Only if labor is 100% of your costs.

If you do it unilaterally, yes. However, if your competitors are forced to make the same change at the same time, prices will adjust to compensate.

Forced to? Even if it forces small businesses out of business?

I don’t think that forcing people to do things is ideal, personally.

We already “force” people to do all kinds of things. We call them labour laws, safety regulations, minimum wages. These are all mostly good things.

They’ll go up to make up for loss in profits.

If your business model requires miserable employees, your business should not exist.

Please don't post unsubstantive comments that take a thread further into flamewar.

Personal attacks are not ok here. Also, please review the site guidelines, which include:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yea right. 150 years ago there was no such a thing as 5 work days weeks. And then suddenly, we had got it, across all of the western (and eastern world). And we have it now, and not a single developed country repealed these laws.

If 6 day work weeks are common, you would be making the exact same bogus argument.

You conveniently choose to ignore the cited research that says that employees are "happier" when they work 4 day weeks. Or are you simply being pedantic and arguing the use of "miserable"?

If human civilization is to go further, we need to recognize some of our generic assumptions. Work is a means to an end, most commonly a means to support oneself and one's family. It should support us in our basic needs (shelter, food, clothing), and allow us to put our creative and intelligent side to better use.

Sure, some would spend all of their time playing PS4, but by opening up opportunities for everyone in the civilization, civilization as a whole should see progress.

If you don't believe in benefits of the civilization and how it has advanced through history mostly through people with spare time (usually higher classes, but with spare time becoming more accessible, through everybody in the past ~100 years), I am sure you are fine with a bigger, stronger dude walking in and taking your car keys and driving off (that was the status-quo at a distant point in history).

Showing that people believe they would be happier with some alternative does not imply that they are miserable in the current state.

One might be happy making $100k per year. Would they be happier making $1M / year? Yes, probably. That doesn't mean they aren't happy to begin with.