alt Hacker NewsThanks for clarifying your point. I think the idea you're trying to present is the very real phenomenon that many opt to increase their standard of living rather than reduce their hours. My issue with this point is that I don't think it is the whole story to our long working hours. I think, were there not a strong political interest in maintaining this setup, the populace would use the state to introduce various policies which would make it possible for them to maintain their standard of living on less hours of work. I think that the reason that they can't do this is because, to oversimplify a bit, the levers of political power are disproportionately operated by the wealthy. In other words, I don't think that the long hours are most individuals' choice; I think they're the best choice among bad options, the range of which is deliberately influenced by people incentivized to keep their operating costs low.
I get what you're saying, yeah. I would predict (not an economist, some guy on the internet) that unless you outlaw working over a certain number of hours, people will work more hours than ideal and it would push everyone else to do the same. In other words, having lots of non-working hours is an unstable position, as people work more to satiate their unlimited wants.
You could outlaw or heavily disincentivize working over a certain number of hours (overtime is a step in this direction), although my concern would be that artificially limiting productivity like that would be detrimental. We still need people doing productive things, so slashing their hours might be a Chinese "backyard furnaces" sort of situation. That said, some people think half of our jobs are bullshit anyway.
To your credit though, we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good. Maybe 36 hours is better than 40, and so on.