It was obviously valuable and workable from the smallest scale possible: a verbal message carried by a runner.

That’s a disservice to the existing complexity of modern economies.

Valid arguments not downvoted pls

UBI seems quite different in that regard and, while it doesn’t invalidate everything, it introduces a lot more of money for nothing and a corresponding nothing for money trade that is required to fund it.

Presumably the government could have actuslly piloted the USPS if they wanted to, only supporting the northeast for example. They just didn't need to, the leap from private courier systems to a government run courier service didn't have many unknowns to test out first.

heh. go away and take your UBI and 38 hour work week. they are implementing a law to enforce this. so you will work for twice a 38 hour work week and still be paid less because why not.

In turn, I'm sceptical of people who say we can't entertain any non-trivial, non-cautionary, non-evolutionary changes to the status quo ... while downplaying the fact that the situation we're in now - 9-5, mon-fri, 20-65yo - was not piloted or effectively tested on a smaller scale before all of us inherited it.

Otherwise it couldn't have gotten so popular and we couldn't have inherited it.

We supposedly even had podcasts to make menial work bearable back in... 1865: https://mashable.com/feature/cigar-factory-lectors

You inherited your place in it, and it is therefore normal.

I'll extend my argument to suggest that most HNers are familiar with changes that can not be tested in isolation, simply because they require significant changes to the whole platform. [0]

UBI studies - including the one in TFA - help us work out some of the likely effects, but they are - also as per TFA - always going to be fundamentally flawed studies in the absence of a) guaranteed forever, b) universal, and c) basic coverage.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_day_(computing)

I understand your point and directly disagree with its main part: the move from a family-run farm to a shift-based employment happened before I was born so I did inherit it but it was in fact piloted, tried on small scale, and organic at first.

This is not backed up by any source I can find. Nearly every source says that the 5 day week was invented by unions in the 1800s, popularized by Henry Ford at the Ford motor company due to measurable improvements to productivity, and made law in the 1930s (in the US) to attempt to counter wide-spread unemployment during the Great Depression. Union pressure is not mentioned anywhere, and honestly doesn't make any sense given that unions were not particularly powerful in those time periods.

Unions were so powerful in the early 1900s that multiple revolutions occurred in part due to their pressure and actions all around the industrialised world. And the fear of strikes led to many reforms and regulations to take talking points off unions (like Bismarck enacting the first welfare state to be a step ahead of social democrats).

Specifically in the US, look at the Coal Wars and the Battle of Blair Mountain in which the US army fought with aircraft and artillery against striking miners.

Flag days are still tested in a staging environment that represents production as closely as possible, and the overwhelming view of the kind of change you're talking about on a technical level is generally don't do that if you can ever help it.