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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)

#471

Post by banannaise »

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…

> the pretty pleasant 16-21 years that most Americans spend in education

From everything I've seen in the US, high school (age 14+) and college are more work than a full-time job, and many students also work a part-time job on top. I'm not sure "pretty pleasant" is quite so accurate.

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

#472

Post by sillyquiet »

greyhair wrote: post #384
dbingham wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Ever done manual labor? Or something that requires both intense manual labor and intellectual problem solving, like carpentry or many of the building trades? Or think about all the various fields that require intense intellectual output, with nothing like the rewards and security of software engineering. We've got it good. Though, really, the ideal would be for all workers to be treated more like we are, and les…

Agree. Ever have to stand waist deep in cow shit? I have. One of the things that encouraged me to go back to college. After the farm job I twisted wrenches for a living. Six day fifty hour weeks were the norm, the pay was meh, and I had over $8K of my own money invested in tools at the end. Yes, this career has been awesome. Awesome, and fun. Non-stop learning the entire time.

Neither your point nor the parent's here make the case that being a developer is the 'easiest' job.

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

#473

Post by jaynetics »

0xffff2 wrote: post #460
odiroot wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty bosses like this in Germany, which doesn't have as much of a history of slavery. Excuse me? My grandma was a slave worker in Germany. Kidnapped from the streets of Warsaw and forcefully moved to Southwest Germany to work for a rich farmer.

"Not much of" does not seem to significantly conflict with your single anecdote.

I purposefully wrote "not as much of", because NS-Zwangsarbeit was indeed massive.

It happened in the main part from 1939-1945, with a total of 8 million people enslaved at one point or another.

On the other hand, US slavery went on for three centuries, with a peak number of 4 million slaves and also about 8 million affected in total.

The time scale is why I think there is a major difference, both in terms of life years stolen as well as in terms of possible social and cultural adaptation or accustomizaton to slavery, the latter being the point of the OP.

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

#474

Post by whatshisface »

bobwaycott wrote: post #449
damq wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Did you just make this up? The stigma is the exact opposite. Western society makes it quite difficult to fire employees. Hell, it's even illegal to fire striking employees. You'd be hard-pressed to find any employer willing to fire an employe…

You appear to live in quite the bubble if you really believe this with absolute certainty. > Western society makes it quite difficult to fire employees. Have you worked in a US "right-to-work" state? It's incredibly easy to fire people. Large companies are typically the only businesses that bother with "thoroughly documented evidence of the employee's malfeasance". And even that is rare. > You'd be hard-pressed to fi…

>it's absolutely okay for employers to terminate any employee, any time, for any reason. Real reasons. Utter bullshit reasons. It doesn't matter.

Strictly speaking, the employee can quit for any reason too.

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

#475

Post by andrepd »

rubber_duck wrote: post #188
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…

> 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…

>Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis

I find that the main thesis is actually pretty sound. Historically speaking, the current (capitalistic) labour / production system is a direct descendant of the medieval feudal labour relations that existed in Europe 900 years ago. When you truly look at it, they are pretty identical in their core mechanics. There is a class system, there is servitude, there is limited social mobility.

It's just that the outer appearance is different, that some aspects are improved (in degree, not in kind, if I'm making myself understood), and finally that the technological advances mask the inequality and the problems in the system (a world where one person has 500$ and the other 500,000$ seems better than one where one has 1$ and the other 1,000$, but they are equally unequal).

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

#476

Post by WalterBright »

claudeganon wrote: post #273
WalterBright wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your take on dTal's assessment that libertarians are for no government at all? If you have any evidence of advocacy for repression in any of Friedman's lifetime of his books, articles, or lectures, I'd like to see it.

It seems a wrong conflation of Libertarianism and Anarchism. I already pointed you to one of Allende’s chief advisors identifying Friedman as providing the direct, ideological grounding for the Chilean coup, so I’m not sure what more evidence you want. What Friedman said in his speeches and wrote in books is not the sum total of his work and ideology. There’s also what he did, who he allied himself with, etc. He was…

> I already pointed you to one of Allende’s chief advisors identifying Friedman as providing the direct, ideological grounding for the Chilean coup, so I’m not sure what more evidence you want.

Something from Friedman himself, not filtered through hearsay. Friedman has a very large body of work you can draw from. If he's a fascist, you should be able to find it in that work.

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

#477

Post by danzig13 »

banannaise wrote: post #471
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…

> the pretty pleasant 16-21 years that most Americans spend in education From everything I've seen in the US, high school (age 14+) and college are more work than a full-time job, and many students also work a part-time job on top. I'm not sure "pretty pleasant" is quite so accurate.

And you pay for the privilege.

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

#478

Post by ernst_klim »

lostjohnny wrote: post #400
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…

It means that in Europe universal healthcare is almost a solved problem, according to WHO (World Health Organization) 6 out of the first 10 and 16 out of the first 20 highest ranked healthcare systems are in Europe. source: https://www.who.int/healthinfo/paper30.pdf

>20 highest ranked healthcare systems are in Europe.

It's not a rank, it's a (bad) efficiency metric, which says that Ukrainian and Kazakhstan HC is "more efficient" than Russian, and that Chilean HC is "more efficient" than that of Denmark.

If you assume this metric shows what's better, it's safe to assume that this metric is garbage. To lazy to dive into the methodology, they weight the date using avg schooling years and other vague staff, but the results rendering this paper totally unsound.

Comparing different countries using a single "performance" metric is nearly always garbage, since all sorts of important nuances are being omitted.

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

#479

Post by xyzzyz »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #286
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…

I am Russian, and Russia is a total mess, full stop. To address positive rights - societies don't just "run out" of money. As has been repeated a million times, a country with a sovereign currency is not run like a household budget. And the "right to clean water" is rather useful in making sure we don't have outbreaks of the plague and other fun stuff

To address positive rights - societies don't just "run out" of money. As has been repeated a million times, a country with a sovereign currency is not run like a household budget.

Sure, a country with a sovereign currency can create as much currency as they wish. They can never "run out" of money, literally. Practically, though, creating more currency doesn't result in more products being made and services being performed. Most countries are aiming for their currency to hold its real value relatively steady in accord with its nominal value, and you cannot do that if you create more money whenever you "run out" of it. So yes, countries cannot "run out" of money literally, but practically they can and do.

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

#480

Post by claudeganon »

WalterBright wrote: post #476
claudeganon wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems a wrong conflation of Libertarianism and Anarchism. I already pointed you to one of Allende’s chief advisors identifying Friedman as providing the direct, ideological grounding for the Chilean coup, so I’m not sure what more evidence you want. What Friedman said in his speeches and wrote in books is not the sum total of his work and ideology. There’s also what he did, who he allied himself with, etc. He was…

> I already pointed you to one of Allende’s chief advisors identifying Friedman as providing the direct, ideological grounding for the Chilean coup, so I’m not sure what more evidence you want. Something from Friedman himself, not filtered through hearsay. Friedman has a very large body of work you can draw from. If he's a fascist, you should be able to find it in that work.

I don’t think Friedman was a fascist. I think he was a sophist who had no problem working with or lending support to fascists when he thought it served his interests and ingratiated him to him to elites in the economic and political milieu in which he operated.

Again, on the one hand you have someone who fled Chile and was murdered by the Pinochet regime and someone who flew into give speeches and pal around with the junta. I’m sorry if I weigh the account of the former more than that of the latter.

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