Why Elon Musk Wants to Kill the Weekend
Elon Musk says weekends are over. We say the fight has just begun
The Weekend Was Never a Gift
Elon Musk wants you to believe there’s no such thing as a weekend.
In a now-infamous statement about working at Tesla, Musk said, “Nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week.” His solution? An 80–100 hour workweek, every week, for the rest of your life—if you’re lucky enough to still have a job under him.
This isn’t just a throwaway quote. It’s a declaration of war on your time.
Because weekends weren’t handed down by the wealthy—they were clawed out of the fists of industrialists by generations of laborers who refused to die on the factory floor. The 40-hour week wasn’t a perk. It was a victory.
Now the billionaire class wants it back.
They don’t just want your labor. They want your submission. And nothing threatens their control more than a worker with free time.
Time to think.
Time to connect.
Time to organize.
Time to remember that this system doesn’t work without you.
The ruling class never stopped hating rest.
It’s not about labor.
It’s about obedience.
II. They Fought for the Weekend
The weekend wasn’t invented. It was won.
In the late 1800s, factory workers—many of them children—were grinding out twelve- to sixteen-hour days, six or seven days a week, under conditions that would make today’s sweatshops look humane. Sundays were often the only pause, and even that was rooted more in religious custom than labor law. The idea of two consecutive days off? Radical.
It took a century of strikes, protests, and literal bloodshed to change that.
The fight began with the push for the 8-hour workday—a demand that echoed across the globe after the Haymarket affair of 1886, when laborers in Chicago were murdered for striking. Unions rallied around the simple mantra:
“Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will.”
That wasn’t a slogan. That was a threat to the ruling class.
As union power grew in the early 20th century, so did the push for a five-day workweek. The Ford Motor Company became one of the first major employers to adopt it in 1926—not out of kindness, but to reduce turnover and increase productivity. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act codified the 40-hour workweek. Weekends, at least in theory, became protected ground.
But don’t mistake that progress for permanence.
Those rights didn’t fall from the sky. They were extracted from the jaws of greed by workers who risked everything to say: “Enough.”
And now? That hard-won time is under siege again.
III. The Billionaire Work Fetish
Elon Musk isn’t alone.
Jeff Bezos once bragged about starting work at 7 a.m. and holding meetings through dinner. Mark Zuckerberg built his brand on monastic intensity and said, “Move fast and break things.” These men aren’t just selling products—they’re selling a myth: that work is salvation, and exhaustion is a virtue.
It’s bullshit. And it’s dangerous.
This cult of overwork didn’t come from the working class—it was manufactured by elites who treat burnout like a badge of honor. When Musk brags about sleeping on the Tesla factory floor, it’s not to inspire solidarity. It’s to establish dominance. It’s to tell you, “If I don’t rest, you don’t get to either.”
They romanticize the grind while weaponizing it.
Because for them, work is choice. For you, it’s compulsion.
They call it passion. You call it rent.
They call it building the future. You call it getting through the week.
But here’s the trick: these billionaires don’t follow their own rules.
They vacation in private villas. They build underground bunkers. They outsource their labor, automate your job, then tell you to “just work harder.”
This is not about productivity.
It’s about performance.
It’s about keeping you tired enough to comply, but not rested enough to resist.
The billionaire class doesn’t fear laziness.
They fear clarity.
They fear what happens when working people have time to think—and worse, time to act.
IV. Control by Exhaustion
There’s a reason the system keeps you tired.
Exhausted people don’t organize.
Exhausted people don’t unionize.
Exhausted people don’t dream bigger, fight harder, or question why billionaires need more yachts while they can’t afford rent.
The grind is the point. Not because it’s productive—but because it’s pacifying.
Overwork has always been a weapon of control. From the plantation to the factory to the Amazon warehouse, labor systems have relied on fatigue to enforce obedience. The logic is simple: keep people too tired to resist, and they’ll settle for scraps.
Now, it’s not just physical. It’s digital.
Every ping, every email, every demand to “just hop on a quick Zoom”—it’s all part of the same playbook. Musk wants 80-hour workweeks not because the job demands it, but because submission is the product.
Burnout isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.
Even rest has been colonized. The weekend is no longer sacred—it’s side-hustle time. Vacations come with guilt. If you’re not constantly optimizing, producing, posting, and grinding… you’re “falling behind.”
That’s not freedom. That’s capitalism with a whip and a hoodie.
And the irony?
The billionaire class doesn’t work like this. They extract.
They skim profit from every bleary-eyed shift, every missed dinner, every cancelled plan. And then they call you entitled.
Let’s be clear: you are not lazy.
You are being looted—of your energy, your time, your presence.
And it’s intentional.
V. The Return of Feudal Time
We were told we were entering the future.
What we got was digital feudalism—with apps instead of chains.
Look around: workers today aren’t just losing weekends.
They’re losing sovereignty over their time altogether.
Amazon warehouse workers are tracked by the second—pushed to skip water, bathroom breaks, even basic movement. Delivery drivers pee in bottles. Gig workers drive ten hours just to break even. Nurses are called in on their only day off because the hospital cut staff to “boost efficiency.” Teachers work nights and weekends while billionaires buy rockets for fun.
This isn’t late-stage capitalism.
It’s early-stage feudalism.
The tech isn’t liberating us—it’s surveilling us. And Elon Musk is one of the architects. Whether it’s algorithms assigning delivery shifts or “performance” dashboards tracking every keystroke, we are being pulled back into a system where the lord owns the land, the tools, and your schedule.
Only now the manor is a fulfillment center.
The crown is a stock portfolio.
And your time? That’s their asset.
Musk’s version of labor doesn’t look like freedom. It looks like servitude in slick packaging. He talks about “changing the world,” but what he’s really selling is a world where workers live in the factory, don’t ask questions, and thank their overlords for the privilege of being used up.
We thought we were free because the chains were invisible.
But they’re still there—just renamed “metrics.”
VI. The Cultural Assault on Time Off
If they can’t take your time through policy, they’ll take it through shame.
We’ve been trained to feel guilty for resting.
For sleeping in. For taking breaks. For doing nothing—even though “nothing” is the thing that heals us.
This isn’t an accident. It’s a culture engineered by billionaires who want you to internalize their greed as your work ethic.
Every hustle-porn post about waking up at 4:00 a.m. to “dominate the day”… every LinkedIn sermon on “grind culture”… every article that asks if a four-day workweek would hurt GDP—it’s all part of the same gaslight.
You are not the problem. Their system is.
They’ve spent decades turning overwork into a virtue, and rest into a vice. And it’s not just about productivity—it’s about control. If they can make you hate your own rest, they don’t have to take it from you. You’ll give it up willingly.
They’ve even infected our downtime.
Social media is now a second job. Side hustles dominate weekends. Paid time off is rationed like it’s a luxury item, not a human right. And in too many workplaces, people are afraid to even take it—for fear of being seen as replaceable, or worse, “not a team player.”
Rest has been privatized.
Recreation has been monetized.
Your attention is a commodity—and your time is the collateral.
And here’s the kicker: the people telling you to grind?
They own the companies profiting from your burnout.
They don’t work weekends.
They own yours.
VII. What We Lose When We Lose the Weekend
When the billionaire class comes for your weekend, they’re not just stealing time—they’re stealing your life.
Because the weekend isn’t just a break from work.
It’s the space where real life happens.
It’s when families reconnect.
It’s when kids see their parents.
It’s when friends gather, neighbors talk, music gets made, protests get planned, and the soul comes back online.
Strip away the weekend, and what’s left?
A week without rhythm. A worker without recovery. A life that feels more like survival than living.
This is why the weekend matters—because it gives us the space to be more than just laborers. It’s where we get to be people.
And that’s what scares them most.
Because people who have time begin to reflect. They read. They rest. They organize. They dream. They stop blaming themselves for being tired and start blaming the system that thrives on their exhaustion.
The weekend is dangerous to the billionaire class not because it’s lazy—but because it’s liberating.
It’s the reminder that your value is not measured in productivity.
It’s the crack in the machine where rebellion starts to grow.
Take away the weekend, and you take away one of the last places left that hasn’t been colonized by the market.
You take away freedom’s last day.
VIII. The Counterforce: Reclaiming Time
They want your weekends.
Your energy.
Your obedience.
But they don’t get the last word.
All across the country—and the world—workers are fighting back.
The United Auto Workers went on strike and won record-setting raises and contract protections, including guaranteed weekends.
Starbucks baristas are unionizing stores one by one, fighting for basic time off and consistent schedules.
Nurses, teachers, Amazon warehouse workers—they’re walking out, demanding not just better pay but their time back.
This is the counterforce.
Every union formed, every walkout staged, every strike that grinds a corporate machine to a halt—it’s a reminder:
You are the economy.
Without your labor, nothing moves.
But this isn’t just about unions. It’s about power at the ground level.
Workers are forming cooperatives, building community-owned businesses, and organizing mutual aid networks that aren’t governed by HR policies or app algorithms. They’re reclaiming their time by reclaiming their control.
There’s a growing push for the four-day workweek, backed by studies that show it increases productivity, improves mental health, and reduces burnout. And yet billionaires still fight it—not because it doesn’t work, but because it empowers you.
Rest is resistance.
Time is power.
And reclaiming it is a revolutionary act.
IX. Burn the Clock. Reclaim Your Time.
The weekend wasn’t given. It was taken.
And now they want it back.
Elon Musk didn’t just declare war on weekends—he put a spotlight on the whole rotten system: the billionaire work cult, the corporate capture of time, and the slow erasure of rest as a human right.
But we’re not going quietly.
We remember who built the weekend.
We remember why it mattered.
And we know the truth: a rested, organized, defiant worker is their biggest threat.
So don’t just defend the weekend.
Weaponize it.
Use your time to breathe.
To learn.
To organize.
To fight.
And if you’re with me in that fight—subscribe below, share this with someone who’s tired of being tired, and support the mission to take back what they’ve stolen.
Subscribe. Share. Rebel.
No Masters. No Monopolies. No Mercy.
In Solidarity,
Greedbane
05/01/2025
Further Reading & Sources
1. The Fight for the 40-Hour Workweek
• The Eight-Hour Day Movement – Wikipedia
• The Struggle to Win the 40-Hour Workweek – APWU
• How the 40-Hour Work Week Became the Norm – NPR
2. Elon Musk’s Workweek Doctrine
• Elon Musk Says You Need to Work at Least 80 Hours a Week to Save the World – Inc.com
• Elon Musk Likes 80-Hour Workweeks — Science Says Forget It – CBS News
3. Recent Labor Wins & Movements
• 2023 United Auto Workers Strike – Wikipedia
• UAW Ends Historic Strike After Reaching Tentative Deals with Big 3 Automakers – CBS News
4. The Push for a 4-Day Workweek
• The Rise of the 4-Day Workweek – APA
• Four-Day Work Weeks Are Good for Your Health, a Large Study Finds – TIME
• Four-Day Week Made Permanent for Most UK Firms in World’s Biggest Trial– The Guardian