Humanity had millennia of lower productivity summers before a/c. Do we really need to be 100% productive year round? Would giving summers off to more job categories maybe boost employee morale and things like hobby/vacation spending?
We've passed the point where individual laborers typically benefit from the huge productivity gains of their employers, so maybe its time to pay back the increased overall efficiency with fewer labor hours and more free time for the same pay? I think we've passed scarcity in most labor markets, too, but if not we're dangerously close, and halving the total labor hours per person in a year, but doubling the total labor force might be a good idea. Most companies could afford it, even if they would loudly complain about it. That sort of increase in bandwidth of pay would also do well for the economy.
I've been joking a lot lately that maybe a/c was a bad idea for the human spirit. It deprived us from natural excuses to need afternoon siestas and summers off for better overall productivity, and it helped industrialization believe people were replaceable parts in machines that could run 40 hour work weeks every single week of the year.
That said, I couldn't imagine someone actually running a campaign with a platform of abolishing a/c in white collar office buildings, but it is fun/amusing to imagine. It's an interesting thought experiment: do we really need a/c to get work done?
This may work in Europe or other northern countries but some countries are hot (35 degrees Celsius / 95 Fahrenheit) all the time. A summer off to hobby/vacation would mean never working.
Certainly, a/c also allowed humanity to live healthier in more places than ever before. Like I said, it's mostly an interesting thought experiment, especially because you can often look up what life was like in your area before a/c. In many cases none of us want to return to 100% of that lifestyle, but sometimes there are interesting answers there.
Part of the reason I started joking that a/c was a mistake was a friend noted how much of the drama of Southern US literature surrounds hot weather and commenting on such. There was an idea that all of the "best plays" such as Gone With the Wind, some of August Wilson's plays, and seemingly the majority of Tennessee Williams' plays, devote _a lot_ of the dialog to just how hot it is. That often leads to character's own tensions and dramas boiling out. It shows up in a lot of books at the time too, like Fitzgerald's works (The Great Gatsby). That lead to me joking that maybe a/c has lead to a great suppression of our emotions and a lack of good drama in our lives. It's obviously more a correlation in those works than a causation, but in its own way an amusing thought experiment in the different tempos of life in such places before and after a/c.
We've passed the point where individual laborers typically benefit from the huge productivity gains of their employers, so maybe its time to pay back the increased overall efficiency with fewer labor hours and more free time for the same pay? I think we've passed scarcity in most labor markets, too, but if not we're dangerously close, and halving the total labor hours per person in a year, but doubling the total labor force might be a good idea. Most companies could afford it, even if they would loudly complain about it. That sort of increase in bandwidth of pay would also do well for the economy.
I've been joking a lot lately that maybe a/c was a bad idea for the human spirit. It deprived us from natural excuses to need afternoon siestas and summers off for better overall productivity, and it helped industrialization believe people were replaceable parts in machines that could run 40 hour work weeks every single week of the year.
That said, I couldn't imagine someone actually running a campaign with a platform of abolishing a/c in white collar office buildings, but it is fun/amusing to imagine. It's an interesting thought experiment: do we really need a/c to get work done?