Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009) • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by navigatesol » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

rubber_duck wrote: post #188

vfc1 wrote: post #114

The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. This explains the system of values that revolve around it, such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. The servant was not expected to leave it…

> such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example. When there is enough choice people change jobs all the time - the demand in my l…

>the demand in my local dev market went through the roof last couple of years for multiple reasons

Do you think your local development market is remotely representative of the nature of national employment trends in general? And you accuse the OP of "over-generalization"?

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

#392

Post by kerkeslager » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #380

kerkeslager wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person I'm responding to said: > The situation is pretty much dictated by supply/demand and both sides take advantage. If that hypothesis is true, then they can use that hypothesis to explain the existent phenomena.

>If that hypothesis is true, then they can use that hypothesis to explain the existent phenomena Why would that be the case? It is true that supply/demand largely explains what happens in the job market. It is also true that there are are socio/political/cultural forces at play. For example, supply and demand is not a good explanation for why you can't come into most work environments in your undergarments.

I think maybe we agree.

I was disagreeing with the one-sided claim, "The situation is pretty much dictated by supply/demand and both sides take advantage."

But you said something more balanced which I agree with: "It is true that supply/demand largely explains what happens in the job market. It is also true that there are are socio/political/cultural forces at play."

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

#393

Post by nudpiedo » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

Draiken wrote: post #320

nudpiedo wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having said all that, I've never had the opportunity to work with physical labor so my views are likely biased. Very strong opinion to end up saying everything could be just false because it is a mere gut feeling. Everyone has worries and problems, if it is not the weather which is about to damage the harvest it will be the expensive providers or the fruits imported from cheaper countries or the workers who try to…

> Everyone has worries and problems, if it is not the weather which is about to damage the harvest it will be the expensive providers or the fruits imported from cheaper countries or the workers who try to do as less as possible with the maintenance of their tools. And after work everyone stressed because they are afraid that this year benefits might end up not covering expenses and not knowing what to do if the pric…

Even when everything appears to be repetitive it is never repetitive. You should just try a work holiday visa on a country where you want to learn a language and work at a farm. It still won’t reflect all the stress that means just changing one provider, investing in new technology from all those companies that want to make profit on you for and never be sure on whether this year you are really not going to make it anymore, knowing you are already at the bottom of the chain (primary sector) and you start considering closing everything right before getting into bankruptcy. And your friends still believe you are ok because “you work in the nature” and if you are an owner you are very likely to get the whole year salary at once and they cannot understand why being cheap is just a way of survive.

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

#394

Post by ryanmercer » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:57 PM UTC

PeterStuer wrote: post #66

If you look at hours per worked per family, things have gotten even way worse since woman were drafted en mass into the salaried workforce post ww2, going from a 40hr week to well over 70hrs.

>If you look at hours per worked per family, things have gotten even way worse since

No, they've got markedly better because of child labor laws. Kids during pre-industrial revolution time periods didn't just go of to daycare, football camp, elementary school... they did as much work as they were capable alongside their parents.

In fact, this still happens to some extent even in the United States on family owned farms. Once you're old enough to handle chores, you're out there mucking stalls or feeding horses/chickens/pigs, then when you're older and more capable you are driving equipment, mending fence, replacing fence posts, moving hay, servicing equipment.

For an easy look at this, just do a Google dive into FFA (Future Farmers of America). 670k kids across the country doing their various farming activities with the motto "Learning to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, Living to Serve"

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

#395

Post by greyhair » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

tryitnow wrote: post #375

dash2 wrote: post #360

This is from a 1993 book. There's no mention of the pretty pleasant 16-21 years that most Americans spend in education, compared to preindustrial labourers starting work before age 11. Or of the concept "retirement", which would have been hard for medieval peasants to imagine. There's also this pertinent commentary from 1995: https://www.clevelandfed.org/~/media/content/newsroom%20and%... "The central message of this…

I think it's very hard to "pretty pleasant" - I'm glad that your educational experience was that way, but for a lot of people education is a form of work. In fact, I would bet most students would prefer work to education - and indeed many vote with their feet and drop out of education. Heck, even on HN there are many of us who hated "education" - it wasn't pleasant at all. As for retirement, well that's an unfair com…

Preindustrial you didn't spend time shopping, you spent time growing your own food and preserving it. You didn't spend time figuring out insurance, because there was no health care, at all. You didn't have bills because you paid up front, or you did without.

The part about the commute though, I'll grant you that. During the last thirty five years, my commute was two and a half hours each day for eighteen years. They rest has been reasonable, but that eighteen was awful.

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

#396

Post by ernst_klim » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #361

ernst_klim wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Universal healthcare solved that in Europe. As a person which lives in Russia and Germany, I'm really interested in what you mean by solved? Universal healthcare in Russia is a total mess. Universal healthcare (edit: in Germany) have a lot of problems too, of which the most significant is underpayment, low salaries, and such a lack of personnel, that CDU people did really suggest to use conscription to draw the fre…

My favorite subject. First, I'm not sure if you're aware, but the price of a procedure in the US is not necessarily related to its cost. There's been several news articles showing the same procedure can cost 100x more in one hospital vs the other in the same city. Hospitals literally pull prices out their ass and justify it by saying "no one pays that price". Then they bludgeon people with these completely fictitious…

Could you elaborate how anything of this is relevant to what I wrote?

The point was that you can't guarantee positive rights, since positive rights require some commitment.

>Stories from the great US paid healthcare system

Did I said it is great? Why you emphasize "paid" when any healthcare system is paid?

Your services are flawed in a typical American way, i.e. overregulated crony mess where all the burden lies on an avg Joe since he has no leverage on a political system while lobbyists do.

I bet my head that if you implement a universal healthcare, you would end up in a mess like that which Russia have, rather than something more decent.

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

#397

Post by luc4sdreyer » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

ernst_klim wrote: post #280

Draiken wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue it's actually easier to cope when what you need is repetitive hard physical labor. You don't go to sleep thinking about that big problem you still haven't solved. You actually get the satisfaction of doing the physical activity. You know with certainty that you've done your job (you can actually see it) and you know when to stop because your body will tell you to. Finally, you might be exhausted physically…

> You actually get the satisfaction of doing the physical activity. Found a guy who haven't done any hard physical labor before. You are confusing a 8-hourd hardcore shift/12 hours hard work under the boiling sun in the field with a 1-2 hour workout in a gym. > Finally, you might be exhausted physically at the end of the day, but your mind is definitely not exhausted, which allows you to actually do something with it…

I don't like sleeping more than eight hours, unless I'm completely sleep deprived. Even then, I'll automatically wake up after about eight hours. This has been the case for as long as I can remember, including times of extremely intense mental work, like a compressed exam week at university. The exceptions was when I did manual labour on a construction site for a few weeks.

I'd get home, eat, shower, and pass out, and sleep for ten or more hours. I wanted to do some reading or watch series but I couldn't keep my eyes open.

Maybe I would've gotten used to it at some point. But the experience was unlike anything else I've gone through.

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

#398

Post by deeg » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:02 PM UTC

msluyter wrote: post #330

ivanhoe wrote: post #219

It's comparing apples and oranges to compare medieval peasants life and modern office work. Even today in rural areas people work around the clock in and around the house to keep everything afloat and barely survive. Sitting on your butt for 10h a day and doing intellectual work seems hard only until you try to do some farming for a while - and modern farming is nothing compared to how hard it was back then, when you…

Almost certainly in the sense of physical hardship -- but perhaps not in terms of total working hours. Here's another more sprightly essay on the topic: https://allthatsinteresting.com/medieval-peasants-vacation-m... "Consider a typical working day in the medieval period,” said Schor. “It stretched from dawn to dusk (sixteen hours in summer and eight in winter), but, as Bishop Pilkington has noted, work was intermitt…

This contradicts my understanding of meal times. "Three meals a day" didn't really start until the industrial revolution [0]. In medieval times you ate when you got food.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20243692

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

#399

Post by turk73 » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:04 PM UTC

lostjohnny wrote: post #245

lotsofpulp wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"the big institutional lie” The big lie is all the lavish promises people made to their future selves. Expensive medical treatments (Medicare), retirement funds (social security/pension payments), expensive infrastructure (constant access to clean water/electricity/gas/sewage/etc). Maybe the biggest lie is pretending to be able to predict the future. All those aforementioned promises require future resources, popula…

> Expensive medical treatments Again. Universal healthcare solved that in Europe. It is expensive, but it's a shared cost that benefits everybody. > Maybe the biggest lie is pretending to be able to predict the future Maybe, but back then they didn't have the means to care for more than a few days at a time, to think about the future. If they could have done it, they would have done it.

The US is not like European countries, we are bigger and have different issues. I keep hearing people rave about countries like Denmark or Sweden where everything is supposedly so great. Is paying the total amount over again in tax on a new car really all that great?

I could retire right now at 46 if the US adopted govt. run healthcare. Thing is, I would feel extremely guilty about pushing that level of tax burden onto everyone.

We in the US forfeit ~50% of our wages in taxes--Federal income tax, federal payroll tax for social security, state, local, sales tax (8%!), property tax, tax on vehicles ("license tabs"--little fucking stickers that if you don't have them the police harass you). Some states like NY have tax people going around all the time fucking with everyone over piddly nonsense like not having a fire extinguisher in a commercial truck. Other states, like NC, have taxes on things like personal watercraft and off road motorcycles. Tax, tax, tax. In addition to taxes, places like NY have "surcharges" and "surtaxes" which are just additional taxes added after the total amount plus tax got calculated. Americans are already tax slaves. Slavery never got abolished, it got extended to all.

How much more tax would we need for universal healthcare? Would I be up to 80%? 90%? Where does this end? Would there be any amount of my income I would be allowed to keep?

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

#400

Post by lostjohnny » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

ernst_klim wrote: post #277

lostjohnny wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Expensive medical treatments Again. Universal healthcare solved that in Europe. It is expensive, but it's a shared cost that benefits everybody. > Maybe the biggest lie is pretending to be able to predict the future Maybe, but back then they didn't have the means to care for more than a few days at a time, to think about the future. If they could have done it, they would have done it.

> Universal healthcare solved that in Europe. As a person which lives in Russia and Germany, I'm really interested in what you mean by solved? Universal healthcare in Russia is a total mess. Universal healthcare (edit: in Germany) have a lot of problems too, of which the most significant is underpayment, low salaries, and such a lack of personnel, that CDU people did really suggest to use conscription to draw the fre…

It means that in Europe universal healthcare is almost a solved problem, according to WHO (World Health Organization) 6 out of the first 10 and 16 out of the first 20 highest ranked healthcare systems are in Europe.

source: https://www.who.int/healthinfo/paper30.pdf