And I think that if these were the optimal way for society to operate, we would already been doing it. Capitalism and Communism, in the form of bartering and tribes exist since the first societies.
> Strange how we, in the UK, have an eight hour day, weekends, public holidays, sick pay, and maternity and paternity leave, then. Or that France has a legally mandated 35-hour working week.
To make it clear, if France started to decline compared to other countries economically where their competitors have a labor force doing better work and spending more time, something would have to change. Wannabe "productivity" would go up don't show in numbers.
"And I think that if these were the optimal way for society to operate, we would already been doing it."
Why? That seems like an extraordinarily implausible claim to me. Presumably you don't think human societies at all times and places are 'optimal', so why would the Western world at the present moment be? And in any case, what is understood to be optimal is historically variable, which is, in part, my point: maybe we should realign our culture.
"Capitalism and Communism, in the form of bartering and tribes exist since the first societies."
Again, I profoundly disagree. Capitalism is a historically specific configuration of social, economic and legal arrangements. It requires that the economy be elevated into an independent sphere of production and exchange, free of direct political control (contrary to feudalism). It requires the creation of a large surplus population, driven out of subsistence agriculture (the historical norm for the last six-thousand years), who come to depend for the means of life on renting themselves out to a small elite with a monopoly on the means of production. It requires this to be at a sufficient scale that large profits can be ploughed back into investment in a cumulative process of self-expansion. This has generally required a certain amount of stability, a powerful military base, and sophisticated trade networks, among much else (as in Northern Italy in the middle of the last millennium, or the Dutch imperial network after that, or the British Empire after that). Similar things can be said about communism - though it's more complicated.
"If France started to decline compared to other countries economically where their competitors have a labor force doing better work and spending more time, something would have to change".
Why would they do 'better work'? Generally, if people do less hours of work, their productivity in the hours they do work goes up. Part of the point of reducing working hours is to redistribute those hours more evenly. So it is not simply a reduction; it is also an addition. But I would assume net working hours would decline, and thus net GDP. I don't see why that's a problem.
"Wannabe "productivity" would go up don't show in numbers".
> Again, I profoundly disagree. Capitalism is a historically specific configuration of social, economic and legal arrangements.
You are just talking about scales here. What I mean is that we basically have two different ways of subsisting: by working individually and trading or by working collectively and be part of a social welfare system. There is no proven third option were a huge chunk of a population's society didn't need to work for it to work. Might happen in the future, but I don't think so.
(1) It is an act of stupefying reduction to claim that every human society, across space and time, can be fitted into one of two models. That is just not very insightful or helpful. I am not talking about 'scales', I am talking about qualitative historical transformations.
(2) I am not suggesting that people do no work, I am suggesting they do less work.
> Strange how we, in the UK, have an eight hour day, weekends, public holidays, sick pay, and maternity and paternity leave, then. Or that France has a legally mandated 35-hour working week.
To make it clear, if France started to decline compared to other countries economically where their competitors have a labor force doing better work and spending more time, something would have to change. Wannabe "productivity" would go up don't show in numbers.