Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)
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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)
#2This isn't the first time I've seen this sentiment displayed here on HN with regard to historic European civilization. What I haven't seen is a comparison to other ones. I'm particularly interested in Asian civilization.
Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)
#3Sure they had a “shorter workweek” but it also took women a full workday to wash the family’s clothes, hours of walking to get water for the day, and if you wanted something from the town over that was a 3 day trip.
So many everyday things we take for granted were incredibly difficult and involved a lot of manual labor and/or waiting around for hours and days.
I wonder how much of that leisure time came from being blocked and technology/communications imposing a maximum throughput. You couldn’t work faster even if you wanted to and so you leisured. “Hurry up and wait” as some like to say
PS: there’s also stories of medieval peasants in France basicalky hibernating over winter because if you didn’t sleep for 16 hours every day, you’d burn too much calories and starve[1]. I’m sure that was a very fun reason to have short workweeks
Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)
#4Sure they had a “shorter workweek” but it also took women a full workday to wash the family’s clothes, hours of walking to get water for the day, and if you wanted something from the town over that was a 3 day trip. So many everyday things we take for granted were incredibly difficult and involved a lot of manual labor and/or waiting around for hours and days. I wonder how much of that leisure time came from being bl…
article basically ignores quality of life in exchange for "leisure". I could build a crude shelter and be homeless and basically achieve the same thing, turns out most people don't want that.
Fact is most people voluntarily opt in to capitalism because life is better, if you want something close to what the article talks about you can pretty easily move to an Amish community or try creating your own commune and try to convince people to join
Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)
#5I'm also very curious about job organization, and teaching.
You can work hard but in a beneficial environment (efforts are well chunked and rewarding physically and/or mentally) or you can work somehow less but in toxic settings (adversarial relationships, bad tooling, etc).
Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)
#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 Industrial Revolution before labor laws to today's "multiple low-wage-jobs to survive".
EDIT: Also odd that the author doesn't point out that ~2040 hours is the yearly hours in a modern 40-hour workweek in the US, give or take a few holidays.
Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)
#7Leisure is the both the opposite of and an essential component to work. An anarchist group in the UK last century had their motto as "neither work nor leisure" which I found interesting.
Recreation is different than leisure. It's about re-creation and renewal, more like play.
Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)
#8Sure they had a “shorter workweek” but it also took women a full workday to wash the family’s clothes, hours of walking to get water for the day, and if you wanted something from the town over that was a 3 day trip. So many everyday things we take for granted were incredibly difficult and involved a lot of manual labor and/or waiting around for hours and days. I wonder how much of that leisure time came from being bl…
> So many everyday things we take for granted were incredibly difficult and involved a lot of manual labor and/or waiting around for hours and days.
Indeed, prepping food was no cake walk. Grinding grains by hand is pretty hellish, and making edible flour from high-tanin acorns takes weeks.
Sane with spinning yarn.
Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)
#9Sure they had a “shorter workweek” but it also took women a full workday to wash the family’s clothes, hours of walking to get water for the day, and if you wanted something from the town over that was a 3 day trip. So many everyday things we take for granted were incredibly difficult and involved a lot of manual labor and/or waiting around for hours and days. I wonder how much of that leisure time came from being bl…
article basically ignores quality of life in exchange for "leisure". I could build a crude shelter and be homeless and basically achieve the same thing, turns out most people don't want that. Fact is most people voluntarily opt in to capitalism because life is better, if you want something close to what the article talks about you can pretty easily move to an Amish community or try creating your own commune and try t…
Is it that easy to leave your community and way of life to live a very different life amidst strangers?
Re: Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's (1991)
#10Sure they had a “shorter workweek” but it also took women a full workday to wash the family’s clothes, hours of walking to get water for the day, and if you wanted something from the town over that was a 3 day trip. So many everyday things we take for granted were incredibly difficult and involved a lot of manual labor and/or waiting around for hours and days. I wonder how much of that leisure time came from being bl…
article basically ignores quality of life in exchange for "leisure". I could build a crude shelter and be homeless and basically achieve the same thing, turns out most people don't want that. Fact is most people voluntarily opt in to capitalism because life is better, if you want something close to what the article talks about you can pretty easily move to an Amish community or try creating your own commune and try t…
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