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Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

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Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#71

Post by pandapower2 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #51
swayvil wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can't buy time.

Well... we live twice as long as those people.

That's not really true. Once you exclude people who died in childhood the average life expectancy shoots up.

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/05/Life-expectancy-b...

In England and Wales around 1850 the life expectancy overall was around 40 because a lot of people died as children and dragged down the average.

For someone that made it to 5 years old their life expectancy goes us 15 years to 55.

People now definitely have a higher life expectancy but the difference isn't as vast as some might assume.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#72

Post by atoav »

manfredo wrote: post #42

> One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit -- but rarely articulated -- assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadi…

All of what you said is why poverty is usally seen as a relative value — it is relative to the perceived average of the wealth of the society you live in.

A society that continuosly sustains high degrees of poverty under that definition, usually needs a narrative for why the poor people deserve to be poor and why the rich people deserve to be rich. Centuries ago (depending on the place) this might have been still been religion: you have been born into a poor life and those in the lead have been born as leaders and there is nothing you can/ought to do about it.

Today individualism takes that function: you are responsible for beeing poor, even if you have been born into it. But you can become a billionaire if you want — it is just very hard. This means also those who are billionaires must have worked very very hard and so deserve their wealth.

Rich people usually inherit their wealth tho, which makes a fool of the whole narrative and suggests who profits from it.

Beeing poor means to struggle to make ends meet every day and despite optimization efforts fail to do exactly that every now and then. You can have a hundred times the absolute wealth of someone in a different society and still be poorer than them in that you struggle for survival, while they do okay for the society thwy are in.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#73

Post by jaynetics »

bsanr2 wrote: post #54

In America, at least, we should consider the legacy of slavery and indentured servitude in attitudes towards working hours. Many of the expectations for economic output by American industry have been set by the productivity of people who had little or no right to question the conditions they worked under, overseen by people who cared little for their well-being beyond that productivity. If that's the basis of the Ame…

There are plenty bosses like this in Germany, which doesn't have as much of a history of slavery.

I'd wager that when looking at countries with roughly the same level of industrialization, whether humans view fellow humans as something more than mere resources is linked to a certain set of attitudes.

I'd guess that reduced working hours are positively correlated to pluralism and pacifism, and perhaps negatively correlated to religiousness.

The more you think that life ought to be lived a certain way, the more likely you are to see work as a savior from straying from that way.

Looking at countries that have severely mistreated minorities, natives or remote people might also reveal a correlation, the more so the less this is part of the public consciousness.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#74

Post by jimbob45 »

bsanr2 wrote: post #54

In America, at least, we should consider the legacy of slavery and indentured servitude in attitudes towards working hours. Many of the expectations for economic output by American industry have been set by the productivity of people who had little or no right to question the conditions they worked under, overseen by people who cared little for their well-being beyond that productivity. If that's the basis of the Ame…

Let's first get everyone on an even playing field. 40 hours is a laughable suggestion to many workers right now. If you could promise every worker that they have to work 40 hours a week for the rest of their life but that OT was forever banned after, I don't think you'd hear many complaints ever again.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#75

Post by aidenn0 »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #69
vondur wrote: post #68

I believe at the height of Imperial Rome, workers almost had one day off for every day worked. The Romans did use a lot of space labor, so that may also have something to do with it.

What's "space labor"?

My guess is autocorrect for "slave labor"

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#76

Post by proto-n »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #69
vondur wrote: post #68

I believe at the height of Imperial Rome, workers almost had one day off for every day worked. The Romans did use a lot of space labor, so that may also have something to do with it.

What's "space labor"?

Probably slave labor typo + autocorrect

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#77

Post by hnick »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #69
vondur wrote: post #68

I believe at the height of Imperial Rome, workers almost had one day off for every day worked. The Romans did use a lot of space labor, so that may also have something to do with it.

What's "space labor"?

Auto-correct of slave, I imagine. Unless we believe in ancient aliens.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#79

Post by atoav »

BurningFrog wrote: post #49
atoav wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty is usually measured relatively to the perceived average of your environment’s wealth because that is how poverty affects your life. You can be 100 times as rich as some poor soul in a third world country and still be so poor in your own society that you are constantly struggling, fighting for survival, skipping meals and inheriting that struggle to your kids who are born into them without much chances of gett…

> Poverty is usually measured relatively to the perceived average of your environment’s wealth because that is how poverty affects your life. No, that is how it affects your status . In every society, half the people are at or below average status, because math. That can never change. But 95+% of the people in the richest country have better material standard than the average people in the poorest. And even those in…

I didn’t come up with that definition of poverty, it is the definition used by UNICEF, UNDP (The United Nations Children's Fund) and the OECD.

And there certainly is discussion about that definition, but other poverty definitions also fail to capture certain aspects of poverty (e.g. the World Bank’s poverty line).

It isn’t status, when bith of your parents work full time and you still don’t get to eat on the last days of the week. That is poverty.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#80

Post by monster99 »

pinkfoot wrote: post #60
atoav wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty is usually measured relatively to the perceived average of your environment’s wealth because that is how poverty affects your life. You can be 100 times as rich as some poor soul in a third world country and still be so poor in your own society that you are constantly struggling, fighting for survival, skipping meals and inheriting that struggle to your kids who are born into them without much chances of gett…

I invite you to visit us in Africa where a dose of real poverty will dis abuse you of your silly notion that relative poverty is a real thing.

I invite you to try getting a mate or date while being a poor man in north america and see how it effects your mental and physical health.

You're a god moron, status matters and if you don't think it does you need to have your status and health reduced so you can feel what it's like to be on the receiving end.

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