Archive link. https://archive.is/N4Rqj
Some personal editorializing: This is a pretty remarkable first because of how captive we Americans are to pharma prices. Famously, when Medicare Part D was brought into existence by law it restricted the federal government from negotiating Part D drug prices. To me, shopping for drugs in Canada is tackling the symptom and ignores the cause. I wonder if this gets more traction with more states how it might affect drug prices in Canada, too.
The real solution to all this, of course, would be nationalize the healthcare industry in all aspects and to create a single payer healthcare system.
No, numbers exist to measure and count objective things. How much numerical comfort do people need or deserve? How much free time? How much happiness? Ridiculous
Yes, like “how many people are middle class vs working class?” or “how much does the typical person earn?”
Free time is something that can also be objectively measured, just look at psychological profiles of people who are burned out, depressed, etc vs those that are happy with their work-life balance. Take the standard deviation of that and time off should be above that.
Happiness isn’t really an objective thing, but there are lots of factors that can be objectively measured, like correlation between income and self-reported happiness.
If we’re talking about public policy, we need to be objective, we shouldn’t just make policy based on feel.
This is quite telling.
First, you presuppose that we should work people right up until the limit of psychological stress. Find out how much is too much work and then make them work slightly less than that.
Then, you presuppose you can just prescribe a one size fits all solution. As if we all burn out at the same rate, as if every job has the same burnout rate, it’s all very mechanical and neat.
Further, you presuppose that you can even objectively evaluate psychological profiles!
You even presuppose that free time is value neutral, so that the quality of free time is irrelevant and only quantity matters.
Basically, by only sticking to numbers, you failed to do the most basic thing: ask workers how much free time they would like. You don’t care what they want. You think there’s an objective answer that can be arrived at mathematically.
I didn’t say that.
I said that’s the minimum time off.
Again, I didn’t say that.
I didn’t suggest any solutions, I merely gave objective measures for the examples you gave. Those are useful at a high level for policy decisions and whatnot, though any kind of broad measure will break down at the individual level. We’re not talking about individuals here, we’re talking about politics.
Again, I didn’t say that.
I said that psychological profiles can be used to draw statistical conclusions. Individual psychological profiles are inaccurate, but over a sufficiently large, random sample, they should average out to a useful metric for a given study.
Again, I didn’t say that.
I’m talking about broad metrics across a population, not at an individual level. Individuals should negotiate something that works better for them. I personally value time off more than equivalent pay, while several of my coworkers feel the opposite way.
Sure, that’s what a usual metric, especially if you compare current time off vs desired time off, along with the rest of the data (e.g. do people who burn out want more time off, or are they not using the time they have?).
When trying to solve systemic problems like depression, reduced productivity, or high turnover, more data is almost always better.
You did! You said “Take the standard deviation of that and time off should be above that.” How am I supposed to read that as anything other than “look at what level of work causes burnout/depression/etc. and then give them enough time off above that”?
We must have had a miscommunication because, again, it sure sounded like you were proposing how much time off people should get i.e. “Take the standard deviation of that and time off should be above that.”
So what do you do with people who fall outside the normal standard deviation? If someone needs more time off than average, what do you propose we do with them?
imo the usual metric is the market rate. You get as much time off as the market will allow.