Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

groups.csail.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 523 posts

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#161

Post by icebraining »

coldtea wrote: post #138
mbell wrote: post #13

Meh, I think this lacks perspective. Maybe you 'worked' less in that era in the sense that you provided a smaller portion of your time to a third party for pay. But, you worked more overall. You didn't work for a few hours then order food for dinner; You probably worked a few hours, then spent the next many hours either harvesting and/or creating all the requirements for life. Maybe you spent 2 hours hunting a deer,…

No, they really worked less hours including those things, and it has been studied a lot. In fact, a lot of the work was those things precisely. (Not that there's anything great to come home dead tired from a 10 hour day at the office + commute, and then have the "amazing" convenience to "order food for dinner"). You can still see it in societies that don't have our lifestyles. Go to a blue zone like in Ikaria (where…

What kind of french farmers? The land owners with their subsidized businesses, or the hired hands?

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#162

Post by NeedMoreTea »

lazyjones wrote: post #155
spyckie2 wrote: post #117

Access to opportunities for more income also didn't exist either. The article specifically references serfs(!!!), possibly the most difficult economic class to escape, as the example. Cars, computers, phones, and health insurance also didn't exist back then, and neither did social mobility. Give people visible improvements to quality of living and also the opportunities to attain them and it seems logical to me that…

> Cars, computers, phones, and health insurance also didn't exist back then, and neither did social mobility. Also: proper lighting, especially outdoors. An important prerequisite for many jobs, so the length of a work day had natural limits.

That mostly meant rising earlier, with the light, rather than the arbitrary hours of today enabled by artificial light. Only during the depths of winter or those in the most northern or southern latitudes had appreciable shortening.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#163

Post by C1sc0cat »

coldtea wrote: post #138
mbell wrote: post #13

Meh, I think this lacks perspective. Maybe you 'worked' less in that era in the sense that you provided a smaller portion of your time to a third party for pay. But, you worked more overall. You didn't work for a few hours then order food for dinner; You probably worked a few hours, then spent the next many hours either harvesting and/or creating all the requirements for life. Maybe you spent 2 hours hunting a deer,…

No, they really worked less hours including those things, and it has been studied a lot. In fact, a lot of the work was those things precisely. (Not that there's anything great to come home dead tired from a 10 hour day at the office + commute, and then have the "amazing" convenience to "order food for dinner"). You can still see it in societies that don't have our lifestyles. Go to a blue zone like in Ikaria (where…

French farmers and farmers in the EU have a lot of support from the CAP (subsidy). Having said that there are a lot of pressures suicides etc farming Is not some dream job.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#164

Post by [deleted] »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #139
ido wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Germany, both my kids go to public kindergarten/daycare (there is no distinction between the 2 here, it starts when the child is 1 year old) & the kindergarten teachers are mostly German themselves. They don't earn great wages but they are not indentured servants either.

Right. So there's a large group of mostly women who accept low wages to store children so more privileged people can go earn higher wages.

[deleted]

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#165

Post by anticristi »

I feel there is an implicit assumption in the article, which is that work time is defined as time that you give away from your life to serve someone else. What if work time was more like a paid hobby or time spent with like-minded adults on intellectually stimulating topics?

Surely I don't like all aspects of my work and surely there are rainy days, but on average I like my work. I like the people I meet at work, the challenges that work exposes me to. My boss often asks me for favours ("can you take this customer call during holidays"), but also makes sure that the emotional account is balanced ("you want more salary or an extra holiday?"). Also, the so-called 40-hours week includes coffee breaks and 1 hour per week of sports (I'm living in Sweden).

I see nothing wrong with people working long hours assuming they do it because they want to, not because they have to. I would much rather like to compare the number of hours people had to work in pre-industrial times (which is likely 100% of their work time) compared to today.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#166

Post by meheleventyone »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #139
ido wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Germany, both my kids go to public kindergarten/daycare (there is no distinction between the 2 here, it starts when the child is 1 year old) & the kindergarten teachers are mostly German themselves. They don't earn great wages but they are not indentured servants either.

Right. So there's a large group of mostly women who accept low wages to store children so more privileged people can go earn higher wages.

In Iceland at least being a leikskoli teacher requires a degree and they are far from child storage. They work and care for the childs development. This is at least a fairly common model in Nordic countries and presume its similar in a lot of Europe.

I've heard horror stories about featureless cinder block rooms as day care in the US though.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#167

Post by feritkan »

In many countries donkeys are not allowed to work more than 6 hours a day by law. In Palastine this still exists. Or in England : ) . -- https://www.blackberrydonkeys.com/donkey-riding-rules-regula...

Compared with donkeys, we are not doing well- I am researching mules.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#169

Post by C1sc0cat »

xg15 wrote: post #123
goatlover wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people want to work OT hours for the extra money, to get stuff done, or because they like working more than 40 hours.

Why do they like working more? Are they masochists?

You haven't worked on the line or a traditional factory job then? There are a lot of "practices" to power game your pay by working in such a way to ensure there is Overtime or to optimise your piece rate.

For example in the UK don't post a first class letter on Friday as work is deliberately kept back to ensure there is OT at the weekend.

Re: Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009)

#170

Post by WalterBright »

feviskus wrote: post #91
jaynetics wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty bosses like this in Germany, which doesn't have as much of a history of slavery. I'd wager that when looking at countries with roughly the same level of industrialization, whether humans view fellow humans as something more than mere resources is linked to a certain set of attitudes. I'd guess that reduced working hours are positively correlated to pluralism and pacifism, and perhaps negatively corre…

Just an anecdote from quitting yesterday at a German IG-Metall company: Yesterday I quitted my working student job in order to precipitately take the opportunity for an internship at another company. My boss congratulated me for the offer, said it's a pity that I leave AND spoke with HR so that I do have a shorter period of notice (otherwise I would have had problems). All on the same day. While accompanying me on my…

> Im kinda blown away by this non-selfish (in a company's view) behaviour and strongly consider to rejoin at some point.

The beauty of capitalism is that it rewards such altruistic behavior - in that you may rejoin them in the future.

Post reply on HN