This kind of refers to the past though. Anyone who is using Google search these days, curses how unbelievably useless it has become. This is how monopolies ruin the segment they dominate.

If there were real competition, Google would improve the search engine, or it would go extinct, and be replaced by something better.

The whole article is written really strangely. Was that written by AI? There seems to be some disconnect in the writing itself.

In a sufficiently competitive environment, players abandon a value for a temporary advantage. When other players follow suit, that value is gone, but the playing field is still level, and everyone is worse off.

Weekends are under threat because our jobs are. Everyone's keeping their head down to make it through the next round of layoffs, to avoid getting replaced by AI, to avoid a protracted job search.

Related: https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/Meditations-On-Moloch

I have applied the same approach in the US and I have never had anyone tell me that I have to put in more hours. However, I see a lot of movement over the weekend and at weird times (people working past midnight). But the thing is that no one is really forcing them, I think this way of thinking is embedded within the average American relationship with work.

I have observed this in my wife too. She stays past her contract hours but mostly because a lot of people in her company do the same.

I think this is a "self reinforcing peer pressure problem"

Before I left my previous company the CEO waxed philosophical about adopting the 996, even as we had above target profits for then nth quarter in a row and layoffs rolling over every department.

Timers would still work. Actions would then be more ad-hoc. The simple change would likely lower stress tenfold, and this is what can be measured.

How then would appointments work? Day offsets (from 0 to 2) would still easily work. People wanting to come in to see a specialist would just have to call/contact, then come in at any time of the day. Some would come in earlier in the day, and some would come in later in the day, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, and things would work out.

Everything would likely be slowed down in the immediate sense, but would this be so bad? Odds are that no; it would probably add much to happiness, and perhaps become more sustainable.

How would a big passenger airplane even depart? It wouldn't, and that's okay. Cargo planes and other dedicated airplanes would remain unaffected because they can depart when there is sufficient mass.

It would be like a return to old times, maybe to an extreme version of Italy. The early chaos, if managed aptly, would soon manifest as a longer and healthier life.