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Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

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Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#371

Post by TaylorAlexander »

malthuswaswrong wrote: post #353
clairity wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's an odd and quite uncharitable interpretation. there's not even a remote connection to (restricting) freedom of association, much less with my own hands (how would that even work?). the underlying point is that money isn't the be-all-and-end-all of what we value and what we exchange in our socioeconomic lives. money collapses a multidimensional social calculus into a single-dimensional metric, with all the unde…

Would you change your opinion if you were presented with hard data proving that 80% of wealthy people earned that wealth by delivering goods and services to people who voluntarily paid for it, and only 20% of the wealthy inherited it and that inherited wealth does not last more than 3 generations?

> 80% of wealthy people earned that wealth

More likely they hired workers who created that wealth. And while in today's system we say that the person at the top "earned" that wealth, we could just as easily arrange firms differently so they are cooperatively owned. And in doing so they would not produce super wealthy people but instead a society with broader wealth distribution.

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#372

Post by mrow84 »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #6

> And they worked only as many days as were necessary to earn their customary income -- which in this case amounted to about 120 days a year, for a probable total of only 1,440 hours annually (this estimate assumes a 12-hour day because the days worked were probably during spring, summer and fall). This goes against everything I've been taught, that the plebian class basically toiled endlessly, from Feudal Times to I…

I’m no expert but my understanding is that the drive to industry in Britain, aided by the enclosures, significantly increased working hours, and worsened working conditions.

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#373

Post by SequoiaHope »

thegrimmest wrote: post #344
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and I view this very differently. First of all, getting people goods that they need is not consumerism. Consumerism is the idea that buying a new car or a Pepsi will make you feel better. Or that doing so will make you “cool”. So for example most car manufacturers come out with a new model every year and then push the idea that buying a new model is an indicator of success. But I claim we would be better off if c…

> if cars were more similar year to year They were like this in the Soviet Union, and it was laughable how much they ended up lagging behind after a few decades. I see the process you describe, despite it's perceived but necessary inefficiency, as resulting in a system that delivers the most progress and the most resiliency. There's a reason that self-driving cars are being invented in one place and not another. The…

But in another way, this is exactly how open source works. They do not sell you a new release and push ads showing how stylish you will be if you dump version 13 and upgrade to version 14. They just push a point release as needed. Some software is updated daily and some is updated once every five years. There is no marketing team trying to drum up artificial demand for some python package.

> They were like this in the Soviet Union, and it was laughable how much they ended up lagging behind after a few decades.

The soviet system was an authoritarian one and I am proposing a free market solution. I am basically just saying people can save money if they band together and buy machines which provide for their basic needs. But also it would all be open source, and like software it would be updated as needed.

Actually the example with cars was just an attempt to explain consumerism. I might as well just paste this definition in to this comment like I just did elsewhere.

"Consumerism is the idea that increasing the consumption of goods and services purchased in the market is always a desirable goal and that a person's wellbeing and happiness depend fundamentally on obtaining consumer goods and material possessions."

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/consumerism.asp

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#374

Post by TaylorAlexander »

clairity wrote: post #292
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and I view this very differently. First of all, getting people goods that they need is not consumerism. Consumerism is the idea that buying a new car or a Pepsi will make you feel better. Or that doing so will make you “cool”. So for example most car manufacturers come out with a new model every year and then push the idea that buying a new model is an indicator of success. But I claim we would be better off if c…

i understand your position. i had that sort of idealism once upon a moon. but i now realize that the causation is backwards. people want , full stop[0]. that is natural and universal, and trying to take that away from people is tantamount to stripping humanity of its animus. given this universal truth, the question isn't 'how do we limit our wants, and our desire to induce others' wants to fuel our own wants?', but r…

For a long time I wanted to be at the top of the monkey pile.

A LOT of that came from received culture growing up in California as a boy in the 1990's. I no longer want to be at the top of a pile of monkeys. I want my daily labor to support others in my community (broadly) rather than working to enrich a few people who will own everything and control our economy.

I think if you grow up in a society that tells everyone "greed is good" then you're going to think being greedy is human nature, but actually anthropologists know that societies have again and again existed based on mutual support of one another. I am simply suggesting we drop this "greed is good" mantra and focus on helping one another. And I think it can be more economically efficient when you value each person's life more or less equally.

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#375

Post by SequoiaHope »

malthuswaswrong wrote: post #262
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many indigenous cultures. The Iroquois native Americans might be one example. There was no notion that a minority got rich off the labor of others.

And how did those indigenous cultures fair when they came in contact with Western systems of resource collection and distribution? How can a system be both agrarian and strong enough to survive contact with non-agrarian systems? How do you stop 10 people from secretly working hard and producing an extra ration of gruel right under your commie nose?

> How do you stop 10 people from secretly working hard and producing an extra ration of gruel right under your commie nose?

I am talking about a voluntary system that works in some ways like wikipedia. I want to get together with others, under a libertarian system of free exchange, and build systems that are designed to meet core human needs as cheaply as possible. Then people can band together and buy those machines if they want, and they can share the output or whatever.

If 10 people want to go do something else, that doesn't affect me any more than Apple affects Wikipedia.

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#376

Post by hogFeast »

rsj_hn wrote: post #314
hogFeast wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will give you some actual facts here (because you appear to be genuinely interested, I can only speak about England which industrialized first). Urbanisation happened over a long period of time and was very far advanced in the UK (and in places like Belgium). Europe always used a far higher stock of capital (inc. animals) than in Asia but it was only when land began to be enclosed that you saw productivity really i…

Thanks, hogfeast! I am really interested in economic history, so I was aware of the enclosure period, but don't know much about it -- can you recommend some reading material to this and also the Swing Riots? (I know I can google, but books are better)

I can't provide any recommendations on enclosure. I studied it at university, and can't recall what books were recommended.

But if you search for stuff about agricultural productivity, you will find lots. I believe Gregory Clark and Robert Allen have written quite a bit about this.

No idea about the Swing Riots either. I have just read about it in other books. I think Luddism is more interesting. Afaik, there was no real persistent movement like it in agriculture.

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#377

Post by nlitened »

j56no wrote: post #211
karaterobot wrote: post #63

I would take a 10 hour day in almost any job in the 21st century over an 8-16 hour workday for a 14th century farm laborer mowing hay with a scythe or plowing behind a team of oxen. I get meal and rest breaks too, and even though they may get more days off than I do, what are they doing on those days off? Chopping wood? Thatching their roof? Hauling water from a well? The amount of labor done in a day by peasants in…

we could have more spare time and use that to improve society, instead we’re kept busy printing money

Any effort to improve society looks like work.

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#378

Post by id02009 »

legitster wrote: post #26

This analysis is solely focused on the "job" aspects of pre-industrial life and includes almost none of the domestic considerations. I'm not sure if it would be fair to call all non-wage time "leisure". Once work was still over there were still things to clean, fix, prepare, butcher, etc. Although, I think it goes without saying that before affordable lighting and heating, we all underestimate how lazy winters were f…

Exactly my thoughts. Mere clothes washing was a full day activity. Go to the well, bring water. Chop wood for heating. Milk cow, tend to chickens. Fix the fence... All this coupled with less then abundant available calories, and the slow paced work does paint a different picture.

Maybe they were not that relaxed, but slow paced work came from the necessary energy conservation?

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#379

Post by id02009 »

btbuildem wrote: post #326
WaitWaitWha wrote: post #293

This feels off. Farming today is a seven day, every day work week. There is no day off with livestock, no matter what century, and what season. If the sun sets, or the weather is bad outside, there are plenty of work to be done indoors. I would presume it was even harder without all the automation and technology in the Middle Ages. Maybe they did not labour for the employer all the time, but all the 'free time' was s…

Farming is an excellent example. But the farming we know today has been subject to relentless pressures of capitalism, and it has been industrialized to support economies of scale. Mom and pop farms are vestiges of the past. So I'm not sure your comparison holds, maybe a better analogy would be a hobby farm? Usually those involve people who have primary jobs and choose this as a lifestyle. My guess would the the farm…

Just an anecdote, but I remember my aunt and uncle farm. No economies of scale at all. My uncle would leave to work, and I remember my aunt's day. Prepare breakfast for kids. Let chickens out. Go to shop (on foot, they had no car) bring necessities. Go tend the vegetables garden. Cook dinner. Take care for elderly mom. Uncle back from work, it's 3pm, she was already busy for 9 hours. I think at this point she allowed herself to watch TV.

I know it's from 1990s, but it feels weird to claim that 15th century work was less, when you would not be able to buy a shovel in a store...

Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)

#380

Post by adrianN »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #239
jdthedisciple wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not entirely true. Visit some east asian countries and you'll see the physical work is literally what keeps the elderly so physically fit and in good shape for very long.

I know you don’t mean China, life expectancies in the villages where they have that kind of hard life is way lower than the cities. That hunched over Ayi still farming when she looks like she is 80 seems amazing, but then you’ll find out she is only 55. Actually, I don’t think this is true for any of the East Asian countries I’ve visited, it seems to be a romanticized myth of the west.

Poverty is of course a huge confounding factor when you look at life expectancy.
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