Canada's Missile Superstation🚀

Trump admin seizes US$120,000,000 owned by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board as stake in an offshore wind project, demands that it be invested in fossil fuel development instead nationalobserver.com/2026/05/07/new…

Folks at OpenAI promote a 4-day workweek. What do we know about the 4-day workweek? It is wildly popular. Same pay for only 4 days per week? Most people support it. Since the 1970s, we have been told that a 4-day workweek is a win-win because workers would be more productive (more output per hour). Many economists and figures like @elonmusk promise major productivity gains from AI. So it would make sense that a 4-day, or even 3-day, workweek ought to be around the corner. Are we about to work fewer days per week? Here is my counterpoint. Excellence requires hard work. If you work fewer hours, everything else being equal, you learn less and innovate less. Here is what Ko and Choi (2019) found: “The analysis of time-lagged data from 273 firms affirmed that a firm’s overtime level was negatively related to employee satisfaction. However, it was positively related to the firm’s productivity and curvilinearly (inverted U-shaped) related to innovation.” What does it mean? Up to a point, working more hours increases productivity and innovation. What happens if you add AI to this equation? I expect it will only amplify the effect. In a fast-changing world, working fewer hours is a dangerous proposition. We can look for evidence at what OpenAI will actually do. Are they switching to this model for their own employees? Doing otherwise would be hypocritical: “You guys switch to a 28-hour workweek, but our guys will keep working 60 hours.” Some will object: “But, Daniel, there are plenty of academic studies showing that productivity increases when hours are reduced.” Fine. Maybe it is true. But if so, this should matter most for the highest-paid workers, Silicon Valley folks, high-level lawyers, doctors, and so forth. We would expect these people, for whom optimizing productivity is most important, to work fewer hours. Yet, famously, they work longer hours than most. Maybe the entire Silicon Valley should adopt a 4-day workweek. But we all know they do not believe it would make them more productive. There is another side: maybe working fewer days makes people less productive and less innovative, but AI will compensate and it will all even out. This sounds fantastic, we all work fewer hours for the same pay. Until you add the caveat: “and you’ll be subservient to people who keep working long hours, this time using AI.” This is the same lie as universal basic income: “You won’t have to work; the government will give you all the money you need.” Yeah. And you’ll be subservient to the technocrats who decide what you need to do to get the money. There is no shortcut in life. To be free and prosperous: work hard. Speaking for myself, I will keep on working long hours. Do what you will.