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Where were you taught that? Fairly basic logic should indicate to you that it wouldn't have been possible for people to work as much. There was no manufacturin

Where were you taught that? Fairly basic logic should indicate to you that it wouldn't have been possible for people to work as much. There was no manufacturing. The vast majority of people who worked, worked in agriculture. You cannot work in the middle of winter, you cannot work at night. I don't know how it would have been possible...and that is why people then lived in crushing poverty (it isn't comparable to anything that exists today, even third-world nations today aren't close to the poverty that existed then). I think the surprising thing is that anyone would conclude that anything about feudalism was better. The reason why people didn't work long hours was because the economy was stuck in a Malthusian trap, and there wasn't enough productivity or work to actually feed people (apart from after mortality crises where close to a majority of the population died). The only reason the argument is being made is so that it can support the OP's conclusion about work in the present. It has no real significance by itself, this isn't history (incidentally, this is why history is important...it is taught so badly in the US, so badly...but everyone makes these bizarre ahistorical comparisons, everyone looks at the past when trying to understand the present...it is unfortunate that we have the knowledge to inform the limits of this process, but people just ignore it).

emodendroket 5y ago
I doubt anyone would really be happy returning to feudalism, but I imagine the goal of highlighting this stuff is to expand the sense of what is possible. It's easy to start thinking of the current state of affairs as some kind of immutable law of the universe and not a carefully negotiated political arrangement that can be altered as we see fit.
- hogFeast 5y ago
  Again, this is exactly my point. This isn't history. This is specifically not what history is for. History does not inform that process because the past is not like the present. They are orthogonal. Attempting to inform your view of the present using the past is like trying to play baseball like football...it just doesn't make any sense.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    Absurd. "History" is not some kind of science done by weights and measures but the job of interpreting various things about the past into some sort of cohesive narrative. Of course the result of trying to recapture something about the past is often not very much alike -- I don't think the American Republic is really that much like the Roman Republic, despite consciously attempting to recreate it -- but the idea that that's "not what history for" is just not true as a descriptive statement. Perhaps you believe it should not be used that way, but if your only lens to look at things is the present, your imagination will be incredibly constrained.
    - hogFeast 5y ago
      You have missed the point totally. The "cohesive narrative" stands alone. History exists only on its own terms. You cannot look at something that happened in history and say: we can do this because it happened then. It is not absurd, it is the basic aspect of how histography is taught in university (and btw, if you study politics...you will find the same idea, "path dependence"...you see parallels in every social science because it is a fairly common mistake made by people who haven't thought about the issue deeply...the "why don't you be like Denmark" meme is a classic of comparative politics). I am not saying that the present is the only lens (again, you haven't even started to understand what I wrote). The point is that the present is the only present. The past can only be understood in it's own terms. You are not constrained in any way because the past provides only information about the past, not the present.
      - emodendroket 5y ago
        The past leads directly into the present, so how could that possibly be? When do you think it’s cut off? Does yesterday not suggest anything about today?
        hogFeast 5y ago
        It can possibly be because that is what history is. It is the study of things which are not the present. It is irrelevant whether yesterday is like today because history is not about yesterday. Again, if you are interested about this subject, I would read some books about historiography (EH Carr and Elton are two of the most important books of this last hundred years...but, again, I don't think you will find anyone arguing for the position you are taking because it so clearly is an attempt to justify a political position today...this isn't what history is, any political position today has to be justified in the terms of today...historical relativists do not take your line, no-one does, it makes no sense unless you have no idea what history is).
- kingkawn 5y ago
  Returning to farming without the terrible pompous inhumane feudal lords sounds good
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    It sounds profoundly unappealing to me but the leisure time has its charms.
monocasa 5y ago
I was taught that as well, in what retrospectively was blatant capitalist propaganda. That the only thing that has given us leisure was the efficiencies of capitalism, and the benevolence of capitalists. Albeit my school district was really into right wing propaganda in general, describing the civil war as "the war of northern aggression" in its text books.
- dantheman 5y ago
  The benevolence of technical progress and productivity increase and the successful allocation of resources.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > That the only thing that has given us leisure was the efficiencies of capitalism, and the benevolence of capitalists. This is the opposite of what you expect from one perspective. When a task becomes more efficient people want to put more time in it since they get more out of it. So the more efficient we make jobs the more people will want to work to get more and more stuff. There might be a cap to that, but as of yet we haven't reached it, even programmers making $500k a year still wants to work more even though they could easily spend most of their time not working.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    There's a huge push for reduced work weeks. And even where it's not official a lot of those software engineers spend their work week on reddit, so I'm not sure your example checks out.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  The industrial revolution did give us a lot more leisure time if you're willing to live with at the same standards as people back then did. But we don't find those standards acceptable.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    The lack of leisure time peaked during the industrial revolution, as the article this thread is on highlights. Victorian era work houses weren't really known for amenities, even by feudal standards.

emodendroket 5y ago

I doubt anyone would really be happy returning to feudalism, but I imagine the goal of highlighting this stuff is to expand the sense of what is possible. It's easy to start thinking of the current state of affairs as some kind of immutable law of the universe and not a carefully negotiated political arrangement that can be altered as we see fit.

hogFeast 5y ago
Again, this is exactly my point. This isn't history. This is specifically not what history is for. History does not inform that process because the past is not like the present. They are orthogonal. Attempting to inform your view of the present using the past is like trying to play baseball like football...it just doesn't make any sense.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Absurd. "History" is not some kind of science done by weights and measures but the job of interpreting various things about the past into some sort of cohesive narrative. Of course the result of trying to recapture something about the past is often not very much alike -- I don't think the American Republic is really that much like the Roman Republic, despite consciously attempting to recreate it -- but the idea that that's "not what history for" is just not true as a descriptive statement. Perhaps you believe it should not be used that way, but if your only lens to look at things is the present, your imagination will be incredibly constrained.
  - hogFeast 5y ago
    You have missed the point totally. The "cohesive narrative" stands alone. History exists only on its own terms. You cannot look at something that happened in history and say: we can do this because it happened then. It is not absurd, it is the basic aspect of how histography is taught in university (and btw, if you study politics...you will find the same idea, "path dependence"...you see parallels in every social science because it is a fairly common mistake made by people who haven't thought about the issue deeply...the "why don't you be like Denmark" meme is a classic of comparative politics). I am not saying that the present is the only lens (again, you haven't even started to understand what I wrote). The point is that the present is the only present. The past can only be understood in it's own terms. You are not constrained in any way because the past provides only information about the past, not the present.
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      The past leads directly into the present, so how could that possibly be? When do you think it’s cut off? Does yesterday not suggest anything about today?
      - hogFeast 5y ago
        It can possibly be because that is what history is. It is the study of things which are not the present. It is irrelevant whether yesterday is like today because history is not about yesterday. Again, if you are interested about this subject, I would read some books about historiography (EH Carr and Elton are two of the most important books of this last hundred years...but, again, I don't think you will find anyone arguing for the position you are taking because it so clearly is an attempt to justify a political position today...this isn't what history is, any political position today has to be justified in the terms of today...historical relativists do not take your line, no-one does, it makes no sense unless you have no idea what history is).
kingkawn 5y ago
Returning to farming without the terrible pompous inhumane feudal lords sounds good
- emodendroket 5y ago
  It sounds profoundly unappealing to me but the leisure time has its charms.

monocasa 5y ago

I was taught that as well, in what retrospectively was blatant capitalist propaganda. That the only thing that has given us leisure was the efficiencies of capitalism, and the benevolence of capitalists. Albeit my school district was really into right wing propaganda in general, describing the civil war as "the war of northern aggression" in its text books.

dantheman 5y ago
The benevolence of technical progress and productivity increase and the successful allocation of resources.
Jensson 5y ago
> That the only thing that has given us leisure was the efficiencies of capitalism, and the benevolence of capitalists. This is the opposite of what you expect from one perspective. When a task becomes more efficient people want to put more time in it since they get more out of it. So the more efficient we make jobs the more people will want to work to get more and more stuff. There might be a cap to that, but as of yet we haven't reached it, even programmers making $500k a year still wants to work more even though they could easily spend most of their time not working.
- monocasa 5y ago
  There's a huge push for reduced work weeks. And even where it's not official a lot of those software engineers spend their work week on reddit, so I'm not sure your example checks out.
Aerroon 5y ago
The industrial revolution did give us a lot more leisure time if you're willing to live with at the same standards as people back then did. But we don't find those standards acceptable.
- monocasa 5y ago
  The lack of leisure time peaked during the industrial revolution, as the article this thread is on highlights. Victorian era work houses weren't really known for amenities, even by feudal standards.