this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2026
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me_irl
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I'm not worried about big business. They will survive. I'm worried about the small bakery around the corner, about the hair salons down the street, the flower shop in the mall and basically every small, independent shop that exists which is a crucial part of every community it's part of. And those small businesses make up a significant portion of the job market.
A 6 hour day at the same pay would absolutely annihilate any retail consumer B2C business that exists anywhere in the western world.
I think it's worth us paying some tax to support a small business, at the cost of having less things, but more time for ourselves.
The market corrects to match the available income of the consumer, usually. They want you paying, not hoarding.
Less goods and less work is ultimately better, leaves us with more time for people, for self-improvement, for the things that really matter, not the cheap plastics.
This is however, an opinion, and a matter of consensus, the economics are what they are.
As for why I'm suddenly writting entire paragraphs and am more literate, it's because I got some good news, and the kind of misery knocks your IQ down.
Most of that can be fixed with scheduling. Are all of those bakers and barbers fully booked for 8-12 hours every day? They don't have gaps where they sit around waiting for business? When you offer shorter hours, people will have to schedule within those hours or go without the service. This should translate to less wasted time babysitting an empty store. And it's totally possible to still accommodate all the customers. I know a chiropractor who is open 6-12 three days a week and 12-6 the other two days. He doesn't have to work 12 hours a day, and it's still easy for customers to schedule when they want.
Lmao, have you even remotely thought this through?
As an example: Bakeries. They already compete with large corporations, namely supermarkets. Every supermarket offers a bread section. If you now force consumers to adapt to your worse hours, they will rather go to the supermarket, despite the worse product. Consumers will not change their behaviors for things they can obtain in another way.
And that's for almost any consumer-facing service that has a "big business competition". Your local bakery will die, your local butcher will die, your local apothecary will die, your local bookshop will die, and so on.
Your example is pretty bad because it's a doctor. There's no large medical corporations that could fill that need. So people will have to adjust their days for doctor visits.