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Medieval peasants got more vacation time than modern workers (2013)

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Re: Medieval peasants got more vacation time than modern workers (2013)

#201

Post by barrkel »

ctdonath wrote: post #160
barrkel wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have HVAC now and nor have I ever felt much need for it; I don't do much online ordering; and I don't spend much time reading other than frivolities online. On the other hand, power, especially over a large organization, and playing in a much bigger game is very interesting.

You use no heating or cooling? That's unusual. Approximate latitude? I spent 37 years largely without A/C, northern climate usually being below preferred room temperature. Heating, however, was essential. Moving south, both are surprisingly necessary as the area, while quite temperate on average, has annual temperature swings from about 25°F to 105°F - requiring HVAC. Unless you're in an unusual situation, like high…

I grew up in a 200 year old cottage in the Irish countryside, the only heating was a fireplace (one, for the whole cottage). It wasn't a problem at all.

And a monarch would have more options for heating.

Re: Medieval peasants got more vacation time than modern workers (2013)

#202

Post by chrisjack »

barrkel wrote: post #87
ghaff wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To say nothing of the fact that let's see the first time he gets an infection or disease or needs surgery given no vaccinations, antibiotics, or anesthetics.

When was the last time you got an infection or disease that would have struck you down without modern medicine? I never have. In fact if hospitals didn't exist and I never saw a doctor my entire life, I don't think anything would have changed. I don't expect to live much longer than 60 as it is. Most 14th century monarchs, in the brief glance I did on Wikipedia before my answer, lived to 55 or 60 or so before they di…

From Health A millennium of health improvement (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/241864.stm) The average life expectancy for a male child born in the UK between 1276 and 1300 was 31.3 years. In 1998, it is 76. However, by the time the 13th-Century boy had reached 20 he could hope to live to 45, and if he made it to 30 he had a good chance of making it into his fifties.

From this history.stackexchange[1] thread, on user found that the average age of death of monarchs to be 44 years in England. In the same thread it seem that it was 48.5 depending on how you made your calculation and 53.4 years if you made it to 20 year old. [1] -https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/43292/what-was-t...

Re: Medieval peasants got more vacation time than modern workers (2013)

#203

Post by barrkel »

ctdonath wrote: post #173
ionised wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruling a country and an army could be pretty attractive to some.

Well, the context here is largely about relative vacation time. Now if you'd rather have a job which was notable in the 14th century, that's a different - and also interesting - discussion.

The message I replied to was talking about a monarch, not a peasant.

Re: Medieval peasants got more vacation time than modern workers (2013)

#204

Post by bjourne »

jerf wrote: post #112
vadimberman wrote: post #58

Ugh. The paper reeks of political agenda. The very first sentence is: > One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. What about the Communism? Why would they spread this durable myth? Because I remember hearing the same story in the Soviet school. The paper does not make a real effort trying to consider different evidence and honestly investigate the subject. Most of the sources are relat…

"The paper does not make a real effort trying to consider different evidence and honestly investigate the subject." Here's some food for thought: If you don't work an additional hour, because the economic environment you are in has provided you no meaningful economic task that would be worth doing in that hour, are you better off than someone who does have that opportunity and works for benefit in that time? It's dif…

> I'd expect tears from our visitor and a high likelihood of violent resistence if you try to send them back.

I'm not so sure. See the antropologist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Good_(anthropologist) He married a native girl named Yarima, but after several years in Western society she choose to return to her tribe in the rain forest. Life as a Medieval peasant seem to me to be inferior to life in a hunter gatherer tribe, but I think it is far from certain that the peasant would refuse to go back.

Re: Medieval peasants got more vacation time than modern workers (2013)

#205

Post by ghaff »

chrisjack wrote: post #199
barrkel wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last time you got an infection or disease that would have struck you down without modern medicine? I never have. In fact if hospitals didn't exist and I never saw a doctor my entire life, I don't think anything would have changed. I don't expect to live much longer than 60 as it is. Most 14th century monarchs, in the brief glance I did on Wikipedia before my answer, lived to 55 or 60 or so before they di…

You don't get infection or disease because. 1- most of the people (and probably you too) are vaccinated and prevent the spreading of such disease. 2- Most of our current developed world is sanitize compare to back them 3- a cut could be lethal or could meant amputation in the middle age, now you just need to put alchool on it. 4- you might had suffer from malnutrition even has a monarch, lack of vitamin C could lead…

I can't help but feel that there is some mild trolling going on this thread :-) If not that, there are at least a couple of people who are seriously optimistic about their personal invulnerability in the absence of modern medicine, healthcare, and public health practices.

Re: Medieval peasants got more vacation time than modern workers (2013)

#206

Post by jungletime »

ptero wrote: post #9

> In addition to relaxing during long holidays, the medieval peasant took his sweet time eating meals, and the day often included time for an afternoon snooze. I have serious doubts about this. Maybe someone could provide additional insight. I doubt all time not working the fields was "relaxing during long holidays". It would likely be spent on other chores. Food was likely not plentiful (when it is, population explo…

If you owned land, and did not experience natural disasters, you could eat very well. Chickens are easy to take care of and growing enough vegetables is not that hard. The biggest worry was catastrophic crop failure of staples like wheat or potatoes due to weather, or disease or pests. The other worry was stored food spoiling over winter in cellars. Beans and pickled fruits/vegetables like cabbage is what got you through. Harvest time was busiest season. Winter you more or less bundled up and stayed indoors as much as you could, venturing out to take care of your animals. I spent my childhood at my grandmas farm. Due to communism, life was very primitive.

Re: Medieval peasants got more vacation time than modern workers (2013)

#207

Post by macspoofing »

emodendroket wrote: post #190
macspoofing wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The relationship between hours worked and work done is not direct Whose arguing that? All I argued: If you work 60 hours @ $10/hr you make more money than if you work 40 hours @ $10/hr. That is a fundamental difference between a market-based economy and a marxist one. In the latter, that equation does not hold. >the route to advancement into better-paying work is rarely just being really efficient at your job. Again…

People not working "enough" hours isn't a structural problem if they're producing enough. If your argument is just that "people will spend more hours at work if their incentives are aligned exactly to making them do that," then I don't disagree, but I also don't find it revelatory.

>then I don't disagree, but I also don't find it revelatory.

Because it isn't. And yet we still have people who believe Marxism can work.

Re: Medieval peasants got more vacation time than modern workers (2013)

#208

Post by notahacker »

emodendroket wrote: post #198
notahacker wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crop failures can just as easily happen under a capitalist mode of production; this seems somewhat orthogonal to the question of whether people not working in the off-season are "unemployed." The point was that if the people had employment opportunities, they'd be less likely to die from their own crops failing, either through acquiring savings during downtime to pay for food or being able to move out of farming wh…

I don't think it's very likely in a medieval context that, if you are experiencing crop failure, there is an abundance of food to purchase from someone else.

Systemwide crop failures weren't exactly rare in the medieval era, but the chances of something going wrong with family-sized farms were higher still.

Re: Medieval peasants got more vacation time than modern workers (2013)

#209

Post by emodendroket »

macspoofing wrote: post #207
emodendroket wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People not working "enough" hours isn't a structural problem if they're producing enough. If your argument is just that "people will spend more hours at work if their incentives are aligned exactly to making them do that," then I don't disagree, but I also don't find it revelatory.

>then I don't disagree, but I also don't find it revelatory. Because it isn't. And yet we still have people who believe Marxism can work.

I don't think your argument works unless you actually go back and tie the hours thing to productivity. If I go to work and goof off for eight hours is the system working?

I'm also not really sure what this all has to do with feudalism.

Re: Medieval peasants got more vacation time than modern workers (2013)

#210

Post by emodendroket »

ctdonath wrote: post #193
Retric wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You where not limited to your own hut. Further you where often staying with a large extended family so playing with children and telling stories etc. It was very different than staying home at a modern single apartment.

Making the best of a bad situation (the essence of unemployment) does not equate to choosing the manner & location of frolicking (the essence of vacation).

> The peasant's free time extended beyond officially sanctioned holidays. There is considerable evidence of what economists call the backward-bending supply curve of labor -- the idea that when wages rise, workers supply less labor. During one period of unusually high wages (the late fourteenth century), many laborers refused to work "by the year or the half year or by any of the usual terms but only by the day." And they worked only as many days as were necessary to earn their customary income -- which in this case amounted to about 120 days a year, for a probable total of only 1,440 hours annually (this estimate assumes a 12-hour day because the days worked were probably during spring, summer and fall). A thirteenth-century estime finds that whole peasant families did not put in more than 150 days per year on their land. Manorial records from fourteenth-century England indicate an extremely short working year -- 175 days -- for servile laborers. Later evidence for farmer-miners, a group with control over their worktime, indicates they worked only 180 days a year.

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...

Does not sound like the actions of a group desperate for more work.

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