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

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

#411

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

BurningFrog wrote: post #326

pandapower2 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 defi…

> That's not really true. Once you exclude people who died in childhood the average life expectancy shoots up. An entertaining use of the word "true". Yes, if you exclude a lot of the data, the average changes :) Sarcasm aside, that is an important point in average life span statistics, but doesn't change the point that preindustrial life was "Nasty, brutish and short", as the old saying goes. Also, 1850s England was…

No, "not nasty brutish and short". And not "everybody suffered a short lifespan" either. As we have just seen.

What is true is that many children died young. Beyond that they lived almost as long as we do.

If they had modern medicine then the numbers would have equaled out. Heck, with their superior diet they may have lived even longer.

So the question is, do we need to work long hours to have modern medicine?

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

#412

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

enraged_camel wrote: post #383

greyhair wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Termination without notice or payment is definitely considered bad form, short of the company closing due to bankruptcy. I have never worked anywhere that did not provide notice or some severance. Even at a startup that cut 50% prior to going down in flames, they paid those half that were released two weeks pay and two weeks insurance coverage. (even though they were asked to leave immediately) Large corporations ten…

Are you US-based? Because severence packages are absolutely an exception, rather than the norm. Most of the US has "at-will" employment, which states that employers can terminate employees at will, for any reason, without warning. And companies take advantage of this all the time. The other thing is that you seem to be speaking as a developer. Everyone knows that our industry treats employees better than average. You…

For layoffs, severance is common.

For other terminations .... there should be a performance improvement plan in place and you should have seen it coming for a long time.

Only the most severe, egregious situations should result in a off-the-cuff, surprising firing.

[I'm not saying that everyone lives up to this standard, but it's the way it should be.]

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

#413

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #374

dragonwriter wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. Not really, they come as rather significant modifications of early capitalist servitude, won at a substantial cost in lives. Early capitalist servitude did itself evolve directly from feudal servitude, but it got much worse, in economic terms, in the process. It usually came with at least not…

>Early capitalist servitude did itself evolve directly from feudal servitude, but it got much worse, in economic terms, in the process. No it didn't. This Roussaunian idealization of rural subsistence living must really die. People aren't idiots, you don't move to urban factory work (as bad as it was compared to modern day) unless rural life was much worse.

> People aren't idiots, you don't move to urban factory work (as bad as it was compared to modern day) unless rural life was much worse.

Rural life was worse not because rural feudal tenancy was worse than urban factory servitude, but because the technology advances which made it possible to support the latter also simultaneously produced a population boom and reduced the total (not just per capita) quantity of rural labor demanded, producing a whole lot of surplus rural labor.

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

#414

Post by earth2eca » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

it is a shell game. I spent the best years of my life, my 20s and early 30s, building a career that was formidable and lauded by peers and colleagues, in a contracting industry. a nervous breakdown from work/life dysfunction led me to graduate studies in contemplative Tibetan Buddhist psychology. I have not worked a day in five years. there are mediating circumstances of privilege, position and inherited /accumulated wealth that have permitted me to choose not to partake in the power-oriented dynamics and economics of the modern "free market" wherein one has no choice but to subjugate free will unto the institutionalized corporation (at center of Western life) and its requisition of children consumers--who lack free will or organized behavioral/stimulus response to reject consumerization behavior mod. Therein the slaves remain working for unseen pharaohs and praying for unnecessary Saviors.

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

#415

Post by mlyle » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:29 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.

> For example, supply and demand is not a good explanation for why you can't come into most work environments in your undergarments.

Sure, when we get to ridiculous cases. But things just short of that, supply/demand is a huge contributor to. Showing up to work in shorts and flip flops? How acceptable this is depends a lot upon how hot the job market is.

Of course, no matter how hot the demand situation is-- it is never going to cause one to tolerate behavior so egregious that it scares away other employees and makes the supply picture worse.

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

#416

Post by swayvil » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:29 PM UTC

JBSay wrote: post #409

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…

He was offering that "proving worth to the lord" was fundamental to that psychology. Which fits in with your scenario just fine.

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

#417

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:31 PM UTC

azernik wrote: post #379

macspoofing wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Early capitalist servitude did itself evolve directly from feudal servitude, but it got much worse, in economic terms, in the process. No it didn't. This Roussaunian idealization of rural subsistence living must really die. People aren't idiots, you don't move to urban factory work (as bad as it was compared to modern day) unless rural life was much worse.

Standard of living rose by some measures on moving to the cities; however, the dependence on an employer was much greater than the old dependence on your lord.

> however, the dependence on an employer was much greater than the old dependence on your lord

I'm not sure the dependence was much greater, but it was less likely to be honored restart than mercilessly abused by the employer, because capitalism arose in the context of a huge labor surplus created by agricultural productivity revolutions, whereas feudal tenancy arose in tighter labor conditions and had grown traditions (and in some cases legal structures) based on that. Which is not too say that feudalism was without massive abuses of dependent relationships, itself.

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

#418

Post by earth2eca » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:35 PM UTC

johannes1234321 wrote: post #307

lostjohnny wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Pre-induistrial workers worked less, on the average, because they were surviving > They were working when they needed money and not working (AKA doing some other job for the house or the family, like farming or breeding cows and pigs) when they had enough to go on for maybe a week or so. Especially they worked depending on the season. During planting or harvest they were on the fields from dawn till dusk. In winter…

This is a cohesive response. The definition of work is itself a manifestation of industrialization, post-U.S. revolution. Previously, in the teleologically-oriented universe of the Medieval period and early Enlightenment, there was little if any distinction between work and life. Exceptions were for those who sought to become members of Guilds -- the architects, alchemists, millers, bakers and too herbalist apothecaries whose guild was closesly associated to the early Catholic church and later, loosely, with Luther's heresy.

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

#419

Post by inscionent » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:37 PM UTC

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…

15 - 21 I had at least one job, usually two, and was in school full time.

School was an additional job. School was a ladder out of devastating poverty. School was an opportunity to not be used for my base physical labor. School was hope. It was not 'Pretty Pleasant'.

Medieval peasants couldn't imagine modern dentistry either but I'm sure we have it good enough and can stop improving working conditions.

Most Americans don't have saving to handle a one time emergency, much less free capital to fully retire. A leisurely retirement sounds like a realistic proposition for a lucky few.

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

#420

Post by chrisco255 » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 4:38 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #383

greyhair wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Termination without notice or payment is definitely considered bad form, short of the company closing due to bankruptcy. I have never worked anywhere that did not provide notice or some severance. Even at a startup that cut 50% prior to going down in flames, they paid those half that were released two weeks pay and two weeks insurance coverage. (even though they were asked to leave immediately) Large corporations ten…

Are you US-based? Because severence packages are absolutely an exception, rather than the norm. Most of the US has "at-will" employment, which states that employers can terminate employees at will, for any reason, without warning. And companies take advantage of this all the time. The other thing is that you seem to be speaking as a developer. Everyone knows that our industry treats employees better than average. You…

Sure, but that goes back to the point that supply and demand are driving these sort of concessions by employers. Devs are in high demand and low supply, so the concessions are much higher than say, a retail job. I would say severance is common in "professional" roles, whether that be an accountant or middle manager. It's certainly less common in blue collar work and lower skill work. Despite the existence of at-will employment in some states, many companies in these states still choose not to fire indiscriminately. I think that it's smart business practice to offer severance, because companies are reviewed these days on sites like Glassdoor. A company with a bad reputation for treating employees is going to have a hard time attracting talent.