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Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you

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Re: Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you

#101

Post by hfsktr »

dredmorbius wrote: post #96
hfsktr wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find amazing is how recently things like germs[1] were given real attention. I'd heard about Ignaz Semmelweis from a book I read and to think less than 200 years ago you would go to a hospital and they didn't bother to wash their hands between patients? Now maybe it was just the hospital in Vienna, but I imagine many were like that. Just the things that are taken for granted as common sense now before they wer…

The amount of progress in knowledge and technology in the past 200-250 years or so (pretty much all of the Industrial Revolution) really is staggering. Take someone from 1750, drop him in the world of 1500, and things would have been pretty familiar. Move 250 years in the other direction and he'd be hard-pressed to make heads or tails of anything (assuming you're taking someone from a part of the developed world -- f…

I had a strange notion recently that if you were to drop the average person (not an Einstein or a Hawking) and dropped them into say the 1500s Europe.

Most people think we'd be regarded as super smart and awesome. This comedian explains most people don't know crap[1], we only know the high-level. I think that even if we could find things we understand to teach it would be largely not viable (how much stuff around us requires machines and precision?) and likely wouldn't reach any audience to become a mainstream idea (even above people thought it ridiculous that germs exist).

I think we'd find people of any time to have clever methods to do their tasks and we'd learn from them and become indistinguishable from the average guy at the time.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVxOb8-d7Ic

Re: Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you

#102

Post by vidarh »

blackcat wrote: post #69
vidarh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that it was was as you can imagine very popular with Marxist historians. Which doesn't make it false of course. Then why do you make this quip? It reads as if you are only including it to sow doubt about the claim by association. Maybe I'm overly cynical, if so I apologize. > The rise of international trade, which depressed agricultural prices in comparatively unproductive Europe, was another huge one. The…

People wearing Che Guevara shirts are rarely hired for important positions.

That'd might be so.

But if they're not hired for some idea that they're Marxist, whoever rejects them are looking for the wrong things. In years of associating with various marxists, I've never seen any of them wearing Che Guevara shirts. Most of the people I see wearing Che shirts seem to have little to no understanding of the political signal it might send.

Frankly, I'd think you'd be more likely to find a marxist wearing a suit than a Che t-shirt.

Re: Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you

#103

Post by tsotha »

lsc wrote: post #70

What I find interesting is how unusual it is for a higher-paid person now to negotiate part-time work. I mean, I've done so at several points in my life, but it's not particularly easy. it's certainly possible, but you need to establish yourself as important to the business (for me, in the past, this has meant working full time for a while.) then do the negotiation, if you want to go half-time. But usually? cutting d…

>But that's the big question. The affordable care act is going to make it so that you can get health insurance on your own, even with pre-existing conditions, (though, I think, employer-paid insurance will still be tax-advantaged) - I wonder how this will effect the number of upper middle class people interested in working part-time

I would be very surprised if there isn't a rush to the exits from people in their mid 50s if it looks like health care will be affordable. I know I'll be able to retire a full decade earlier if I can get health care for a few hundred bucks a month.

As to people working part time... I can see why people would want to (hell, I'd like to do that myself), but I don't think it's going to happen to any great extent. Employers don't like it because there are a lot of per-employee expenses (as opposed to per-hour). Two half-time employees cost more than one full time employee.

Re: Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you

#104

Post by Mordor »

pg wrote: post #4

Statistics about how much time medieval peasants spent working can be misleading, because a lot of what they spent their time on when they weren't doing fieldwork was still work, e.g. tending their own gardens, making implements and furniture, working on their houses. They had to make most of the things they used themselves. So when "work" was over they didn't go home and watch TV. It's hard to be sure exactly what l…

Dude, where are your sources?

Re: Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you

#105

Post by socialist_coder »

I was thinking about this the other day- why don't some start ups implement a 4 day workweek? That would be a huge incentive for me to join.

Yes, it's less productive, but with 33% more weekend think about how happier the employees would be.

I would love to try this with my startup once we get into the profitable stage.

Re: Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you

#106

Post by lsc »

tsotha wrote: post #103
lsc wrote: post #70

What I find interesting is how unusual it is for a higher-paid person now to negotiate part-time work. I mean, I've done so at several points in my life, but it's not particularly easy. it's certainly possible, but you need to establish yourself as important to the business (for me, in the past, this has meant working full time for a while.) then do the negotiation, if you want to go half-time. But usually? cutting d…

>But that's the big question. The affordable care act is going to make it so that you can get health insurance on your own, even with pre-existing conditions, (though, I think, employer-paid insurance will still be tax-advantaged) - I wonder how this will effect the number of upper middle class people interested in working part-time I would be very surprised if there isn't a rush to the exits from people in their mid…

>I would be very surprised if there isn't a rush to the exits from people in their mid 50s if it looks like health care will be affordable. I know I'll be able to retire a full decade earlier if I can get health care for a few hundred bucks a month.

Is the subsidy based on income? or assets? or both? 'cause if you don't qualify for the subsidy, the affordable care act doesn't make it any cheaper, it just makes it possible for people with pre-existing conditions to get healthcare.

Without the subsidy, you are still looking at a grand a month or more for healthcare for a 50+ person.

>As to people working part time... I can see why people would want to (hell, I'd like to do that myself), but I don't think it's going to happen to any great extent. Employers don't like it because there are a lot of per-employee expenses (as opposed to per-hour). Two half-time employees cost more than one full time employee.

I am postulating that the affordable care act will make it realistic for contractors-without-bodyshops (or just part-time folks) to cover their own healthcare. that vastly reduces the per-employee cost. All of the times I've been successful negotiating part-time work, it has been as a contractor, where I had to provide my own benefits.

The affordable care act makes being a contractor (or working contractor-style, where you provide your own benefits) much more practical. That is, I believe, what might change things in favor of part-time work.

Re: Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you

#107

Post by wybo »

What surprises me here is that virtually all comments are about whether peasants really had many holidays.

And not about the current situation (+ the macho 'my hours are longer than yours' trap that most of the California Software world seems to be in...) that drains much of the possibility of having a life besides work.

One idea that crossed my mind when I still worked in the Vallley, was that the situation might be reversed by a 'Union' that only concerns itself with working hours. Leaving salaries up to everyone for themselves to negotiate as currently.

This would:

1) Allow people a coming-out in terms of favoring work-life balance. Which many people confessed to me in private, but did not dare say in front of their boss/team (has nothing to do with a lack of love for the job/project/company, even love itself you can't enjoy 10 hours a day 50 weeks a year, or that would be the length of billionaires honey-moons. Also what is wrong with loving your life and family/friends in addition to the job, and needing some time for that?).

2) Create a bargaining position and a public face for it.

3) Dispel myths of long-term productivity gains through longer hours. Especially in a creative industry like Software Engineering long hours reduce productivity (there are studies of this + the many self-evaluations on HN over the years of people being able to code consistently and productively 4 to 7 hours per day max).

Just an idea that crossed a mind.

Re: Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you

#108

Post by dredmorbius »

hfsktr wrote: post #101
dredmorbius wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of progress in knowledge and technology in the past 200-250 years or so (pretty much all of the Industrial Revolution) really is staggering. Take someone from 1750, drop him in the world of 1500, and things would have been pretty familiar. Move 250 years in the other direction and he'd be hard-pressed to make heads or tails of anything (assuming you're taking someone from a part of the developed world -- f…

I had a strange notion recently that if you were to drop the average person (not an Einstein or a Hawking) and dropped them into say the 1500s Europe. Most people think we'd be regarded as super smart and awesome. This comedian explains most people don't know crap[1], we only know the high-level. I think that even if we could find things we understand to teach it would be largely not viable (how much stuff around us…

I'm not saying that humans are smarter in a generally useful sense now than they were 500 years ago. Especially at the median, where what most people know isn't how things work but what they need to do to make things work within their environment.

Take your average man or woman off the street today and drop them into 1500s Europe, in all likelihood they'd be unable to function.

Now, an engineer (or a Connecticut Yankee) with both a specific understanding of materials science, a knowledge of history sufficient to know the broad outlines of circumstances in the past, and where the gold (or more importantly: coal and oil) are buried, might be able to accomplish some interesting things. If he could convince someone to go along with his proposals.

But that's not my point.

It's that you could pretty much take a European from 1500 and from 1750 and have them swap places. Most of the general nature of day-to-day life would remain largely similar. There were very few significant changes (among the biggest would have been in how business and banking were organized, as financial systems were developing over this period).

Socially and culturally there may have been a few bigger differences. Martin Luther posted his 95 Thesis in 1517, and the changes that this triggered in the Church would likely have dwarfed much else.

And really, you could move another 500 or 1000 years backward and you'd see some incremental change, but nothing at all like the past 250 years.

But again, 1750 -> 1500 is going to be a hugely different change than 1750 -> 2000.

Re: Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you

#109

Post by rsynnott »

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #20
EthanHeilman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the most convincing evidence that it was very hard was that early mines and factories were easily able to recruit all the workers they needed, despite working conditions we know to have been harsh. I don't find that evidence convincing for two reasons: 1. Many peasant farmers relied on a commons for food production which was being legislatively destroyed at that time ( See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure ).…

Factory workers were paid handsomely and competition for such jobs was fierce.

Certainly in the early industrial revolution the "paid handsomely" bit was not true. People took the jobs because it was that or starve, and many of them starved anyway. This was especially the case during deflationary periods, as wages fell.

Re: Why a medieval peasant got more vacation time than you

#110

Post by rsynnott »

VLM wrote: post #33
tokenadult wrote: post #13

This article statement, "His life was shadowed by fear of famine, disease and bursts of warfare. His diet and personal hygiene left much to be desired" explains why I don't want to go back to the life of my peasant ancestors. The author's background, "Lynn Parramore is a senior editor at AlterNet, co-founder of Recessionwire, and founding editor of New Deal 2.0 and IgoUgo.com. She is the author of "Reading the Sphinx…

Other than adding the fear of famine, I'm not sure how different that is from today. Fear of disease? Check. Both realistic (as in, the huge fraction with no/minimal health insurance or any dental at all). And unrealistic, like fearmongering politicians (as in, send lots of money to X or we'll all die of some made up thing) Bouts of warfare, check. Both actual for kids in .mil, and imaginary daydreams of terrorism. I…

> Other than adding the fear of famine

Er, that's a pretty huge other.

> Fear of disease? Check. Both realistic (as in, the huge fraction with no/minimal health insurance or any dental at all).

As far as the developed world goes, that's largely restricted to the US. And, of course, most of the diseases that killed people back then can be treated with a few euro worth of penicillin.

> Bouts of warfare, check. Both actual for kids in .mil, and imaginary daydreams of terrorism.

It's highly unlikely that the neighbouring lord will burn your village in the developed world today, however.

> Inferior diet? Check.

Not really on the same level. Even those who got enough food often had severe malnutrition issues. Nowadays, some people have poor diets; in the developed world this is largely a function of personal choice.

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