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

Post by synthmeat » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 10:06 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #142

wutbrodo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's what the parent comment is doing, but it's beyond baffling to me when I see this view in the wild. You'd have to be completely ignorant of staggering amounts of history, economics, and basic arithmetic to think that historical incomes were anywhere close to what we have today in terms of consumer goods, and yet I see this very often. (Not to be mistaken with more reasonable arguments that rely on th…

Well, one also has to be completely ignorant of staggering amounts of history, culture, and social understanding, to think that historical cultural concerns where anywhere close to what we have today in terms of consumer goods and buying more stuff... You could be perfectly content (and more happy than most office drones with 1000x the stuff) with a couple of clothe articles, food and a basic home...

Post by mftrhu » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 10:09 AM UTC

jdavis703 wrote: post #218

H8crilA wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple rules that work for me: a) don't take my work laptop home, no corp provided phone (if they insist I'd keep the phone at my work desk, where it belongs). b) work 40 hours on average per week. Just go home already! Helps if you're a late sleeper (like me), you can simply arrive later at work to compensate for the hours you've recently donated to your employer. This works very well for me, although I'm based in E…

Not taking your laptop home is poor information security practice. We had a break-in where dozens of laptops were stolen. We had to do key rolling, password resets, etc for the whole organization. Many people couldn't even work until new computers were shipped in. Of course me and the people who took our laptops home were fine.

Post by ironic_ali » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 10:11 AM UTC

bot1 wrote: post #221

jdavis703 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not taking your laptop home is poor information security practice. We had a break-in where dozens of laptops were stolen. We had to do key rolling, password resets, etc for the whole organization. Many people couldn't even work until new computers were shipped in. Of course me and the people who took our laptops home were fine.

you cant be serious

Post by ironic_ali » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 10:15 AM UTC

zulgan wrote: post #196

rubber_duck wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example. When there is enough choice people change jobs all the time - the demand in my l…

I guess this is cultural as well, I(anecdotally) absolutely feel shame when I am about to leave a company, or even negotiate.

Post by WilliamEdward » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 10:16 AM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #232

ivanhoe wrote: post #219

It's comparing apples and oranges to compare medieval peasants life and modern office work. Even today in rural areas people work around the clock in and around the house to keep everything afloat and barely survive. Sitting on your butt for 10h a day and doing intellectual work seems hard only until you try to do some farming for a while - and modern farming is nothing compared to how hard it was back then, when you…

Exactly. Hard physical work is real work - sitting at a desk tapping on a keyboard is a dream.