(Note: "the accelerated work week" is derived from the reviews for a fast electric car. Though some people might not feel any reason to be impressed by any terrestrial or existing technology... speed of thought and all that.)
Someone I know said that most people are not aware of the many ways in which they cause damage to society, but expressed hope that in teaching piano lessons they were not helping to create the next Adolf Hitler.
The world is complicated, and it isn't realistic for everyone, or even anyone, to completely understand everything important about it. As long as people acknowledge the possibility of their shortcomings this doesn't need to cause any problems, because it allows other people to distinguish between malicious intent and simple mistakes. Of course, there is no reason to expect that anyone is completely sure that their actions will lead to the intended result but people like to think this of other people anyway because it simplifies decision-making.
So why do rich people work just as hard, or even harder than people with less money? It must first be noted that states or regions with higher average income tend to be 'progressive' or support the US Democratic party, while states with lower average incomes often have a majority of conservative Republican voters. At the same time, extremely rich people are often thought to be mostly supportive of the Republican party.
It has been empirically shown that people with higher incomes tend to have a lower marginal propensity to consume, and it is also thought that money has diminishing marginal utility. The fifth private yacht is not nearly as enjoyable or useful as the second one. So one might assume that once a rich person has enough money to buy everything they could possibly benefit from having in the rest of their life, they might stop working or at least work less.
But evidently many don't and furthermore feel resentful that others would criticize their wealth or attitude toward economic problems.
This is best explained using the ideas of two previous posts on this site: the first describes the 'market failure' which leads to inaccurate standards of judgement, while the second provides evidence that this leads to harmful effects which everyone should be concerned about.
Since the economy is a competitive environment, many rich people are intelligent enough to be aware of the underlying problem and its implications. The idea of 'good' and 'bad', separate from the legal structure, is one of the most fundamental concepts of culture and this explains the role people give it in demonstrating that things are not always as they seem. Rich people can only hope that people will realize that the assumptions they make about economic benefit are wrong and that the judgements of other people are likely to be of limited use in deciding how to accomplish goals, especially economic ones.
So to summarize the above, many rich people feel the need to continue working harder because it might cause them to be thought by others as selfish. This is intended to improve the success rate of things like relationships by not worrying about specific inaccurate standards of judgement, but at the same time rich people cannot conclude that doing so is the most likely to lead to accomplishment of personal goals or the greatest benefit to society as the sum of individual goals.
However, this has the unintended effect of causing people to think that earning a lot of money is also the best way to accomplish the economic goals of society.
As a result, people with mid-range incomes are reluctant to work less when those with even higher incomes, who might be more aware of the underlying problem, are not doing so. Someone with an income of just $450k or so might still find useful things to spend their money on, like private school for children, paying off education loans, hiring gardeners or domestic help etc. Someone with an income of $450m is less likely to find 'useful' things to spend their money on, but revealing this to the less affluent would be tantamount to admitting that earning a lot of money is not, in fact, beneficial to society, or that it represents a sort of sacrifice or compromise in the face of an unsolved problem.
It is almost an amusing situation: poor people think that having some money is good, so having lots of money must be great and the key to being happy even if it is more selfish than, say, donating that money to charity. And so rich people continue to work hard, because this is what causes other people to think they are selfish even if the more intelligent of rich people are completely aware that this is all somewhat of a sham.
If people are to make a dramatic reversal of attitude and agree that perhaps GDP is not the only important number when it comes to how 'successful' an economy is, there might be questions about whether we should expect people with say, $100~500k incomes to decide to work less before people with $10m+ incomes do.
But this is the wrong question, one which implies that we can have an expectation of who might decide to work less. Even if reducing the hours worked was a moral imperative for anyone who could do so, we should still not expect any specific individual to work less because the United States is based on ignoring the prevailing opinion if it is within your interests to do so, and it has already been shown there can be harmful effects when too many people agree on what the "right" thing to do is.
So it is completely fine to say that as a society, we should encourage the use of the accelerated work week while personally choosing not to do so, even if unemployment remains high. If everyone were to agree that the accelerated work week would be good for society and yet no one expresses any desire to work less despite that it is seen as socially acceptable to do, then we simply have another conversation about whether we prefer high unemployment, or taxes or inflation from fiscal stimulus.
But the accelerated work week doesn't work unless the entire management of a company supports it, otherwise working less just leads to discrimination in promotions. Anyone who is interested in fixing unemployment should be prepared to spend at least a little time convincing themselves that this would, in fact, fix unemployment and associated problems, with a minimal or no net cost to the company.
I still don't know if anyone is interested in discussing the problem since there has been so little support up to now. I don't want to think it's because people aren't smart enough to understand it.
Anyone who has played WoW to some extent should know about the 'zerg' that takes place between flags in the PvP battleground of Alterac Valley. AoS-type maps had it a little too but I guess that was just about the travel time causing greater resistance to a wave of units with momentum... I have not played League of Legends though. Alterac Valley was different because 'reinforcements' only happen when defeated but since the other formats have static defenses or three sides I guess the stability isn't that different. More importantly a single individual can have a greater effect in Alterac Valley if they are prepared to ignore the pointless zerg taking place between the two flags. Which of course is partly a result of the incentive design... need more non-shooter games with actual strategy! And intelligent people to play them.
Lower taxes vs fiscal stimulus is the pointless zerg, of course. And people wonder why many female persons are not interested in economic or political discussions..! I hereby declare that anyone who argues for lower taxes or more government spending will get no points for their efforts. Please spread the message that arguing about those issues is not a productive activity.
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