You're pretty much right here, but it's important to be clear that the article does not suggest restricting working hours, it suggests changing the norm in an unspecified way. Granted, in Britain this has always been done with restrictive laws. The norm used to be for 9 year olds to work in factories for 15 hours a day. This was changed progressively to reduce to a norm of 40 hours a week for adult males only, and then has included adult females and slowly been rising since.
There are ways other than just saying that people can't work more than 35 hours a week. You can require overtime loading, you can change bargaining laws, you can change the employment conditions of people employed directly by the government. This doesn't impinge on anyones freedom more than current laws (i.e minimum wage, health and safetly, child labour, non-discrimination)
It's also important to remember that the having "some tactical discretion", and "being aligned with their job’s goals" in your job is rare. Most people dislike their jobs and most jobs are pretty pointless. There's an equality issue here that isn't the one you're thinking about: more access to meaningful work? If there's only so many hours of meaningful paid work to be done, wouldn't it be better to sacrifice a bit of efficiency to have as many people as possible doing a smaller amount of this work?
It is really important to not confuse individual with collective reasoning. It's pretty clear from the article that it doesn't apply to all cases. (And from what I've heard, you're a famously extreme outlier here) Yes, there will be negative consequences to any change, but you don't make society wide changes by looking at outliers.
There are ways other than just saying that people can't work more than 35 hours a week. You can require overtime loading, you can change bargaining laws, you can change the employment conditions of people employed directly by the government. This doesn't impinge on anyones freedom more than current laws (i.e minimum wage, health and safetly, child labour, non-discrimination)
It's also important to remember that the having "some tactical discretion", and "being aligned with their job’s goals" in your job is rare. Most people dislike their jobs and most jobs are pretty pointless. There's an equality issue here that isn't the one you're thinking about: more access to meaningful work? If there's only so many hours of meaningful paid work to be done, wouldn't it be better to sacrifice a bit of efficiency to have as many people as possible doing a smaller amount of this work?
It is really important to not confuse individual with collective reasoning. It's pretty clear from the article that it doesn't apply to all cases. (And from what I've heard, you're a famously extreme outlier here) Yes, there will be negative consequences to any change, but you don't make society wide changes by looking at outliers.
@ddouglascarr