We would be ~33% more advanced by now. Electronics would have cooling systems to allow perpetual gaming. Working class life would suck more because they' probably have to do continuous work for several days straight.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

The post says sleep, not rest. And even if rest isn't needed, people would still require time off to do other things like take care of their families, run personal errands, and all that other good stuff that you do when you're not working (besides sleeping). Not to mention, just a break by itself from any activity you do, not just work. You might study for 2 hours, but you need a break at some point. Maybe not to sleep, but just to do something different. I kinda wonder what the daily schedule would be like for everyone. Would stores even close? Would a new day still start at 12am? There would also have to be something else to compensate for sleep because sleep is important for giving our minds a break so that it can organize the things we learn and experience each day.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

1. You may need to rest, but you //want// to spend time with family. Companies will see the lack of need for sleep as lack of need to let people go home There would still be periodic breaks, bt short ones, just as there are now (lunch). I said working class because they generally make minimum wage and they will need to work as much as humanly possible, eve if it means neglecting their family to an extent. 2. All shifts would probably total around 24 hours. Usually that would be split between 3-4 people, but sometimes 2, like how security officers have it now. If a day can start in the middle of the night when we sleep, that's all the more reason to keep it that way if we don't need to sleep. It removes the counter-intuitive-ness. 3. If we don't need sleep it means our minds don't need a break. Or else it would be just sleeping in a different way.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Being social and interacting with others is actually a need with humans. So is //taking care of// family. Not getting social interaction is bad for a person's health. There might be some monks that can live in solitude for their whole lives but even people who tend to be anti-social need some form of human interaction at one point or another. Stop assuming that companies are big evil super powers that will do whatever it takes to take advantage of their employees. "Oh, those damn companies //forcing// employees to work an ungodly amount of hours. They couldn't possibly do anything themselves to change how they're being treated!" Since we're not discussing the free market, I've got a different argument: Since the people just //can't// help themselves, they could allow the government to step in to create regulations as to how long an employer could make someone work in a 24 hour period. Your second paragraph describes what most factory jobs currently do. 1st shift, 2nd shift, and night shift or day shift and night shift. And it is beneficial for factories and businesses to shut down at some point during the day, you know. This allows for resets, cleaning etc.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I'm referring to a situation that if you spend an extra hour with your family (work 1 hour under your absolute capacity) the $7 you lose is the difference between whatever is one step under life and death. Of course they still spend SOME time with their family in any situation. I'm talking about anything more than the bare minimum. I'm not sayign the companies force their employees to work that long. I'm saying the employees have to in order to put food on the table. People are now able to work, say, 12 hours a day for extended periods. Without the need of sleep, people will be able to work maybe 16 hours a day for extended periods. Current minimum wage is $7, so that's $84 a day. Without sleep, epople would theoretically still need $84 a day, so minimum hourly wage will go down. I know $84 isn't enough, but clearly the government sees it as such and they decide the minimum wage, so that's all that matters for now. That's just the thing about midnight being the start of a new day. You'd think a new day starts at dawn, or around when most people wake up, but no, it's the middle of night. Without sleep, that's neutral, rather than counter intuitive.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I was beginning to see what you meant but you lost me at "..., so minimum hourly wage will go down." Why would minimum hourly wage go down? And not to start a big debate on minimum wage again, but the government isn't the only thing that defines minimum wage: Each and every individual defines the minimum wage they are willing to work for. It just so happens that most people think they can't live for less than the government's standard. Also.. $7 x 16hrs is $112/day. Assuming that's not a mistake and you took out taxes to make it $84, $84/day @ 6 days a week = $504/week (6 days) = $2016/month (4 weeks). That's not a bad sum of money. Granted, work hours are 96 per week (which by the way, **overtime pay** was not factored in), but that's not a bad amount of money to be making and it is perfectly possible to live off of. After all, people in 3rd world countries live off of less than $1/day, right?

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Minimum wage will go down because companies/the government will think you still only need $84 a day to live, so they'll drop minimum wage so that you get $84 for 16 hours instead of 12 hours. Minimum wage is supposed to be the lowest sum a company can legally pay you per hour because any amount below that cannot be lived off of. Although it's not enough now, the government thinks it is (Obama is trying to change that, but it hasn't happened yet). You're only helping my argument. Minimum wage cannot be a good sum of money. It has to be the bare minimum for necessities. If humans are able to work longer hours, they NEED less money per hour. It's like how if you can make 20 trips to move a certain amount of stuff, you need to move less per trip than if you only had time to make 10 trips. Overtime may not even exist any more because night isn't a time for rest, but jsut a different lighting condition.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Okay, you win. Let's raise minimum wage. But if we're going to raise it to $9/hour, why stop there? Why not $20/hour? I'd LOVE to get paid that much to flip burgers. Why can't the government just go ahead and raise it to $100/hour? Also, how much is your cost of living? What makes up your cost of living? When you say "the cost of living is too high" you're implying that the cost of living is the same for everyone when it's not and that there's no way it can possibly be any lower.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

Minimum wage should be an amount that you could live solely off of in a full time job. In a full time job, you typically don't have time to do another job, or the company has a rule against you dividing your working ability. There should not be a case where you can legally force someone to have income only from you and not give them enough for basic necessities. I don't know what the cost of living is in America, but apparently it's higher than $84 a day. Or $70, whatever he usual shift length is. I'd say cost of living is a $2-300 a month for utilities, $300 a month for food, and whatever it costs to rent a 1 bedroom apartment. If your parents own a house, replace rent with property tax. Raising a family is not a need. If you can't get a job that can support at least 3 people, or 1.5 if your spouse works, you shouldn't have started a family.I think that is the bare minimum and it can't reasonably go any lower.

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I'd be able to spend even more time on the Internet

by Anonymous 11 years ago

I dont like to think about my life without the highlight of my day

by Anonymous 11 years ago