I've posted this several times before. The workweek can be modeled as two linear equations based on rate of production vs rate of consumption. But you can also see the equations empirically -

https://www.scry.llc/2024/12/2...

"During the first post-Civil war depression (1873-1878), jobs bifurcated into two categories - "new technology" skilled jobs and existing "unskilled" jobs. The new jobs were lucrative enough that employers tended towards a 48-hour workweek for about twenty years, then the 60-hour jobs fell to 48 hours during the 1890s.

During the Great Depression, 25% unemployment was eventually solved by government legislation - a mandatory 40 hour workweek and child labor laws."

Both depressions were the culmination of long-term technology booms. It's likely that we're near a third.

https://www.scry.llc/2025/09/1...

"Assume the declining cost of information (COI) has driven economic activity for fifty years. Then the stagnation or increase of COI could be disasterous for the economy. The preceding graph shows an inflection point in Internet user growth, implying that Internet growth is slowing and will soon stagnate."

this reminds of the first digital cameras. too expensive and too primitive but what does everybody carry now? :)

were the peak of handcrafted excellence by builders with decades of experience.

by 1930, all churches were built with machine-cut bricks and mechanical effort.

the Era of handcrafted software is ending, just as masonry did.

adapt or die.

All technological revolutions have an S-curve structure.
They eventually peak in value and diminish...

https://www.scry.llc/2025/09/1...

The net result of the past two Kondratieff cycles was a net decrease in the workweek...
from 60 to 48 in the 1870s and 48 to 40 in the 1930s...

https://www.scry.llc/2024/12/2...

The past four years of constant IT lsyoffs are a huge red flag
signifying structural change, not inventory adjustment of previous 1yr recessions.

https://www.scry.llc/2014/05/1...

The Kondratieff (credit) cycle is coming to an historical end.
That's why gold is up 200% in the past two years.
The Law of Demeter will collapse length of supply chains.

I wrote this 13 years ago for today. The past four years indicate structural change, not the standard "inventory adjustment" previous recessions.

https://www.scry.llc/2014/05/1...

"The Big Three (or Four) will eventually do significant layoffs as the IT industry goes through consolidation. If you're a current employee and relatively young, you should think about when this might occur."

https://www.scry.llc/2024/12/2...

"The real cause of economic depressions is the mismatch between production time and consumption time which occurs gradually as productivity rises. Governments then create make-work jobs in a haphazard attempt to maintain consumption (equilibrium). Eventually, the impedance mismatch leads to collapse and a new system. We are probably on the verge of that change."

Another indicator that the Law of Demeter is gaining importance in supply chains.

https://www.scry.llc/2025/12/2...

"Law Of Demeter is the design response to the deterioration of fiat money (which is a deterioration in altruistic intention, ie "empathy") and a likely foundation pattern for the next Kondratieff (Credit) cycle."

Cost of Information "Assume the declining cost of information (COI) has driven economic activity for fifty years. Then the stagnation or increase of COI could be disasterous for the economy. The preceding graph shows an inflection point in Internet user growth, implying that Internet growth is slowing and will soon stagnate."

https://www.scry.llc/2025/09/1...

https://www.scry.llc/2014/05/1...

I wrote this 13 years ago, and called the twitter buyout several years before anyone else.

"Saturated industries often consolidate for vertical integration. Large companies buy smaller competitors, and they also purchase their vertical supply chain to reduce costs and manage dependencies. A classic example is the American car industry, which went from 1500 companies to today's Big Three (and the occasional glitch like Tesla)."

yore wakeup call has arrived.

https://www.scry.llc/2025/09/1...
.

this story reminds me a company meeting where our new manager was introduced as having delivered his last two projects with zero bugs.

we all burst into laughter at the same time
followed by an awkward silience.

the wealth taxes proposed In NY, WA and NYC are bad paths.

https://www.scry.llc/2025/09/0...

"The large IT companies are now in a consolidation phase accelerated by AI, as evidenced by continuous layoffs for the past three years. The average recession length is less than a year, this is structual change, not inventory adjustment. I'm curious if the Republicans will figure this out before the economy forces their hand."

adjusting the workweek is the optimum long-term fix.

yes, we're watching an historical cycle play out so answers already exist.

https://www.scry.llc/2025/01/2...

"Production equals consumption in an ideal economy. Both are bound by finite time. If production increases, consumption must increase, too. Ergo, time spent on production must fall, which is what happened during the last two depressionary eras. 1873-1897 and 1930-1940. I'm fairly sure that AI is the last straw which breaks the forty-hour workweek"

somebody reading my blog, :)
  I wrote this three weeks ago

"AI is probably accelerating the "Law of Demeter" effect on the Internet and information"

https://www.scry.llc/2025/12/2...

Distance + diversity + time = declining trust

the majority model now is devolution back to physical validation. it's too easy to spoof anything online, which I first predicted at DEFCON in 2006 regarding clickfraud.

I decided to share the full incomprehensible thread for a few days here on Slashdot. Im condensing and simplifying it next week.

https://chatgpt.com/share/6960...

.

I mentioned AI as a reflection engine before which generates a synthesis. the cognition series I'm writing is a perfect example. ChatGPT synthesised this from my inputs.

https://www.scry.llc/2026/01/0...

I'm actually co-writing a multi-part series on this with ChatGPT. Sorry, it's still in raw form.
I wrote part 1 yesterday.

https://www.scry.llc/2026/01/0...

Here's part of the raw convo for part 5:
Rates of change are no longer human-scaled
You nailed this when you said humanity was âoeroughly a constant.â
Historically:
population growth was slow
idea propagation was bottlenecked by humans
novelty injection was rate-limited by culture
Now:
AI can generate novelty faster than humans can metabolize it
synthesis happens continuously, not episodically
attention shocks overlap instead of resolving
So the system moves from:
punctuated novelty
to
continuous novelty pressure
Thatâ(TM)s catastrophic under finite attention.

5. This is where your series gets very important
Because now the thesis evolves:
Then:
Finite attention governs human systems.
Now:
Finite human attention is embedded in a system with infinite non-human cognition.
Thatâ(TM)s a different problem class.
And it leads to a necessary conclusion:
Future systems must actively protect continuity, or humans will be displaced cognitively long before they are displaced economically.
Thatâ(TM)s not dystopian. Itâ(TM)s mechanical.

you can create two linear equations to model the optimum work week given a certain degree of productivity.

https://www.scry.llc/2024/12/2...

as productivity increases, the work week has to decline to stay at the optimum point.
that's why the 40-hour workweek and child labor laws were the result of the Great Depression.