This article is somewhat surprising. It does not seem to account for variation in the intensity of work at different times, for example planting and harvest. At those times it's hard to imagine that people worked anything less than dawn to dusk to ensure they had food for the next year.
Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
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Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#12Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#13Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#14Meh, I think this lacks perspective. Maybe you 'worked' less in that era in the sense that you provided a smaller portion of your time to a third party for pay. But, you worked more overall. You didn't work for a few hours then order food for dinner; You probably worked a few hours, then spent the next many hours either harvesting and/or creating all the requirements for life. Maybe you spent 2 hours hunting a deer,…
Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Common usage indicates that "than us" is just fine. Remember English grammar doesn't come from a grammar book - grammar books are merely imperfect attempts to describe common English usage.
Imagine writing this in a code review
Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#16Meh, I think this lacks perspective. Maybe you 'worked' less in that era in the sense that you provided a smaller portion of your time to a third party for pay. But, you worked more overall. You didn't work for a few hours then order food for dinner; You probably worked a few hours, then spent the next many hours either harvesting and/or creating all the requirements for life. Maybe you spent 2 hours hunting a deer,…
Capitalism wasn’t a thing, and the society was fundamentally different. People were in caste like social strata and did what they were supposed to do, no more.
Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#17It's true there are skilled workers that love what they do, and their jobs allow them to exert influence -- so they are motivated to work long hours (versus, say, a worker assembling widgets on a factory line).
Something about that dichotomy of the people who have the luxury of choosing how much to work, writing about how we work longer, is something I find interesting. The management class of workers are the ones who have the most influence on the working hours of an organization's individual contributors.
Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#18Seriously. Read the mandate at the feds website and process it literally.
Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#19If you have a fixed amount of land to farm, there's only so much work you can do. If you give the king or the bishop your excess crops, there's only so much motivation to work.
Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)
#20Meh, I think this lacks perspective. Maybe you 'worked' less in that era in the sense that you provided a smaller portion of your time to a third party for pay. But, you worked more overall. You didn't work for a few hours then order food for dinner; You probably worked a few hours, then spent the next many hours either harvesting and/or creating all the requirements for life. Maybe you spent 2 hours hunting a deer,…