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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)

#411

Post by villedepommes »

didibus wrote: post #156

Tangentially, the physical labor jobs I had when younger never really tired me out the way that the mental/bureaucratic/political job I have now does. Physical work actually energized me, I mean this is all confirmed today as well, we know all the benefits exercise brings on well being. There's something about desk jobs that is frankly soul sucking and literally mentally draining in a way where when the day ends, it'…

> when younger

this may be the key. When I was younger, I don't remember getting tired much no matter what I was doing, programming, studying, gardening.

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

#412

Post by clairity »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #374
clairity wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 everyon…

no offense to you personally, but that's a naive position. "greed is good" is a movie platitude, not the basis of our complex socioeconomic system, so it's practically useless to argue against it. more crucially, your solution says nothing about the universality of human desire, which is why it's simply a non-starter.

if you really want to improve social equity, distributing esteem more widely[0] will be more fruitful as a guiding light than trying to devise a more perfect, automation-based socialist/communist economic model. extreme automation will inevitably increase inequality as capital will find ways to corner ownership of the machines and hoard the productivity gains, no matter your good intent.

[0]: 'flatten the pile', if you will.

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

#413

Post by TaylorAlexander »

malthuswaswrong wrote: post #392
adrianN wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are conditioned from a young age by the ad industry to want a lot of things that are not essential in your life.

That's one theory. Another theory is that the ad industry is exploiting a human nature that has been there long before ads or industry. How would we test that theory? How would we test if humans have always wanted things or if nobody wanted things until ads were invented?

I wouldn’t be so dismissive of the public relations industry. Sigmund Freud’s newphew Edward Bernaise is regarded as the creator of public relations, and he wrote multiple books and talked widely about his theories for manipulating the public. These theories have been put to the test multiple times and they proved successful enough that the industry is thriving 100 years later.

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/02/27/torches-of-...

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

#414

Post by varjag »

asdff wrote: post #402
varjag wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You get to throw a lot of tees in until it even begins to approach rubbing your robe clean down in the river.

And setting on laundry is largely a fixed effort, whether you do one item or thirty. Most people don't do one at a time.

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

#415

Post by negzero7 »

gxs wrote: post #360
redisman wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most manual labor has you doing a handful of quite repetitive moves over and over and over until something breaks and you retire on disability. Some people seem to think it’s like going to the gym or something smh

There is a whole lot of kids here with romanticized ideas of what physical labor is. My dad is a contractor and every summer through college I’d go work for him as a low-skilled laborer. I hated it at the time - all these years later I’m grateful because a) it taught me a lot of useful handyman stuff and b) I have no illusions of how great it is to “work with your hands” or outside everyday. No one I worked with ever…

On the flip side of this many actually do prefer their manual labor jobs. My father in law and brother in law both run their own contracting businesses (one does concrete, the other builds Med Expresses) and their workers and themselves have both said they would never want a desk job and don't know how I stare at a computer all day long.

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

#416

Post by gadders »

gbronner wrote: post #106
gadders wrote: post #23

"An important piece of evidence on the working day is that it was very unusual for servile laborers to be required to work a whole day for a lord. One day's work was considered half a day, and if a serf worked an entire day, this was counted as two "days-works." " Presumably because in the other half of the day, they'd be working to harvest and grow their own food. I'm not sure what the difference is between working…

First, if you are doing heavy work, like fixing roads, you usually can't do it all day. Neither can most draft animals. Second, the mid day meal was the big one, and there was usually a nap as well. People had to walk to work, and it would be hard to get everyone back at the same time. Third, the Lord's inventory of tools was limited, so better to have two shifts of reasonably rested people than one double shift of e…

>> First, if you are doing heavy work, like fixing roads, you usually can't do it all day

Not sure if this is true. I worked at a building site labourer and I've seen people digging trenches all day. I'm also pretty sure in the poorer parts of the 3rd world people are toiling for 8 hours a day in manual/ox-assisted agricultural work.

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

#417

Post by asdff »

varjag wrote: post #414
asdff wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You get to throw a lot of tees in until it even begins to approach rubbing your robe clean down in the river. And setting on laundry is largely a fixed effort, whether you do one item or thirty. Most people don't do one at a time.

I do my laundry once a week if not more frequently with a decently heavy load. I don't go down to the river, but I've lived in apartment complexes where the laundry room was a few hundred yards and several stories away. You still do some stuff on per clothing bases, like folding, ironing, special care like certain things being air dried on hangers or some other surface. Some stuff washed cold or hot even. Some people have to shlep their stuff to off site laundry businesses much a kin to a walk down to the the river. I'm sure back then you'd only be washing a handful of thin linen underclothing regularly, outerwear if at all. These people back then also probably weren't washing bedding. Some doctors say the modern beds, while comfortable, are worse for the spine than a firmer surface still used in some cultures.

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

#418

Post by daddylongstroke »

didibus wrote: post #156

Tangentially, the physical labor jobs I had when younger never really tired me out the way that the mental/bureaucratic/political job I have now does. Physical work actually energized me, I mean this is all confirmed today as well, we know all the benefits exercise brings on well being. There's something about desk jobs that is frankly soul sucking and literally mentally draining in a way where when the day ends, it'…

Completely agree. My most enjoyable job was working shipping at a factory (think playing tetris while loading/unloading trailers all day). Farming however, is my most enjoyable 'value-generating' activity as opposed to job. I highly recommend it: getting more than adequate daily exercise while providing most of your family's food needs.

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

#419

Post by daddylongstroke »

gxs wrote: post #360
redisman wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most manual labor has you doing a handful of quite repetitive moves over and over and over until something breaks and you retire on disability. Some people seem to think it’s like going to the gym or something smh

There is a whole lot of kids here with romanticized ideas of what physical labor is. My dad is a contractor and every summer through college I’d go work for him as a low-skilled laborer. I hated it at the time - all these years later I’m grateful because a) it taught me a lot of useful handyman stuff and b) I have no illusions of how great it is to “work with your hands” or outside everyday. No one I worked with ever…

It's kind of weird. I've worked both physical jobs and desk jobs, and could never imagine actually wishing a computer/desk job on either of my kids (thankfully they're not at all interested so far, so I think they've dodged a bullet). Interestingly, I have a good friend that was a bed-side nurse since she was 16 all the way through 36, at which point, she switched to a nurse manager position basically being behind the computer all day. This woman has worked a 12 hour shift most of her life, standing or walking, and lifting during the vast majority of that shift, yet couldn't understand why her back, hips, wrists and knees were killing her after 8 hours of sitting at a computer (not to mention her weight gain).
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