On Tue, 24 Aug 2010, Jeremy MountainJohnson wrote: > This theory of yours and reality example may equate to more happiness, > but economic prosperity would suffer. How do you know that? Don't people want to do good work? > You're talking about taking away the carrot on the stick- everyone would > be happier but no one is chasing a carrot or having much motivation to > do more. Meh, 5 hours of work = more family time no hurry to work longer > hours and advance technology or cure diseases any time soon (not saying > this would go away). Economically things would slow; which is fine, I'd > rather be happier myself, but this isn't ideal from an economical > productivity stand point. It's not better for your boss, I guess. Not better for corporations who want to drive people to do more for the corporation for less pay. I don't know, but I think advancing technologies and finding cures for diseases are things that people want to do anyway. I work with Danish researchers and they are really into what they are doing and they work hard at it. The man with both MD and PhD who works 60 hours a week isn't going to become very rich, but he isn't doing this so that he can live in the big house on the hill and look down his nose at his neighbors. He just loves learning and science and he wants to contribute. I'm sure he also likes the prestige accorded to his research successes. The Danes are fairly homogeneous ethnically. They can't be played the way we are with arguments about the immigrants and the black welfare queens stealing all of our hard earned money. They have some problems with immigrants, as you've heard (the cartoon of Muhammed case) but that is a small thing, at least so far. Mike