6 ms·

Sure they had a “shorter workweek” but it also took women a full workday to wash the family’s clothes, hours of walking to get water for the day, and if you wan

by Swizec 5y ago

Sure they had a “shorter workweek” but it also took women a full workday to wash the family’s clothes, hours of walking to get water for the day, and if you wanted something from the town over that was a 3 day trip. So many everyday things we take for granted were incredibly difficult and involved a lot of manual labor and/or waiting around for hours and days. I wonder how much of that leisure time came from being blocked and technology/communications imposing a maximum throughput. You couldn’t work faster even if you wanted to and so you leisured. “Hurry up and wait” as some like to say PS: there’s also stories of medieval peasants in France basicalky hibernating over winter because if you didn’t sleep for 16 hours every day, you’d burn too much calories and starve[1]. I’m sure that was a very fun reason to have short workweeks [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/opinion/25robb.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/opinion/25robb.html

ren_engineer 5y ago
article basically ignores quality of life in exchange for "leisure". I could build a crude shelter and be homeless and basically achieve the same thing, turns out most people don't want that. Fact is most people voluntarily opt in to capitalism because life is better, if you want something close to what the article talks about you can pretty easily move to an Amish community or try creating your own commune and try to convince people to join
- karpierz 5y ago
  Is it that easy to leave your community and way of life to live a very different life amidst strangers?
  - ratsforhorses 5y ago
    Isn't that what a majority of us do when we reach adulthood? and though the answer is subjective, yes it's easy, fun, interesting...also if you are interested in freeloading I'd recommend it, sleeping rough, squatting, food gathering, skipping(from dumpsters) or just generally sharing resources is a lot of fun... my wake up came while squatting and transforming unused buildings...met a bunch of lovely people and learnt a lot from them..
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- narrator 5y ago
  Adam Smith points out too that most people only had one or two hand woven garments during their entire lives before the industrial revolution. Thus clothes were a far bigger deal back then than they are today. For example, in the Bible, if a person was incredibly upset, they would tear their clothes, and this was considered a huge deal.
- Emma_Goldman 5y ago
  You can't because if you don't organise production to maximise profits you'll be beaten by the competition that does. If you set up a commune and put aside time for democratic meetings and communal recreation, and make work easier and more pleasurable to do, then you'll produce less per hour worked. Companies that don't do those things will get the contracts. Also, you'll be selling into a market whose demand is dominated by the rich and the imperatives of capitalism.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > most people voluntarily opt in to capitalism because life is better I think this takes a good point too far. The society around you is not opt-in, it's a very difficult opt-out. People generally follow the religion of their parents, the career path of their neighborhood, etc. Opting out of the current economy would be a major, radical sacrifice (of status, friends, family, resources, opportunity) that would require enormous vision and courage. And then what do you do for health care, for example? How do you raise kids? Peasants in the industrial revolution faced starvation, IIRC, if they didn't move to the cities. Much of their opportunity for their former lives had been taken away.
  - californical 5y ago
    Isn’t that their point? You can opt-out and give up the healthcare, education, ease of raising kids, grocery stores, etc, living life similarly to people of the past before all of those modern inventions. It would just be a horrible life, so nobody does it.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      My understanding: They say people are making a rational, economic, opt-in choice. I'm saying people are making an almost inescapable choice not to opt-out, having nothing to do with the economics.
- slv77 5y ago
  The biggest increases in quality of life comes from public health measure such as access to clean water, food and air. The next is protection from the elements with access to adequate clothing, shelter and fuel. After that I would argue that trust in the integrity of public institutions (rule of law) and security from the threat of violence and extortion. Then it would be access to education, basic health care to prolong life and reduce suffering. Beyond that we have basic needs to feel that we are part of a family and community where we are loved and valued (belong) and where we can contribute (purpose). While capitalism has excelled at improving productivity it doesn’t dictate that the gains in productivity necessarily will increase overall quality of life. I could, for example increase the productivity of food production in ways that may decrease overall public health. In that scenario capitalism would directly decrease quality of life. I think the arguments on hacker news have mostly been due to a (US) system that has become extremely rigid in that there is less personal choice in how productivity gains may be spent by forcing people into very narrow specialties to maximize income. In many cases that may result in overall lower quality of life if it impacts long term health or being part of a community.
  - Swizec 5y ago
    “What have the Romans ever done for us” https://youtu.be/uvPbj9NX0zc https://youtu.be/uvPbj9NX0zc
    - paulryanrogers 5y ago
      How much of the things Romans are credited with reached the lower classes or conquered people?
  - gbronner 5y ago
    Peace. Not having an army sell you into slavery or burn/steal all of your possessions is a precursor for capital formation
masklinn 5y ago
> So many everyday things we take for granted were incredibly difficult and involved a lot of manual labor and/or waiting around for hours and days. Indeed, prepping food was no cake walk. Grinding grains by hand is pretty hellish, and making edible flour from high-tanin acorns takes weeks. Sane with spinning yarn.
- Swizec 5y ago
  Yeah I’d be curious to see how much of that short workday was because just staying alive was so much harder than today that you simply didn’t have time for more work. Like when dinner takes 3 hours to prepare instead of 20 minutes, that’s quite a difference.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    We went to 10 to 12 hour days of back breaking labor, six days a week with no off season during the industrial revolution, so I don't think it's a physical limit that was being hit.
  - ratsforhorses 5y ago
    What dinner takes 3 hours....? if we're talking about the poor, realistically soup was a mainstay...here in Romania we have all kinds and then there's marmaliga, basically polenta, add salt and if you're hungry delicious... it does seem like rent, insurance, transport , investment for the future takes up a lot of "work" needs in the present, besides we've become incredibly vain, where the packaging is often worth more than the content...
- Aunche 5y ago
  Not only was it incredibly labor intensive to process grain by hand, it was also caused the flour to be full of tiny rocks that would wear away one's teeth.
agumonkey 5y ago
I'm curious about this argument. It was mentioned in some TED talk about the benefits of simple machines. I might just be a change of pace, also a change of dependencies. Walking long is fine (people need daydream and wandering time, some dose of boredom). Washing your family clothes may be work but it's still better than doing what your boss doesn't want to do. Emotionally your a lot less invested in the latter yet you have to do it.
- Swizec 5y ago
  Here’s a great talk about clothes washing. https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_magic_washing_machine/up-next?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_magic_washing_mac... Hans Rosling argues that washing machines are magic because clothes go in and books come out. Women education, literacy rates, workplace participation etc directly correlates with automation in the home. The less time it takes to keep a family running, the more empowered women get in a society.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    That's the TED talk I had in mind, I just forgot Hans' name. I understand his argument but I think it's a biased view, we assume modern leisure is better but I'm not sold on this.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      Education, literacy, political empowerment are not leisure.
      - agumonkey 5y ago
        These are all cute words, but on my daily routine I see nothing of that sort. People are not especially empowered, power which I believe comes as much from emotional and human experience rather than words.
        5y ago
Zigurd 5y ago
There are confounding factors in figuring supposed historic misery: Fewer clothes, washed less frequently, for example. Average life expectancy being pulled down by high infant and maternal mortality. That's obviously not good, but it also means that survivors lived longer than averages suggest.
- Swizec 5y ago
  The problem with child mortality is that birthing 8 kids is a lot more taxing on women’s lives than birthing 2. Maybe that doesn’t fall under work but it’s not quite leisure either.
britch 5y ago
I think you are right about this. Life may have had less of what we think of as "work" now. The part that I think is interesting is, as we progressed technologically, where did that time non-conventional working time go? It used to take hours to clean your home, prepare food, etc. We have modern technology which made it easier. How are people spending that new "free" time? I think the answer seems to be that technology has essentially freed more time for people to work for someone else. The "advancement" means you spend less time washing clothes, but more time flipping burgers or delivering food. I think this points to something interesting about how much the lowest earners in a society get paid. While it is true that they get paid what the market will bear, the minimum value is always just enough to survive on. "Time saving" technology has effectively devalued their wages. The cost of staying alive is less than it was before. They must work more for the same outcome. I'm someone who likes to think automation and technology can make people's lives better in the abstract, but... maybe technology alone cannot accomplish this
- gbronner 5y ago
  We have automatic dishwashers now. During WW1, a relative of mine was sent from the city to help on a farm. After dinner, the family lined up all the platters and plates and put them outside, where a herd of hungry cats would lick them clean. Presumably they were rinsed afterwards, but nobody ever told me. There are qualitative differences in results independent of time savings...
drivebycomment 5y ago
> I wonder how much of that leisure time came from being blocked All evidence point to that being very high. e.g. famine was regular and routine, before the capitalism and before the industrial revolution. Humanity basically spent majority of the time before the capitalism and the modern agriculture fearing running out of food. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#Decline_of_famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#Decline_of_famine And, examples like de-collectivization of agriculture in China during their economic reform, or what happened in Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#Decline_of_famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#Decline_of_famine make it very clear "capitalism" played an important role in reducing / eliminating the famine. So, articles like this is really misleading - it implies somehow life was better like this paragraph from the article: > The contrast between capitalist and precapitalist work patterns is most striking in respect to the working year. The medieval calendar was filled with holidays. Official -- that is, church -- holidays included not only long "vacations" at Christmas, Easter, and midsummer but also numerous saints' andrest days. These were spent both in sober churchgoing and in feasting, drinking and merrymaking. The "feasting, drinking and merrymaking" was regularly followed by long periods of malnutrition and massive death.

by Swizec 5y ago

ren_engineer 5y ago

article basically ignores quality of life in exchange for "leisure". I could build a crude shelter and be homeless and basically achieve the same thing, turns out most people don't want that. Fact is most people voluntarily opt in to capitalism because life is better, if you want something close to what the article talks about you can pretty easily move to an Amish community or try creating your own commune and try to convince people to join

karpierz 5y ago
Is it that easy to leave your community and way of life to live a very different life amidst strangers?
- ratsforhorses 5y ago
  Isn't that what a majority of us do when we reach adulthood? and though the answer is subjective, yes it's easy, fun, interesting...also if you are interested in freeloading I'd recommend it, sleeping rough, squatting, food gathering, skipping(from dumpsters) or just generally sharing resources is a lot of fun... my wake up came while squatting and transforming unused buildings...met a bunch of lovely people and learnt a lot from them..
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
narrator 5y ago
Adam Smith points out too that most people only had one or two hand woven garments during their entire lives before the industrial revolution. Thus clothes were a far bigger deal back then than they are today. For example, in the Bible, if a person was incredibly upset, they would tear their clothes, and this was considered a huge deal.
Emma_Goldman 5y ago
You can't because if you don't organise production to maximise profits you'll be beaten by the competition that does. If you set up a commune and put aside time for democratic meetings and communal recreation, and make work easier and more pleasurable to do, then you'll produce less per hour worked. Companies that don't do those things will get the contracts. Also, you'll be selling into a market whose demand is dominated by the rich and the imperatives of capitalism.
wolverine876 5y ago
> most people voluntarily opt in to capitalism because life is better I think this takes a good point too far. The society around you is not opt-in, it's a very difficult opt-out. People generally follow the religion of their parents, the career path of their neighborhood, etc. Opting out of the current economy would be a major, radical sacrifice (of status, friends, family, resources, opportunity) that would require enormous vision and courage. And then what do you do for health care, for example? How do you raise kids? Peasants in the industrial revolution faced starvation, IIRC, if they didn't move to the cities. Much of their opportunity for their former lives had been taken away.
- californical 5y ago
  Isn’t that their point? You can opt-out and give up the healthcare, education, ease of raising kids, grocery stores, etc, living life similarly to people of the past before all of those modern inventions. It would just be a horrible life, so nobody does it.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    My understanding: They say people are making a rational, economic, opt-in choice. I'm saying people are making an almost inescapable choice not to opt-out, having nothing to do with the economics.
slv77 5y ago
The biggest increases in quality of life comes from public health measure such as access to clean water, food and air. The next is protection from the elements with access to adequate clothing, shelter and fuel. After that I would argue that trust in the integrity of public institutions (rule of law) and security from the threat of violence and extortion. Then it would be access to education, basic health care to prolong life and reduce suffering. Beyond that we have basic needs to feel that we are part of a family and community where we are loved and valued (belong) and where we can contribute (purpose). While capitalism has excelled at improving productivity it doesn’t dictate that the gains in productivity necessarily will increase overall quality of life. I could, for example increase the productivity of food production in ways that may decrease overall public health. In that scenario capitalism would directly decrease quality of life. I think the arguments on hacker news have mostly been due to a (US) system that has become extremely rigid in that there is less personal choice in how productivity gains may be spent by forcing people into very narrow specialties to maximize income. In many cases that may result in overall lower quality of life if it impacts long term health or being part of a community.
- Swizec 5y ago
  “What have the Romans ever done for us” https://youtu.be/uvPbj9NX0zc https://youtu.be/uvPbj9NX0zc
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    How much of the things Romans are credited with reached the lower classes or conquered people?
- gbronner 5y ago
  Peace. Not having an army sell you into slavery or burn/steal all of your possessions is a precursor for capital formation

masklinn 5y ago

> So many everyday things we take for granted were incredibly difficult and involved a lot of manual labor and/or waiting around for hours and days. Indeed, prepping food was no cake walk. Grinding grains by hand is pretty hellish, and making edible flour from high-tanin acorns takes weeks. Sane with spinning yarn.

Swizec 5y ago
Yeah I’d be curious to see how much of that short workday was because just staying alive was so much harder than today that you simply didn’t have time for more work. Like when dinner takes 3 hours to prepare instead of 20 minutes, that’s quite a difference.
- monocasa 5y ago
  We went to 10 to 12 hour days of back breaking labor, six days a week with no off season during the industrial revolution, so I don't think it's a physical limit that was being hit.
- ratsforhorses 5y ago
  What dinner takes 3 hours....? if we're talking about the poor, realistically soup was a mainstay...here in Romania we have all kinds and then there's marmaliga, basically polenta, add salt and if you're hungry delicious... it does seem like rent, insurance, transport , investment for the future takes up a lot of "work" needs in the present, besides we've become incredibly vain, where the packaging is often worth more than the content...
Aunche 5y ago
Not only was it incredibly labor intensive to process grain by hand, it was also caused the flour to be full of tiny rocks that would wear away one's teeth.

agumonkey 5y ago

I'm curious about this argument. It was mentioned in some TED talk about the benefits of simple machines. I might just be a change of pace, also a change of dependencies. Walking long is fine (people need daydream and wandering time, some dose of boredom). Washing your family clothes may be work but it's still better than doing what your boss doesn't want to do. Emotionally your a lot less invested in the latter yet you have to do it.

Swizec 5y ago
Here’s a great talk about clothes washing. https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_magic_washing_machine/up-next?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_magic_washing_mac... Hans Rosling argues that washing machines are magic because clothes go in and books come out. Women education, literacy rates, workplace participation etc directly correlates with automation in the home. The less time it takes to keep a family running, the more empowered women get in a society.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  That's the TED talk I had in mind, I just forgot Hans' name. I understand his argument but I think it's a biased view, we assume modern leisure is better but I'm not sold on this.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    Education, literacy, political empowerment are not leisure.
    - agumonkey 5y ago
      These are all cute words, but on my daily routine I see nothing of that sort. People are not especially empowered, power which I believe comes as much from emotional and human experience rather than words.
      - 5y ago

Zigurd 5y ago

There are confounding factors in figuring supposed historic misery: Fewer clothes, washed less frequently, for example. Average life expectancy being pulled down by high infant and maternal mortality. That's obviously not good, but it also means that survivors lived longer than averages suggest.

Swizec 5y ago
The problem with child mortality is that birthing 8 kids is a lot more taxing on women’s lives than birthing 2. Maybe that doesn’t fall under work but it’s not quite leisure either.

britch 5y ago

I think you are right about this. Life may have had less of what we think of as "work" now. The part that I think is interesting is, as we progressed technologically, where did that time non-conventional working time go? It used to take hours to clean your home, prepare food, etc. We have modern technology which made it easier. How are people spending that new "free" time? I think the answer seems to be that technology has essentially freed more time for people to work for someone else. The "advancement" means you spend less time washing clothes, but more time flipping burgers or delivering food. I think this points to something interesting about how much the lowest earners in a society get paid. While it is true that they get paid what the market will bear, the minimum value is always just enough to survive on. "Time saving" technology has effectively devalued their wages. The cost of staying alive is less than it was before. They must work more for the same outcome. I'm someone who likes to think automation and technology can make people's lives better in the abstract, but... maybe technology alone cannot accomplish this

gbronner 5y ago
We have automatic dishwashers now. During WW1, a relative of mine was sent from the city to help on a farm. After dinner, the family lined up all the platters and plates and put them outside, where a herd of hungry cats would lick them clean. Presumably they were rinsed afterwards, but nobody ever told me. There are qualitative differences in results independent of time savings...

drivebycomment 5y ago

> I wonder how much of that leisure time came from being blocked All evidence point to that being very high. e.g. famine was regular and routine, before the capitalism and before the industrial revolution. Humanity basically spent majority of the time before the capitalism and the modern agriculture fearing running out of food. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#Decline_of_famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#Decline_of_famine And, examples like de-collectivization of agriculture in China during their economic reform, or what happened in Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#Decline_of_famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#Decline_of_famine make it very clear "capitalism" played an important role in reducing / eliminating the famine. So, articles like this is really misleading - it implies somehow life was better like this paragraph from the article: > The contrast between capitalist and precapitalist work patterns is most striking in respect to the working year. The medieval calendar was filled with holidays. Official -- that is, church -- holidays included not only long "vacations" at Christmas, Easter, and midsummer but also numerous saints' andrest days. These were spent both in sober churchgoing and in feasting, drinking and merrymaking. The "feasting, drinking and merrymaking" was regularly followed by long periods of malnutrition and massive death.