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

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

#261

Post by rubber_duck »

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.

I don't think it's purely cultural because chances are you have co-workers who don't have these issues at all just as I know people who are limiting themselves because of feelings like this - I would say this is more individual.

To flip it around - do you feel other people who leave the company did something shameful ? Do you see judging from others (especially outside of co-workers where it's incentive based) ?

I think as job market turns from oversupply to undersupply the culture changes simply out of nececity.

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

#263

Post by Pungsnigel »

lostjohnny wrote: post #245
lotsofpulp wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"the big institutional lie” The big lie is all the lavish promises people made to their future selves. Expensive medical treatments (Medicare), retirement funds (social security/pension payments), expensive infrastructure (constant access to clean water/electricity/gas/sewage/etc). Maybe the biggest lie is pretending to be able to predict the future. All those aforementioned promises require future resources, popula…

> Expensive medical treatments Again. Universal healthcare solved that in Europe. It is expensive, but it's a shared cost that benefits everybody. > Maybe the biggest lie is pretending to be able to predict the future Maybe, but back then they didn't have the means to care for more than a few days at a time, to think about the future. If they could have done it, they would have done it.

It's not by any means solved in Europe. // Swede

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

#264

Post by rubber_duck »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #197
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…

What proportion of the total jobs market [in your country || in your supply chains] are you looking at though. The parent might be a generalisation but you're objecting based on the thinnest sliver of contrary occupations. Seems like the parent could well be on the money for all menial roles?

The whole thing is much better explained through supply demand and security. When job supply is low you want to maintain a close relationship with your employer because you hope this grants job security. When the demand outpaces supply suddenly people are forced to bid up wages - I agree that the culture might need time to catch up - like initially the risk averse will still be stuck in this mode and few will change jobs, but as the demand ramps up the terms get better and switch job becomes much more common - culture changes and even the most cautious cannot ignore the market trends - I've seen this first hand in my local market over the last few years where the salaries went up 2x in 3 years.

How medival servitude explains any of this better is beyond me.

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

#265

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

vfc1 wrote: post #114

The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. This explains the system of values that revolve around it, 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. The servant was not expected to leave it…

> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification.

Where can i read more about this assertion? I was not aware that serfdom would specify such details as the number of hours. I guess that serfdom would be a very different institution in each country, or even within each province; (I guess corvée service might have been a more detailed contract, but I am not aware of the details) so I would like to hear some more details.

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

#266

Post by Cederfjard »

raducu wrote: post #244
zulgan wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Funny because my todler is never ashamed to loudly demand what she wants, yet as adults we feel shame when we want to negotiate. It absolutely is cultural.

Well, isn't also the case that a toddler still hasn't fully developed their empathy and other mental faculties, and thus aren't capable of understanding the full extent of how their behavior affects others (and indeed why they should care).

I'm not saying that anyone should feel ashamed to negotiate for better compensation (quite the opposite!), but I'm also not sure that you can look at those little uncooked narcissists and conclude "this is how a human being naturally behaves". I think it's pretty normal for a person with mature emotions to feel at least a bit bad when making demands.

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

#267

Post by wukerplank »

rubber_duck wrote: post #264
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What proportion of the total jobs market [in your country || in your supply chains] are you looking at though. The parent might be a generalisation but you're objecting based on the thinnest sliver of contrary occupations. Seems like the parent could well be on the money for all menial roles?

The whole thing is much better explained through supply demand and security. When job supply is low you want to maintain a close relationship with your employer because you hope this grants job security. When the demand outpaces supply suddenly people are forced to bid up wages - I agree that the culture might need time to catch up - like initially the risk averse will still be stuck in this mode and few will change…

Have a look a low wage/low skill jobs. There is no such thing as security, employees are subject to their employer's benevolence. They even have to accept circumstances that might violate laws. They can't fight it because they need the job, even if they hate it.

I'm too busy to do the research for you, but Amazon warehouse workers are the first examples that come to my mind.

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

#268

Post by rorykoehler »

ido wrote: post #199
rorykoehler wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I became a parent last year and all of my research indicates that 1 is way too young to send a kid away. The optimum age seems to be 3 years. It seems we have come to accept social norms that are not designed around the well-being of the child.

It's a tough question that we have struggled with with both our kids. At the end we've reached the conclusion that we need to balance between the needs of the child and the needs of the parent. The first 2 months after the birth we were both home, then my wife stayed for another 9 months & finally I took 1 more month of parental leave (so in total it was 1 year before starting to acclimate him to daycare). After almo…

> there is a real lack of intellectual stimulation despite there constantly being work to do

My wife is taking more of a leading role with our 1 year old (maybe 70/30 between her and me ... also in Germany) and she gets her mental stimulation through voraciously reading about changing dietary requirements of children as they age along with general child developmental research. In fact it is leading us to a discussion about startup opportunities.

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

#269

Post by rorykoehler »

WalterBright wrote: post #187
ido wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe anti-poor is a better description? Could also be that I only notice the assholes and the milder form of libertarians just don't stick out as much :)

> Maybe anti-poor is a better description? No. Libertarians are against any sort of class system (i.e. legal privileges for certain groups). They are neither anti-rich nor anti-poor. Of course, there are libertarians who are jerks, but that isn't what Libertarianism is about. Also, most people only hear about Libertarianism from non-Libertarians, hence they only hear negative things about it. Libertarianism is mainly…

AnarchoCaps always came across to me as being based around "Free to choose... if you are rich"

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

#270

Post by athenot »

stareatgoats wrote: post #113
dannyw wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The commute may influence this. The average American commute is about 30 minutes each way. That's 1 hour round trip. Commute as a portion of work time.... 4 hrs work: 25% 5 hrs work: 20% 6 hrs work: 16.7% 7 hrs work: 14.3% 8 hrs work: 12.5% Considering you don't get paid for your commute, there is a natural incentive to work more hours.

Remote work may influence this. Commuting to a workplace just to do the things you might as well do from home will be considered old-fashioned, inefficient and/or shameful in a few years, if my crystal ball is not lying.

Our team comes in the office once a week for some face time. But we have plenty of face time throughout the week on Webex Teams. We've eliminated the friction for remote face time.

If anything, it's an improvement over the in-office because instead of interrupting someone at work, we politely message someone (or the team) about doing a quick call once it's convenient for them.

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