This article is mostly about scheduling, but a bigger issues is actually amount of actual work. (Ignoring cases where amount of perceived work is important like in Japan)

A “reasonable” amount of work basically always comes down to what someone is willing to sacrifice. A cushy work week is basically always subsidized by other people. It’s often very indirect, like a factory in China. When this information is forcefully shoved in a person’s face, their moral compass gives them no other choice but to protest against the Foxconns of the world.

Unions formally define what is reasonable, but there is also a cultural form of unionization. In the U.S. H1B’s implicitly acknowledge this possibility. They look to join teams that have this cultural unionization. If half of the non-H1B’s go home at 5, management cannot force overtime from everyone else without it being egregious. This disappears when the team is mostly H1B’s or even if the manager him/herself went through this process. (Startups, rather than look for H1B’s, look for “culture fit”)

Cultural homogenization allows a shared definition of reasonable-ness without needing formal structures. With a non-homongenous culture, the “lazier” cultures lose out to the more “hardworking” cultures. The “lazier” cultures would like a rule that says “You must eat out at least one a week, and enjoy a movie, and NOT let your money compound for your children.” Otherwise, the culture that is more willing to work hard effectively undermines the desire to live comfortably of other cultures. In the Bay Area, western culture simply cannot compete with Chinese culture when it comes to housing bids. It’s 1 couple vs an entire family of savers.

There should obviously be a law to prevent Olympic athletes from taking a super-drug that will allow them to win a gold medal and then drop dead afterwards. But should there be one to prevent parents from overworking for their children?

IMO, when the amount of wealth in the world reaches the point where everyone can live comfortably if it were evenly divided, a casual lifestyle will naturally emerge. Prior to that though, there will always be people more willing to work hard. In order for a cushy lifestyle to be sustained, there must be an explicit border or wall (physical or otherwise) that divides people into homogenous cultures. People in each group must be willing to work around the same.

In the U.S. sweatshop and factory conditions are protested against, but in those same countries, they are prestigious jobs that can lift a family out of an agrarian lifestyle into technical or knowledge work. The willingness to fight over pennies subsidizes the casual picking of dollars. With China moving towards picking up dollars, there is no longer a large enough penniy-picking population to sustain it. (Which is why China internally subdivides into a 1st world portion and a 3rd world subsidizing population).

With globalization comes cultural mixing. A large portion of Trump voters realize this threat to their lifestyle (and many have probably already been affected and have trouble making ends meet) and think that re-establizing cultural zones will fix the issue (with a literal wall…) but it won’t. Solutions to questions about how to work and live comfortably without solving the global wealth distribution problem basically are all forms of indirect subsidization, making it zero sum. (Aside, religion can actually be used as a force to sub-divide a population into a culture that desires less, allow them to subsidize a smaller population that want to live more comfortably)