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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)

#401

Post by TaylorAlexander »

thegrimmest wrote: post #390
SequoiaHope wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what happens when some people don't want to participate in your voluntary communism and insist on inventing new things and marketing them? What happens when someone decides they do not want to contribute to wikipedia? > You'll note that membership in intentional communities is quite low. Which is why I am designing an open source farming robot. Maybe if the work is fixing robots it will be more appealing than labor…

Open source tractors and other agricultural equipment have been around for quite a while now, but don't really have much uptake. People still prefer to buy John Deere. Why do you think that might be?

Well I’m not designing a tractor. For large equipment it is probably difficult to compete on the manufacturing side. Luckily our vehicle is much smaller than a tractor.

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

#402

Post by asdff »

varjag wrote: post #175
legitster wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Hedonistic Treadmill. We're incredibly richer, but we are wired to always want something nicer. We can wash our clothes so much easier but we insist on washing them after every wear. The net result is the same amount of time spent washing clothes (but they are always nicer).

Except you don't wash them, you load and unload the machine. That's substantially less work (literally, in Joules) no matter how you dice it.

Its less work but if you do it multiple times as much its the same work or potentially more in a year.

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

#403

Post by WalterBright »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #363
WalterBright wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a 100% pay cut to work on D. But there aren't enough people like that to run a society like that, not remotely close.

I think it depends on the society. With automation to reduce absolute labor needs and a people that prefer living in community with the basics to slaving away at a retail job, I think it can be done. People like to work and they like to help one another. We've created a system that isolates people and many of us are sick of it. We would way rather have a hot meal and the company of friends (who are not themselves stu…

Who is going to clean the toilets?

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

#404

Post by Chris2048 »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #352
Chris2048 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so we know that a primarily agrarian society CAN resist a militaristic society America did not invade, or go to war with Afghanistan - it was attempting to liberate it, not annihilate it.

America absolutely invaded Afghanistan. I don't see the point of this line of questions but if you want a better example see Vietnam.

I think you're ignoring the context of my comment.

The USA entered alright, but the common meaning of invade is

> (of an armed force) enter (a country or region) so as to subjugate or occupy it.

and subjugate in turn:

> bring under domination or control, especially by conquest.

American did not intend to annihilate Afghans, nor the Vietnamese.

> I don't see the point of this line of questions

That the resistance you describe depends on the behaviour of the aggressor. Could the Japanese resist the atomic bomb? Could German Jews peacefully/non-violently resist the Nazi regime?

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

#405

Post by asdff »

vkou wrote: post #127
asdff wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today after work is over I still have things to clean, fix, prepare, butcher, etc. today too. Instead of repairing a thatch roof I'm working on shingles, but the amount of labor needed around the home and in domestic life even today is seemingly endless and somehow fills to expand all available free time like a gas in a container.

> Today after work is over I still have things to clean, fix, prepare, butcher, etc. today too But do you or your partner have to spend ~1200-2000 working hours/year spinning clothes for you and your household? This was absolutely the norm in pre-industrial times. You couldn't just go down to the thrift store and buy a pair of jeans for $8. When you clean, fix, wash and butcher, you have a dishwasher. You have a wash…

The nature of the work is different, but the amount of time spent doing work is still quite substantial even if we are mostly just operating machines. Plus other stuff has stayed the same, It hasn't gotten any faster to cook a piece of meat since that's limited by the laws of physics.

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

#406

Post by over_bridge »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #226
clairity wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and/or idealized socialism. i agree that consumerism is an issue, but the solution isn't 'end consumerism', as that's just completely unrealistic. it'd be more realistic to think of ways to redirect our esteem-giving activities toward people who produce real and essential goods, and the rest would balance out much better as a result. that's diametrically opposed to our corrent system of giving esteem to the wealth…

Isn't ending consumerism essential to avoid running out of resources.

If we could mandate that a product can only be sold if the entire lifecycle is sustainable then technically it could continue. This includes the company taking responsibility for disposal and recycling of anything they produce.

The current model of transferring materials from source, through consumers and then direct to landfill where they sit forever can only end one way.

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

#407

Post by WhisperingShiba »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #132
WhisperingShiba wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we just have to rethink what being a good person is. Workers have way wayyy more power than people think, they just need unity and the ability to say 'Fuck you' to the systems and people that harm more than help. And keep in mind; of course those systems and their people tell you that they help more than harm. UBI is totally not necessary. The market works with minimal intervention if people are able to live…

> Workers have way wayyy more power than people think Explain? Individual workers are quite weak. A lack of large scale workplaces in the service sector make organization hard. Overall weak demand and lack of competition makes "capital strikes" in response to worker unrest especially easy to pull off. We are seeing more strikes now precisely to do stimulus checks making 2020 a better year on average for bottom quinti…

Unions are a good start, so long as they don't think the path to victory is through legislation. Increasing the spirit of fearlessness and proximity to nature should be sufficient to make the society resistant to corruption. Stimulus was necessary and had many beneficial consequences for labor, but it should not be mistaken for liberation.

I should explicitly state this; I believe that government and corporate corruption is only a problem when you live far away from nature, which is the true universal law which governs this universe and our lives. For the longest time, I lost this sense of trust with nature, for various reasons, but I know its now time to take back our lives from the hell of society.

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

#408

Post by Ericson2314 »

WhisperingShiba wrote: post #407
Ericson2314 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Workers have way wayyy more power than people think Explain? Individual workers are quite weak. A lack of large scale workplaces in the service sector make organization hard. Overall weak demand and lack of competition makes "capital strikes" in response to worker unrest especially easy to pull off. We are seeing more strikes now precisely to do stimulus checks making 2020 a better year on average for bottom quinti…

Unions are a good start, so long as they don't think the path to victory is through legislation. Increasing the spirit of fearlessness and proximity to nature should be sufficient to make the society resistant to corruption. Stimulus was necessary and had many beneficial consequences for labor, but it should not be mistaken for liberation. I should explicitly state this; I believe that government and corporate corrup…

> Unions are a good start

Yes

> so long as they don't think the path to victory is through legislation.

That is definitely true.

> Increasing the spirit of fearlessness and proximity to nature should be sufficient to make the society resistant to corruption.

It's good to be in nature, but it's important to distinguish between nature the soother of souls, and nature the means of sustinence. We can build trains to ferry people to and from great parks, but we are too numerous for people to all resist through subsistance agriculture or foraging.

> Stimulus was necessary and had many beneficial consequences for labor, but it should not be mistaken for liberation.

Of course not, but we need a "starter motor" to get the labor market tightness to give people the leverage to rebuild those bonds. unionize, and shrink the workweek enough (by norms and laws, that's a safer sort of labor law than NLRB-type appeasement) to keep the labor market tight.

> I should explicitly state this; I believe that government and corporate corruption is only a problem when you live far away from nature, which is the true universal law which governs this universe and our lives. For the longest time, I lost this sense of trust with nature, for various reasons, but I know its now time to take back our lives from the hell of society.

Unionizations and organizing more broadly are nothing if not societies within society. We can critique the whole, but if take up a primitivism which is against all advanced human structures we offer ourselves no hope and way out, and commit ourselves to a path towards the dystopias we can merely cynically take pride in predicting.

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

#409

Post by WhisperingShiba »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #408
WhisperingShiba wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are a good start, so long as they don't think the path to victory is through legislation. Increasing the spirit of fearlessness and proximity to nature should be sufficient to make the society resistant to corruption. Stimulus was necessary and had many beneficial consequences for labor, but it should not be mistaken for liberation. I should explicitly state this; I believe that government and corporate corrup…

> Unions are a good start Yes > so long as they don't think the path to victory is through legislation. That is definitely true. > Increasing the spirit of fearlessness and proximity to nature should be sufficient to make the society resistant to corruption. It's good to be in nature, but it's important to distinguish between nature the soother of souls, and nature the means of sustinence. We can build trains to ferr…

I want to believe that we have the technology available to make subsistence farming, water treatment and power generation available to huge numbers of people. The key factor to this is keeping the benefits of the internet, while moving away from the main body of society. I have hope that starlink or another technology will make this possible within my lifetime.

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

#410

Post by Ericson2314 »

WhisperingShiba wrote: post #409
Ericson2314 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unions are a good start Yes > so long as they don't think the path to victory is through legislation. That is definitely true. > Increasing the spirit of fearlessness and proximity to nature should be sufficient to make the society resistant to corruption. It's good to be in nature, but it's important to distinguish between nature the soother of souls, and nature the means of sustinence. We can build trains to ferr…

I want to believe that we have the technology available to make subsistence farming, water treatment and power generation available to huge numbers of people. The key factor to this is keeping the benefits of the internet, while moving away from the main body of society. I have hope that starlink or another technology will make this possible within my lifetime.

I'm sorry but I think that would be very dangerous to attempt until after the population declines (naturally, per current modeling).

I am all for trying to maximize technology advancement / alienating division of labor. (This is why I spend so much time on https://github.com/nixos/nixpkgs/ to untangle our great open source commons and make even in it's totality it graspable!), but "everyone gets to be a farmer too" is like the hardest-to-achieve form of that, and a failed attempt could easily wipe out what nature remains.

I would much prefer to abolish all non-highly-intense agriculture and try to return as much and to parkland as possible. IMO it's no coincidence California, Korea, and Japan are all prosperous. Mountains containing developing to smaller areas greatly improve things. We need the political will to do same thing in the flat areas by fiat.

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