Preindustrial workers worked fewer hours than today's (2009) • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by etripe » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:36 PM UTC

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #265

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 contrac…

Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber goes into it tangentially, as part of making a greater point.

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

#372

Post by greyhair » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:37 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #350

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's your supply and demand explanation for the following norms? - It's considered professional for employees give their employers two weeks notice before leaving. It's considered completely reasonable for employers to terminate employees and not even pay them for the rest of the day. - It's considered unprofessional to talk about what you're getting paid. - It's considered normal for potential employers to do back…

Termination without notice or payment is definitely considered bad form, short of the company closing due to bankruptcy.

I have never worked anywhere that did not provide notice or some severance. Even at a startup that cut 50% prior to going down in flames, they paid those half that were released two weeks pay and two weeks insurance coverage. (even though they were asked to leave immediately)

Large corporations tend to offer minimums plus based on years of service at termination.

Even termination with cause (performance, not legal) will generally be after a half year of 'remediation' training, then plenty of notice to find a new job.

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

#373

Post by majewsky » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #241

majewsky wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand this presumably American fixation with the 40 hour week. Not just America. We have elections coming up in Saxony (a state in East Germany), so I watched a 2-hour interview with the current MP from the conservative party (the same party as Angela Merkel). When it came to the topic of UBI and automation, he adamantly refused to consider any policy that would move away from the 40-hour work week. He…

> His mantra seems to be "Work harder, not smarter". Bavarian here. Your MP is a nutjob, as is Söder and the rest of the conservatives. The point is that conservatives (as well as the FDP and the AfD) focus primarily on the needs of the businesses which means keeping to old Prussian traditions no matter what.

> Your MP

#NotMyMP. I just happen to live here.

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

#374

Post by macspoofing » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #298

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. Not really, they come as rather significant modifications of early capitalist servitude, won at a substantial cost in lives. Early capitalist servitude did itself evolve directly from feudal servitude, but it got much worse, in economic terms, in the process. It usually came with at least not…

>Early capitalist servitude did itself evolve directly from feudal servitude, but it got much worse, in economic terms, in the process.

No it didn't. This Roussaunian idealization of rural subsistence living must really die. People aren't idiots, you don't move to urban factory work (as bad as it was compared to modern day) unless rural life was much worse.

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

#375

Post by tryitnow » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #360

This is from a 1993 book. There's no mention of the pretty pleasant 16-21 years that most Americans spend in education, compared to preindustrial labourers starting work before age 11. Or of the concept "retirement", which would have been hard for medieval peasants to imagine. There's also this pertinent commentary from 1995: https://www.clevelandfed.org/~/media/content/newsroom%20and%... "The central message of this…

I think it's very hard to

"pretty pleasant" - I'm glad that your educational experience was that way, but for a lot of people education is a form of work. In fact, I would bet most students would prefer work to education - and indeed many vote with their feet and drop out of education.

Heck, even on HN there are many of us who hated "education" - it wasn't pleasant at all.

As for retirement, well that's an unfair comparison, life expectancy at middle age was a lot lower in pre-industrial times, mostly as a result of poor public health knowledge and practice. Furthermore, there was de facto retirement as families and communities took care of elders - but who knows how that related to retirement today. The author of this book probably doesn't know and you certainly don't know.

The Cleveland Fed's Economic Commentary is absolutely positively not pertinent. It is comparing the 1950s to the 1980s, not pre-industrial labor to industrial labor. Did you just google "myth of XYZ" and copy and paste the first result without reading it?

And by the way, even on its own merits that Economic Commentary is pretty suspect. It doesn't look like it takes into consideration commute times, time spent shopping, time spent on administrative overheard like paying bills figuring out insurance payments and the whole host of bureaucratic non-sense that a market economy requires customers to engage - all of that is work, it's not leisure and it needs to be accounted for.

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

#376

Post by HSO » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:39 PM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #361

ernst_klim wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Universal healthcare solved that in Europe. As a person which lives in Russia and Germany, I'm really interested in what you mean by solved? Universal healthcare in Russia is a total mess. Universal healthcare (edit: in Germany) have a lot of problems too, of which the most significant is underpayment, low salaries, and such a lack of personnel, that CDU people did really suggest to use conscription to draw the fre…

My favorite subject. First, I'm not sure if you're aware, but the price of a procedure in the US is not necessarily related to its cost. There's been several news articles showing the same procedure can cost 100x more in one hospital vs the other in the same city. Hospitals literally pull prices out their ass and justify it by saying "no one pays that price". Then they bludgeon people with these completely fictitious…

Do you have any idea how absolutely crazy these numbers sound over here in Europe?

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

#377

Post by vonmoltke » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #368

kasey_junk wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My explanation is you are just wrong about all of those things. A firm that let people go without severance would be considered extremely unprofessional in professional contexts. Talking about how much you get paid is not only normal it’s protected by law and you should definitely be doing both legal and financial research on any perspective employers.

> A firm that let people go without severance would be considered extremely unprofessional in professional contexts. Not everyone works at "firms": this is extremely common in food service, for example. > Talking about how much you get paid is not only normal it’s protected by law Citation? I've worked at least one place where it was explicitly against the rules to share what you were paid with your coworkers (althou…

Discussion of pay (and other workplace issues) is a "protected concerted activity" under the National Labor Relations Act, even when it happens outside the context of a union: https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/rights/employee-right...

The NLRB has taken action against companies that have attempted to use such handbook policies against workers: https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/enforcement-activity/... (click the pin on Missouri, it isn't direct-linkable :()

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

#378

Post by manfredo » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:41 PM UTC

wickedsickeune wrote: post #110

manfredo wrote: post #42

> One of capitalism's most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit -- but rarely articulated -- assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadi…

Who said that we have to trade current life for pre-industrial? Learning from the advantages of pre-industrial life and applying them now, is the point of the article, not regression.

The author did, when she wrote that it is a myth that capitalism did not reduced human toll. Using number of days spent working per year in a pre-industrial society and comparing it with a modern work week is incredibly naive. The increase in human "toll" caused by this increase in work is drastically offset by the benefits that this work produces: all the amenities we take for granted living in a post-industrial society.

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

#379

Post by azernik » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:42 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #374

dragonwriter wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 40h a day week and modern-day work contracts come as a direct evolution of medieval servitude, with little modification. Not really, they come as rather significant modifications of early capitalist servitude, won at a substantial cost in lives. Early capitalist servitude did itself evolve directly from feudal servitude, but it got much worse, in economic terms, in the process. It usually came with at least not…

>Early capitalist servitude did itself evolve directly from feudal servitude, but it got much worse, in economic terms, in the process. No it didn't. This Roussaunian idealization of rural subsistence living must really die. People aren't idiots, you don't move to urban factory work (as bad as it was compared to modern day) unless rural life was much worse.

Standard of living rose by some measures on moving to the cities; however, the dependence on an employer was much greater than the old dependence on your lord.

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

#380

Post by macspoofing » Thu, Aug 22, 2019, 3:42 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #370

macspoofing wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's your supply and demand explanation for the following norms? OK. You can't just assert things and then when someone disagrees challenge them to come up with their own explanation. The null hypothesis is "I don't know".

The person I'm responding to said: > The situation is pretty much dictated by supply/demand and both sides take advantage. If that hypothesis is true, then they can use that hypothesis to explain the existent phenomena.

>If that hypothesis is true, then they can use that hypothesis to explain the existent phenomena

Why would that be the case? It is true that supply/demand largely explains what happens in the job market. It is also true that there are are socio/political/cultural forces at play. For example, supply and demand is not a good explanation for why you can't come into most work environments in your undergarments.