The "n-hour workweek" is arbitrary. We work as much as we do because that's what the lending institutions need us to do so they can justify and manage the global trade and manufacture of calories, textiles, fuel, shelter, and implements.<p>We don't work 50-60 hour weeks at software companies because we'll die of starvation or exposure otherwise, we work that much because the finance trade our work supports allows us to live in a 2-story houses in the first world without knowing anything about construction, defense, farming, etc. The <i>real</i> work [1] gets handled by other people who make less money than us. But we still have to work so the lending institutions can make the debt contracts balance correctly.<p>[1] Yes, some of us do actually work on real projects, with real consequences to downtime, I understand. But how many brilliant engineers work for F+N or Spotify or whatever that could work on domestic engineering projects instead? Would they still have to work 60 hour weeks? Is such a project even possible without involving lending institutions, and the second those institutions are involved, doesn't that put us right back at the "justify the global finance infrastructure"?