucracy. Parkinson's Law is explicitly about this.

It is not at all clear if (or how) productivity would go up in most other jobs, including construction, factory work, barbers, nurses, garbage men, chefs, etc. While technology may make it possible that people are productive per hour, there is no study or even pathway for how a chef (for instance) could produce more meals in 32 hours than 40.

ToucanLoucan2• 2 years ago

Degrowth/anti-capitalism are popular to many but even among this subset of people they are very upset (as we have seen) when prices of things go up slightly.

Citation: trust me dude

I don't really recall getting upset at prices of things going up unless I perceive that the price change has no correlation to the value delivered. I get angry when my cable internet bill would go up $20 every quarter because they were selling me the same (terrible) service still, for a higher price. Just helping themselves to a larger portion of my monthly income while delivering the exact same product.

Or you have the even worse version of that, streaming services that raise their prices, as they're removing content from their libraries.

Conversely, I've personally known tons of people who buy higher priced products for the perceived value they gain. That's an utterly normal thing.

pavel_lishin• 2 years ago

I'm sorry for throwing more anecdotes into the barrel, but our local Facebook groups absolutely lose their shit when things go up in price (or are perceived to go up in price.) Things like fast food places upping the price of a burger, or grocery stores charging a dollar more for eggs than last year, are certainly noticed.

(And honestly, for people on a fixed/limited income, food prices going up are probably a fairly reasonable thing to be upset about!)

timeon2• 2 years ago

Degrowth/anti-capitalism

I think you are merging too much of it here. I was born in communist regime and as far as I can remember degrowth was never popular.

belter• 2 years ago

Please don't ban my private jet. You can all work from home and move to a three day work week...

kkfx3• 2 years ago

shorter workweeks, while perfectly possible according to a classic https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/ are generally used to force people in cities with hybrid works model instead of full remote.

So I claim arrogantly that such proposals and experiments are ultimately AGAINST the declaimed "green goals" IF such goals are green in the sense of spring grass, not in the sense of the dollars dominant color. Private jets since they are a little minority does not count except for PR/emotions (no, I do not have one).

BTW I observe always in "spring grass" green sense that living in dense cities is the most polluting way to live we have. Oh, yes, formally a new high rise building need less energy to heat/cool than an equivalent number of single family homes and being "near" demand less energy for personal daily trips BUT that's not the big picture. Single family homes can be rebuilt "frequently", for instance at a generational change (inheritance, and so on, let's say after 50 years) and the ability to to far shorter personal trips means the need of a much big infra to supply dense zones in food and water. The "TCO" is far higher for high density than for moderate-low density. A classic (well, not ideal but...) study http://www.newgeography.com/content/006840-high-density-and-... as a sample. Oh, and of course a single family home can have p.v. (it it's meaningful where it exists), charge a BEV at home and so on, I do have them now, I couldn't have them in a dense city.

tux1968• 2 years ago

Private jets since they are a little minority does not count except for PR/emotions (no, I do not have one).

They do count. It's incredibly important that elites/leaders have skin in the game, and live by the same rules as those they govern.

Ekaros2• 2 years ago

I personally expect anyone asking for sacrifices, to make even bigger sacrifices themselves. And those that actually impact their quality of live. Like if you want to ban meat, you should be ready to get rid of things like coffee or large selections of fruits and vegetables.

kkfx3• 2 years ago

This is unpopular here but... The green new deal have not much about ecology, at least is marginal, and have much about economy. The substantial targets announced in many occasions are impoverishing the 99% to make them workers operating services they do not own, consuming services to live, balancing their income and expenses to own nothing, no matter how much they earn.

Did you read for instance the "forecasts" of US DNI from the 2004 https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Global%20Trends_Mapping%... with notes about a stop in the development of Democracies to use in the west the China model to counter China or reports like https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... take this: did you see that the main focus is "making people accepting" and whole "urban mobility" is written everywhere try to imaging how such kind of mobility could be possible in dense cities, while it match perfectly sparse areas where some wealthy move and sometimes also reach a city via an small "inter modal node-building"? Did you really think we can produce enough EVs to substitute old cars (old EVs included, a generation after another)? Where did you imaging a p.v. centered electricity production in cities? Where the place to install heat pumps for heating and cooling and sanitary water in high rise apartments buildings?

The entire "material part" of the Green New Deal is about single family homes in a sparse area with some small buildings for commerce, industry, schools and so on. It's NOT about an entire society. We can converge to electricity as we almost have done with IP for signal appliances, but NOT in the way depicted by the green deal for a whole society. It's clear that such scenario is a new old classic, well depicted by this advertisement https://appliedevtolconcepts.com/ witch is not different from the '20s/30s advertisement of a gentleman on a car traveling from a nice home looking at workers in the countryside.

Be aware that not, I'm not from US far right, I'm a EU leftist citizen, having choose to built a new home, an EV, a domestic p.v. and having done the best I can to integrate my home appliance to maximize self-consumption. I know such model could work, but I also know is directed in ways to achieve BEFORE the new deal material part, the new deal "in 2030 you'll own nothing" part. Beside that you can read everywhere from famous economists, certainly not from the far right, like Varoufakis about https://unherd.com/2023/09/capitalism-is-dead-long-live-tech... or generic articles like https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/billionaires-pandemic-wealth-... and so on.

If you really go deeper you'll find this story https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/17/nazis-based-th... and this management school http://www.intellinews.com/ukraine-could-be-a-beacon-about-t... of the same people of the past https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/11/trump-... essentially: those who effectively craft a significant advance in technological terms on the blood of the 99% keeping for themselves a very big slice, those who made the most pollution and the current state of things, who again pretend to be good people with a good recipe to save the world.

vdaea2• 2 years ago

Banning stuff that you can't do is popular for obvious reasons. It's like when the EU overregulates the software industry.

vdaea2• 2 years ago

Also I wonder what some will do with so much free time. I know many men for whom work is a way to escape home with the nagging wife and the kids who don't respect them. I guess they'll spend one more day a week drinking at the pub.

Before someone flags this for being against progressivism, it's just a thought that crosses my mind whenever this comes up. I'm not arguing against it.

graemep• 2 years ago

They will probably have better relationships with their wives, and certainly with their kids, if they spent more time with them.

timeon2• 2 years ago

I know many men for whom work is a way to escape home with the nagging wife and the kids who don't respect them.

Imagine sharing chores, the horror.

kelnos4• 2 years ago

Assuming the trope you mention is common these days (I don't think it is, but sure, let's run with it), perhaps part of the reason for it is the wedge that the working day pushes between the breadwinner and the rest of the family. And perhaps that breadwinner would have a better relationship with spouse and kids if there was a little less work and a little more family time.

Either way, if you don't work and get bored, that's on you. There are so many exciting things to do in our world (many of them low-cost or free, even), that there's no excuse for being bored, except, perhaps, for laziness or a lack of imagination.

seanmcdirmid• 2 years ago

I love my family (no nagging wife or disrespectful kid) but long weekends leave me exhausted. We have to figure out how to keep the kid engaged for a day without school or after school care for an assist. And this is at the same time trying to keep screen time down by providing interesting alternatives.

Coding is much easier than childcare, at least from my perspective. However, I know I’ll look back on my kid’s needy phase with fond memories.

spicyusername• 2 years ago

Hopefully get a divorce and let their wife find a better husband.

jmyeet• 2 years ago

I don't think we need to ban private jets. It should just be more expensive to use them.

Take Taylor Swift as an example. Is she meant to fly commercial? How would that work exactly? She'd get mobbed at the airport, at security, at the gate, on the plane. Just look at what happened when Taylor Swift went to a friend's rehearsal diner in New Jersey recently [1].

It would be a legitimate security issue too. The last one is why many executives of large companies (eg Tim Cook) are banned by their boards from flying commercial.

So, stop making private jets any form of legitimate tax deduction. Give them absolutely no tax advantageous treatment whatsoever. Increase the fuel excises, landing fees, parking fees, you name it. When the amortized flying cost of that jet jumps from $10k/hour to $30k/hour, we'll see who still needs to fly private.

Oh and as for working 4 days a week. Yes. Most jobs are bullshit. Most work is bullshit. Work less, get paid more.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUjXdKEVoBg

gruez2• 2 years ago

So, stop making private jets any form of legitimate tax deduction. Give them absolutely no tax advantageous treatment whatsoever.

AFAIK there's no such "advantageous treatment" for private jets. They're are tax-deductible in the same way that plane tickets (or any other business expense, really) are tax deductible.

kelnos4• 2 years ago

That could change, though. The tax code could have a carve-out that says use of a private plane can't be counted as an ordinary business expense (or cap it at some amount, or some percentage of the cost).

timbit42• 2 years ago

She could make do with commercial flights. Just give her a private boarding to first class.

jemmyw• 2 years ago

What do people expect to happen when they mob a celebrity like that? Like what's the point? They're not going to perform a show for you while waiting in an airport lounge. I can understand the reverent fan who attends every concert and goes out of their way to do so, and I can understand (in a way) the psychopath who wants to take home their body parts, but I cannot understand the fan that wants to ... fill in blank here ... by mobbing and getting in the face of their idol.

wmf2• 2 years ago

When the amortized flying cost of that jet jumps from $10k/hour to $30k/hour, we'll see who still needs to fly private.

I wonder if that would make the PR problem worse by more starkly highlighting extreme inequality.

cscurmudgeon3• 2 years ago

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sapphicsnail2• 2 years ago

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cscurmudgeon3• 2 years ago

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chanakya2• 2 years ago

Whether or not degrowth can be made to work, what this guy is talking about is fantasy. For example:

...That creates some pressure on planetary boundaries. So that means that the Global North needs to consciously degrow because it is over-developing, and has excessive production and consumption.

This will not help. Emissions from the US and Europe now account of about 20% of global emissions and are going down. Emissions from the rest of the world are rising steeply.

sapphicsnail2• 2 years ago

I think it’s [degrowth] in some sense utopian. But believing that capitalism will prosper in the decades to come is utopian too, because we will have more natural disasters, inflation, wars — and these will all accelerate with the climate crisis. So it’s naive to think that our way of life will somehow continue.

He admits several times that this isn't a concrete solution and that the global south will continue to grow but the point remains that we can't really continue what we're doing.

*Edited to mark the quote

chanakya2• 2 years ago

There were more wars and disasters before capitalism, not fewer. In recent times, both wars and fatal disasters have dropped drastically.

cscurmudgeon3• 2 years ago

He is a Marxist shilling his books. There is nothing intellectual or deep worth critiquing here more than what you have in your comment.

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

Germany explores 4-day workweek amid labor shortage

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39219344

sirdarius• 2 years ago

Maybe a dumb question, but what does "banning private jets" actually mean? Do we ban the actual planes themselves, as in, crack down on plane manufacturers to somehow restrict them from building small passenger capacity jet planes? And if so, what minimal capacity should be the threshold? Or do we ban private companies and individuals from flying jet planes under said hypothetical capacity? Another possibility might be to ban non-scheduled flights using jet planes.

In any case, who would have the authority to enforce this internationally, ICAO I guess? It does not appear like something they would even consider, their efforts being targeted towards implementing CORSIA (Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation) instead.

Now to go even further, let's hypothesize that private jets are banned. What about non jet planes, as in props or turbo-props engines? Perfomance in terms of speed can be close to jet planes. Take for example the Piaggio Avanti EVO, which can reach around 740 km/h. While its fuel consumption is notably lower than similar jet planes, it's still higher per passenger than commercial flights. We can imagine a strong market demand for them will appear, to replace the banned model range. So should non jet private planes be banned as well? Even models like Cessna 172 and such?

wmf2• 2 years ago

It's not a serious policy suggestion so the details don't matter.

Coincidentally I went down a Piaggio Avanti rabbit hole recently; it sounds quite cool.

Banning Private Jets and Going to a 4-Day Work Week Are Radical – and Popular

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