by dihydro on 10/30/21, 5:05 PM with 405 comments
by didibus on 10/30/21, 7:25 PM
Physical work actually energized me, I mean this is all confirmed today as well, we know all the benefits exercise brings on well being.
There's something about desk jobs that is frankly soul sucking and literally mentally draining in a way where when the day ends, it's as if you suffer from temporary depression. Even getting motivated to do things you want to do is hard, resorting to the laziest activity is often what happens, phone, social media, television. Sometimes I can't even get myself to play a video game and I love video games.
And when the night comes, you'd think sleep is what you need, but that same day of desk job actually gives you insomnia, falling asleep is hard, and while you sleep it's as if all of that mental activity is still happening in your head from the work day.
If physical labor work paid me as well and provided the same benefits, I'd probably switch back to it honestly.
by legitster on 10/30/21, 5:31 PM
Although, I think it goes without saying that before affordable lighting and heating, we all underestimate how lazy winters were for the average peasant, whether idyllic or not (accounts I have read make it sound incredibly, incessantly dull).
And I think the best evidence we have that we are overrating the quality of pre-industrial leisure time is that people developed almost no leisure activities! Common people had almost no sports, no games (beyond precursors to Bocce or backgammon), no literature! They supposedly had half a year of doing nothing, and perhaps singing and drinking was sufficient to fill the time, but you'd think they would show lots of other innovations. Or even steal the activities of the rich (organized sports)!
Instead you don't see leisure activities develop until the rise of the 40 hour workweek and the availability of consumer appliances.
Edit: I hope people understand that the argument the article presents is largely a romanticization of poverty.
by SavantIdiot on 10/30/21, 5:20 PM
This goes against everything I've been taught, that the plebian class basically toiled endlessly, from Feudal Times to Industrial Revolution before labor laws to today's "multiple low-wage-jobs to survive".
EDIT: Also odd that the author doesn't point out that ~2040 hours is the yearly hours in a modern 40-hour workweek in the US, give or take a few holidays.
by Dumblydorr on 10/30/21, 5:44 PM
There's no better demonstration of the decimation of the rural Irish than the potato famine of the 1840s. It wasn't just one year, multiple years, their monocrop of the Irish Lumper potato, which had led the widespread growth in population, failed them due to fungal blight. It's estimate 5% or even 10% died of starvation in some rural areas. Moreover, millions more left in droves for the UK and USA, recognizing the crushing poverty and lack of food vastly outweighed their love of the land and culture.
In my estimation, the rural Irish had leisure time for the arts despite their poverty and destitution. The abundance of time didn't help, they were too poor to own many games and objects. Yet, through music and dance and writing, they kept their spirits alive and, by some cheer, were able to Banish Misfortune.
by WaitWaitWha on 10/30/21, 11:46 PM
Farming today is a seven day, every day work week. There is no day off with livestock, no matter what century, and what season. If the sun sets, or the weather is bad outside, there are plenty of work to be done indoors.
I would presume it was even harder without all the automation and technology in the Middle Ages. Maybe they did not labour for the employer all the time, but all the 'free time' was spent labouring for sustenance, and other life's maintenance.
If I recall correctly, the 8 hour day, 40 hour week, and five day work-week are all 19th century trends.
by karaterobot on 10/30/21, 5:49 PM
by gadders on 10/30/21, 5:30 PM
Presumably because in the other half of the day, they'd be working to harvest and grow their own food. I'm not sure what the difference is between working 8 hours, and getting enough money to buy food, and working 4 hours and then another 4 hours to make your own food.
by thinkingemote on 10/30/21, 5:21 PM
Recreation is different than leisure. It's about re-creation and renewal, more like play.
by catlikesshrimp on 10/31/21, 2:34 AM
My father had a blast in a farm, because he is the boss and the manual work he has done is symbolic.
Swinging a machete (blade) under rain and sun for days on end is not fun, I can tell you from experience.
I only hear the opinion manual labor is "better" from some people who have never known any alternative, politicians who won't have to do any, or desk workers who can afford doing some manual "work" when feeling like it.
Any work you don't like will be tagged as bad, but I personally took the desk bad alternative over the manual labor alternative.
Manual labor is so bad that you have to import immigrants to do it. You could truly argue the wages are lower. I will elaborate realistic higher wages aren't enticing enough to get more nationals to embrace that work. That is happening in England right now, by the way.
by k__ on 10/30/21, 5:25 PM
People would say I'm lazy, because I'm come to work at 11am or wanted to work from home.
Many even got angry and said I'm insolent for wanting to work like this, while the rest of the world simply does as they're asked.
by wolverine876 on 10/30/21, 5:28 PM
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/business/9...
I wonder what later research adds.
by hintymad on 10/30/21, 5:40 PM
by rladd on 10/31/21, 1:31 AM
As discussed in Stone Age Economics by Sahlins:
https://archive.org/details/StoneAgeEconomics_201611
https://bigthink.com/big-think-books/vicki-robin-joe-domingu...
The biblical expulsion from the Eden of gathering fruit to the toil of agriculture also makes that point.
by waynesonfire on 10/30/21, 5:38 PM
by dang on 10/30/21, 5:46 PM
"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
by Swizec on 10/30/21, 5:14 PM
So many everyday things we take for granted were incredibly difficult and involved a lot of manual labor and/or waiting around for hours and days.
I wonder how much of that leisure time came from being blocked and technology/communications imposing a maximum throughput. You couldn’t work faster even if you wanted to and so you leisured. “Hurry up and wait” as some like to say
PS: there’s also stories of medieval peasants in France basicalky hibernating over winter because if you didn’t sleep for 16 hours every day, you’d burn too much calories and starve[1]. I’m sure that was a very fun reason to have short workweeks
by rglover on 10/30/21, 9:41 PM
Employers would be blown away by how much better the output and quality of work would be if they just left people the hell alone (fire your managers). People would also focus less on petty BS because they'd be happy instead of acting like children clawing at an ideal that only exists in their head.
Assume people are lazy idiots and you'll get a bunch of lazy idiots. Assume they're smart and generally well-intentioned: put your sunglasses on. You'll get the occasional clown (who you fire) but most will respect you for not treating them like cattle.
by Ericson2314 on 10/30/21, 6:33 PM
Stagnant weak demands screws over big things like nuclear power plants and subways.
We need things like a UBI and further shrinking of the workweek (perhaps as an "automatic stabilizer" based on pop vs total working hours vs popuation!) in order to not stagnate technology and get back our free time.
by fleddr on 10/31/21, 12:22 AM
It's truly odd for example when women joined the work force, this massive influx of labor didn't move work hours by an inch. Likewise for all the automation that happened.
We seem to be able to dramatically improve on everything in record time except for work conditions. It's a work for work sake situation, where some 50% of our economy basically consists of keeping each other busy.
Keeping each other busy is made possible by mandatory consumption. Marketing, social status, inflation, planned obsolesce all create a strong incentive to consume.
So, that's the system. Work, regardless of purpose. Consume, regardless of purpose. Just do lots of both. Keeping velocity at proper levels requires constant stimulation, which tells us its unnatural.
Isn't it odd that our species sees consuming lots of resources as a good thing? Isn't it odd that we glorify labor even if that labor does nothing to advance mankind? Isn't it cruel how some 80% of people hate their work, yet we force them into a humiliating 50 year rate race anyway, consuming their life energy?
Is it all worth it? Are we sure we can't do better?
by getbricked on 10/30/21, 7:53 PM
by ineedasername on 10/30/21, 6:11 PM
What the article says is that they had a shorter work week than many people did during the early/middle years of the industrial revolution. Modern day capitalism, while significantly flawed, seems to have moved on from that early horror: I have ancestors from ~100 years ago that died of black lung after spending decades of 60-70 hours/week in coal mines.
The author also ignores the time outside of "work" necessary to keep a household going. Time spent outside of the fields wasn't just idle time: everything from cooking to home maintenance was added labor that would eat away at those off hours more so than similar tasks today.
And sure, today some people still have no choice but to work long hours, and some people choose to do so, but I imagine that was the case in the supposedly more idyllic workers' environment described by the author as well.
Other aspects of these claims of a more leisurely life are refuted here: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.adamsmith.org/blog/regulati...
We also shouldn't forget the conditions of work & life for the average person. Peasantry was certainly a big step above out & out slavery but freedom was still significantly curtailed. There was not for example universal freedom of movement. Absent approval by the local lord, a person was bound to the land they were born on. The quality of low/middle justice for what rights people did have was highly variable & subject to capricious whims at times. (Which isn't to say that's a completely solved problem today though)
All of which is to say that workday hours, even granting the author's central thesis (which I don't), are not the yardstick to use when measuring quality of life. At best it's just one data point in the constellation of factors involved.
by cwwc on 10/30/21, 6:54 PM
by BurningFrog on 10/31/21, 1:12 AM
World population was 1/10 of today, so there wouldn't have been food for most of us.
Of course, our ancestors living then didn't have that comparison, and were possibly much happier than we are.
by 1MachineElf on 10/30/21, 5:14 PM
by penjelly on 10/30/21, 6:34 PM
by 999900000999 on 10/30/21, 5:51 PM
Considering famines were common, 1/10 women died during child birth, infant mortality was absurdly high and most people stayed in the same town until they died, I prefer now.
Running water is also nice .
by monkeydust on 10/30/21, 5:44 PM
by chiefalchemist on 10/30/21, 5:27 PM
by throw63738 on 10/30/21, 5:48 PM
by agumonkey on 10/30/21, 5:18 PM
You can work hard but in a beneficial environment (efforts are well chunked and rewarding physically and/or mentally) or you can work somehow less but in toxic settings (adversarial relationships, bad tooling, etc).
by lettergram on 10/30/21, 10:35 PM
by chromaton on 10/30/21, 9:58 PM
by jokethrowaway on 10/30/21, 5:24 PM
Capitalism was also people working in the fields and trading their produce, after paying their tax to their lord, not unlike to our income tax.
There are definitely many trends that led us to work more and more. There are increasingly more and more people in the few places people with ambitions want to live in. That's more competition which gradually drives the cost down. If the wage is already low enough that it's unreasonable for someone to live on it, the working hours will go up.
The real modern culprit in my opinion is the mandatory education system which indoctrinate kids to become employees for life instead of helping them find a place in society and in the market by providing value as a small business.
With less employees around wages would go up, with more small businesses the capital would be spread more and not concentrated in the hands of a few.
It's not hard to understand who is benefitting from this system: whoever owns capital and need workers.
I'm sure there is plenty of overlap with people controlling the media and telling people what to think and want - and people in the government approving laws.
by ryanmercer on 10/31/21, 10:24 AM
by WalterBright on 10/30/21, 9:54 PM
by zz865 on 10/30/21, 9:01 PM
by pietrovismara on 10/31/21, 12:07 AM
This kind of emotional reaction shows a level of insecurity that usually only comes out when we are attacked on something personal we feel fragile about. I don't understand how a discussion about the merits of capitalism can trigger the same response in people. You don't react like this when you're confident and certain that you're doing the right thing.
The point of the discussion isn't if we should go back to the pre-industrial era. The trillion dollar question is sadly left unanswered and, worst of all, undebated: If productivity has constantly risen since the first industrial revolution, why do we have less free time than ever? Where have most of the productivity gains gone?
Before I get answers about how we have less housework to do in our free time today, for most people working full time that is simply untrue. You commute ~1 hour daily, work 8 hours, when you get back home you've got to buy groceries, shower, cook, wash your dishes, etc. There's barely 1/2 hours of leisure left, and we usually feel too tired already by that time.
by Aunche on 10/30/21, 6:26 PM
by Grustaf on 10/31/21, 7:25 AM
by zaidf on 10/30/21, 5:38 PM
This statement is only true if you don't count slaves as people
by kiloDalton on 10/30/21, 8:55 PM
by supperburg on 10/30/21, 6:44 PM
by MeinBlutIstBlau on 10/30/21, 9:49 PM
by CryptoPunk on 10/31/21, 2:02 AM
by GaryTang on 10/30/21, 5:43 PM