4 day work week would mean 20% more free time for entertainment businesses to capitalise on and yet none of them have realised how beneficial this would be to their industries specifically if adopted throughout society. If they did then they'd be campaigning for it as significantly as they propagandise about anything else. Pandemic even provided exact data for just how much entertainment industry is tied to how much free time people have but they wrote it off in their heads as being caused by being locked inside by the lockdowns instead of tying it to free time specifically.
You underestimate how much capitalists hate poor people. There are several things things that would help the economy that rich people won't do because because it would mean giving money to poor people.
Putting money in the hands of poor people tends to help the economy because they have to spend it Rich people who have more than they need just sit on it or move it around to other rich idiots.
But we'll always do trickle down instead of trickle up because "Poor people don't deserve money"
More leisure time would mean more time to become educated and/or form real bonds within communities (again).
People breaking free of the "cuck mindset" that is prevalent under capitalism of "it is natural to have unaccountable, non-elected, non-workers own the company/corp and steal profits from workers" is the ultimate fear.
I'm not sure WHY that mindset hasn't already broken, everyone inherently knows stockholders and basically everyone above a direct manager of workers does jack shit, everyone knows this, yet they don't go to the logical step of "we could just eliminate the people doing nothing, take their ill gotten capital, and make them workers too..." Very quickly societies everywhere could reduce overall working hours once commodity production purely for profit of an owner class is no longer the priority of every industry.
That doesn't mean not producing ANY commodities, but the ones which are produced would not be purposely shit-quality, built with obsolescence in mind to force more production sooner. They would be designed to "last forever" within reason.
Yes it would mean less labor (bring this up IRL and listen to people howl over this).... and that's a good thing AS LONG AS labor has already taken the reigns of government power, seized all industries and resource extraction, and has a (true) democratic government in place that ensures the meaningful existence of all people.
Cummunism
Unfortunately, we seem to be rocketing towards a future more like that (kinda shitty but good idea) movie "Elysium" from like 10 years ago. Where the ultra wealthy live almost like humanities' gods, literally up in the heavens, because they hoarded all the life improving technologies for themselves. We already see some level of that happening if you look at the entirely separated-from-reality life that billionaires live while shooting themselves up with crazy serums to turn into jacked bodybuilders at the age of 55.
More leisure time would mean more time to become educated and/or form real bonds within communities (again).
People breaking free of the "cuck mindset" that is prevalent under capitalism of "it is natural to have unaccountable, non-elected, non-workers own the company/corp and steal profits from workers" is the ultimate fear.
I'm convinced that it would not. The effect would be similar to providing cheap housing and nice socdem reforms on welfare etc. People would just be living better, we know from experience that people living better translates to less revolutionary energy rather than more.
they wrote it off in their heads as being caused by being locked inside by the lockdowns instead of tying it to free time specifically.
Hilariously, a lot of industries and corps. also thought this would be the new normal.
They should just eat the costs, I mean if any org can...
At the same time, I helped a friend collect youtube data years ago and the volume of eg European children uploading hours of HD Minecraft footage with 0-10 views a piece was astounding.
