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

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

#401

Post by lostjohnny » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

Pungsnigel wrote: post #263

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.

It's not by any means solved in Europe. // Swede

Well, you're right!

It's not entirely solved yet, we still have to die sometimes...

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

#402

Post by kasey_junk » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:09 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #368

kasey_junk wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My explanation is you are just wrong about all of those things. A firm that let people go without severance would be considered extremely unprofessional in professional contexts. Talking about how much you get paid is not only normal it’s protected by law and you should definitely be doing both legal and financial research on any perspective employers.

> A firm that let people go without severance would be considered extremely unprofessional in professional contexts. Not everyone works at "firms": this is extremely common in food service, for example. > Talking about how much you get paid is not only normal it’s protected by law Citation? I've worked at least one place where it was explicitly against the rules to share what you were paid with your coworkers (althou…

It is not a norm for non-professionals to provide 2 weeks notice. Leaving a good service job without providing notice will have no ramifications on your food service worker reputation.

I routinely ask my perspective boss for references. I also routinely ask for financial data before accepting a job. It has never caused even an eyebrow to be raised.

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

#403

Post by turk73 » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

lostjohnny wrote: post #214

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…

> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. Citation needed It really come from workers rights to have a life outside the workplace AND a salary even when they could not work (what we call safety). In medieval servitude there was no life outside the workplace, nor safety. Pre-induistrial workers worked less, on the average, because the…

Yet these days there is no way to work to get ahead for most people. You are always falling behind even as your pay rises because of rampant inflation that is understated by official reports. The entire system is designed to rip people off, then as now.

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

#404

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:15 PM UTC

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…

At my last company, there were several employees who spent the vast majority of their time trying to convince people their jobs are important. Whether I thought they were or not is kind of irrelevant, but it seems insane to work a job where the majority of your time spent is convincing people it makes sense for you to have a job.

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

#405

Post by simplecomplex » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

wukerplank wrote: post #314

rubber_duck wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked those jobs when I was younger - none of those people would feel any shame quitting for a better job so I'm not sure what your argument is.

> feel any shame quitting for a better job Yes and how do they find a better job without education? You are very fortunate that you were able leave that behind you. But do you realize there are millions of people in this world who have no means of pulling themselves out of the dirt?

Never before has education been so cheap or widely available. The whole world’s information is available to anyone with an Internet connection.

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

#406

Post by lostjohnny » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:17 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #272

lostjohnny wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a different job. it's equally hard, one could argue it's not equally heavy, but many athletes today exercise way more than what the typical medieval "drunk till the early morning ready to beat his wife and kids" farmer did.

While many athletes do work hard, it is one thing to work hard when you are well fed and another when you are starving. I have done both hard physical and keyboard tapping jobs in my life and I have no wish to go back to doing hard labor.

My family comes from poverty and hard work, my grandmother died last November at the age of 96, she worked, mainly as a farmer, her entire life up until 3/4 years ago.

I've never seen her tired, she never looked like she was not gonna finish what she started because it was too much.

Truth is physical work is hard only if you're not used to it.

Your body adapts to the amount of energy you give to it.

The harder the job, the more it takes to adapt, but it happens.

Well, unless we're talking about extreme malnutrition, but I've honestly never seen it in the west, not even in the deep country of central Italy, where my family comes from.

After a while working the fields is a lot less hard than climbing a dozen steps twice a day after you sat all day eating snacks, drinking sodas and basically not exercising at all.

Hard work today, IMHO, is working at Amazon's storage facilities, where stress adds up to what's basically legalized slavery and the workers cannot even work at their own pace because they have to work at the machines speed.

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

#407

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

HSO wrote: post #376

bcrosby95 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you have any idea how absolutely crazy these numbers sound over here in Europe?

The legal maximum out of pocket cost for a calendar year for in network providers (providers who agree to a price with your insurance company) is $13.5k. You should budget at least that much for a childbirth in the US (in case of complications such as C sections and other common issues after birth), if you can manage to plan your child being born between ~May to Oct, as you can then likely have all your expenses be in one year, otherwise another year's out of pocket maximum will come into play.

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

#408

Post by pyzon » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

"Wage slave" is a term that should return to the popular vernacular. It very accurately describes the relationship most Americans have with employment.

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

#409

Post by JBSay » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

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…

Somehow I don't think you know much about medieval serfdom. While the serf was not allowed to leave neither was the lord allowed kick the serf out of his land. The only way the lord could "fire" a serf was to sell the associated land in which case he would simply become the serf of another lord. By contrast employees are not attached to their place of work and are free to leave. The two systems have nothing in common.

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

#410

Post by jaclaz » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

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…

I would add that cows (or whatever other animals in the farm) don't have any idea about saturdays, sundays or hoilidays, they want to be fed (and in the case of cows need to be milked) every day, sun, rain or snow.

And it is not so ancient (medieval) as it may seem, it depends a lot on the country and the actual area.

I am told that the family (a very large one, composed of some thirty-forty people) of my great-grandfather (born in 1860 or 1861) lived in a farm (near but not so near to a village) in a remote area of the Apennines and they made one trip each year (with a horse carriage) to a village some 60 km away, on the seaside, to buy salt.

Besides that, all they actually bought "outside" were matches and some kerosene (or lamp oil), some steel/iron tools and glass and clay tableware, all the rest, including furniture, soap and candles was created/manufactured in the farm, including shoes[1] and clothes (they had wool, linen/canvas, leather) .

An older brother of my great-grandfather was semingly the first one to buy (circa 1865 or so) a rifle to go hunting, so you can add to the list gun powder.

[1] what was used largely at the time in farms were wooden clogs (or barefoot) , shoes were reserved for special occasions only