Here’s an observation: employees, companies & countries that are winning tend to work harder. Those that are merely coasting or declining - eg in a situation where there is nothing to win with more effort - work less hard.
Elon Musk - “no one changes the world working 40 hr weeks” - is trying to win in a global competition. Your uncle Bob who is Director of QA at Oracle? Probably not playing to win.
Countries like Japan or SKorea or China are trying to win. US is trying to win. Denmark or Italy are no longer trying to win a world-wide competition.
No one has shown that individuals, companies or countries can wim while working less than the competition.
I get what you mean about trying to win on the level of people and even companies. Winning or being in the game to win is motivating and when you see an excellent payoff curve where each hour is delivering value, working longer does not feel so bad.
When you use this logic for larger entities though, it falls down. Very few countries are in that kind of rapid growth mode for long as an entire country. Indeed, you've grouped some wildly different countries together there.
South Korea and Japan had periods of extremely rapid and impressive growth where it really did make sense to say that the entire country had organised themselves and sacrificed in order to win. Their goal was to grow their children's standard of living and they succeeded. Is aging, inward looking Japan on 2020 still playing to win? Or have they won enough to enjoy the fruits of that victory?
China is a country that is still on the rise.
Is "the US" trying to win at a national level? I don't think so. I think that parts of the country are full of people who are trying to win but on a national level? I think the best we can hope for is that the humiliatingly inept set of responses over the last six months are a galvanising moment for Americans on the order of Meji era Japan.
I also think that you've given Uncle Bob quite a good job for someone who's not too bothered about winning. Oracle might have a reputation as not such a great place to work, but I rather suspect that making it to their director of QA takes quite a lot of winning along the way!
If you want a tech example of not fussed about winning, maybe someone doing SAP implementation or running internal business logic as a 9-5 is a better example.
Also it's a bit odd comparing Italy and Denmark since I'd be hard pressed to come up with two countries that are so different!
Denmark's labour productivity is the highest in the EU after Ireland and Luxembourg, both of which have distorted figures because of financial concentration of assets there by American tech companies. Italy's is not much more than half that of Denmark.
>> the last six months are a galvanizing moment for Americans on the order of Meji era Japan.
Or how about Sputnik? Or the Great Depression, Civil War, etc. I like to think that the US has changed course when a course change was required. It often takes a crisis to trigger it.
Just because the company you work for or the country you live in wants to "win" the world economy doesn't mean that every citizen and employee can and will ascribe to that model. If people work hard because they are forced to and not because they want to, you create (as we have) a society full of burnt out employees unable to relieve the stress they get from working a job that barely pays their bills.
I don't see that as "winning" unless you're talking specifically about the billionaires and politicians who benefits from this slave labor.
the explicit linking of a country's success with corporations success is an extremely skewed and unhealthy set of metrics that usually prioritize the wants of a small minority - see stockholders and those running the company
I'm not saying how large / cutting edge companies perform doesn't matter because it certain does - but I believe pursuing only "what is good for companies" is a major source of many of the problems America faces today. see massive income equality, the holllwing out of the middle class, the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, tying healthcare to employment, etc.
Elon Musk - “no one changes the world working 40 hr weeks” - is trying to win in a global competition. Your uncle Bob who is Director of QA at Oracle? Probably not playing to win.
Countries like Japan or SKorea or China are trying to win. US is trying to win. Denmark or Italy are no longer trying to win a world-wide competition.
No one has shown that individuals, companies or countries can wim while working less than the competition.