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This is a polemic, the chapter he refers to is actually a cogent argument: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...

Basically he traces the origin of the "fallacy" back to "a hodgepodge of borrowed working-class slang, middle-class prejudice, and archaic economic doctrine" from David Schloss in 1891, and shows it had nothing to do with the 8-hour day effort at the time. The "lump-of-labor fallacy" is essentially a strawman trotted out by opponents of lower hours as a rhetorical device, similar to how the waterfall model never existed before Agile came along as "the alternative". (See e.g. https://pragtob.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/why-waterfall-was-a...)

Then he uses Chapman's theory of hours and some estimates from Denison to show that most likely the 35 hour work week would result in lower unit labor costs, increased demand, and a net gain in productivity overall from the redistribution of working time.

Then he gets into a discussion of fixed costs, and basically says "the government can subsidize the transition by restructuring taxes".

I'm not saying his arguments are sound, although they don't seem obviously wrong, but the chapter is certainly a lot better than the original link, which just summarizes the strawman conclusion but not the evidence.

I suspect the problem is that the fallacy has assumptions, and like most economic theories you need to know what those assumptions are.

The assumptions get shown when thinking about why many countries are raising retirement ages, or what happens to work when pandemics occur, or just how fungible people are between different jobs, or why we allow immigration.

The article says that the author thinks the “lump of labour fallacy” is wrong, but doesn’t provide any hint as to why they think there actually is a lump of labour (except to read their other work).

A very sloppy editorial in The Economist on the topic: https://archive.ph/attgx

[minor edits]

I think this classic explain better, and in general: https://i.ibb.co/gdTBXT0/Corp-Whining-Hist.jpg
This is the most frustrating kind of article: "I think this thing is bad and will spend several paragraphs explaining why, but will explicitly refuse to tell you what it is."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

> In economics, the lump of labour fallacy is the misconception that there is a fixed amount of work—a lump of labour—to be done within an economy which can be distributed to create more or fewer jobs.

The bit where he references Sydney Chapman's obscure theory as being of critical importance and then doesn't actually tell you what it actually stated is even more annoying.

This paper - funnily enough written by the article author - does attempt to tell you what Chapman argued. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1125543#....

Assuming his paraphrase is accurate, Chapman argued that workers would act against their interests by picking higher pay over shorter hours, and employers would respond in kind by poaching employees from rivals by offering higher salaries for longer hours. It's also implied that this is somehow also against the corporation's long term interest but without a proper explanation of why; but perhaps the original writing offered a less muddled concept of the "optimal" amount of working hours (for whom, on what basis?) than the paraphrase.

That provides some theoretical justification for state limits on reducing working hours in the interests of preserving employee health, something which happened in many industries a year after Chapman made his argument (a bunch of industries where people worked an average of 57 hours saw a mandatory 48 hour maximum working week; though I suspect arguments that UK mining and manufacturing workers didn't have much choice over schedules was a larger factor in that decision than the assumption they were working those hours out of greed)

But I'm not sure this theory which doesn't have a whole lot of empirical support particularly conflicts with what mainstream economists believe[1] or gives us any reason to support the author's contention that the "optimal" maximum working week is 35 hours.

[1]few economists will argue for the benefits of a 57 hour work week, and other theories in labour economics acknowledge certain scenarios in which workers will become overly fixated on the size of their pay package over longer term considerations

My reading of the article is that there are two main claims in it:

1 - There exists an optimum amount of working hours that maximize the society's wealth.

2 - A competitive labor market will maximize the hours worked, completely ignoring the optimal value.

He cites Javon (from the famous "paradox" that the "lump of labor fallacy" fallacy misinterprets) for item 1, but does not supply a reference.

Economics is a strange field. True statements are “fallacies” and fallacies like the rational actor model are axioms.
The lump-of-labor thing was called a fallacy by someone arguing that the amount of labor to be done in society is not fixed: if you happen to have people with a bunch of time on their hands, they can usually find something useful to do that would not otherwise get done. And as for the rational actor model, everyone knows that it's not true; the reason people use it is that its predictions are often surprisingly close to the truth. ("All models are wrong, but some are useful.")
People on HN like to make things up about the field of economics, and then complain as a group about those things they just made up.
The rational actor model is not a fallacy, nor is it axiomatic in economics.
Are you seriously arguing the lump of labour fallacy is actually a true statement, and the amount of work to be done in the economy is fixed?
Hum... There is a couple thousands of words article at the top explaining why what you say is meaningless propaganda. But TLDR, only you care about the lump of labor fallacy, the people you are talking with never used it.
The article contained a couple of thousand words, but neither it, nor Sydney Chapman, nor the person I replied to provided a single actual argument for why the lump of labour fallacy is not a fallacy. The article contains no statements about why the lump of labour fallacy is incorrect, not even any about why it might not be applicable to his proposals, but two statements that readers don't need to know what it is, they should take his word for it that it's bad (hmm... what was that about meaningless propaganda?!)

Do you believe the quantity of work that there is to be done in an economy is fixed and the work readily substitutable, so if HN dropped down to 10 hour weeks the result would be unemployed factory workers all finding jobs writing backend code, not less software development work being done (and probably 10 hour work week devs buying less stuff from factories)?

Unless you do, the lump of labour fallacy is a fallacy.

Ok, keep beating that strawmen. Just a few more hits and it will be dead for sure.
How sad you also can't explain why the lump of labour fallacy isn't a fallacy.

Maybe save the snark until you have at least a high school level understanding of the subject matter?

People are having an issue with him "not naming the issue" in the article, but for what it's worth, I understand why?

There is so so much in mainstream economics that "feels rooted in fact," aka, lies or more accurately, overly-relied-on-unprovable-theories, the work of trying to debunk them can make one forget which one you're talking about today.

Theories about the observable world aren't supposed to be provable, they're supposed to be falsifiable. You can't prove a theory based on empirical observation. Economic theories are tested--and often shown to be lacking--by statistical models; that's the entire point of the models. Economists test and falsify each other's work all the time. You basically couldn't be more wrong if you tried.
I enjoy how the author skips facts and reasoned arguments and just tells me how I should feel, which is mostly angry. Also I appreciate him assuring me I don’t need to critically think about or do any research on the topic at all. It’s just so obvious that the mainstream economists are wrong.

His style would do well in journalism today.