2 ms·

I was looking at things like this: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/workti

• defrost 3y ago
  Oddly, both can be true: Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. ( from your link ) Pre capitalist rural life was relaxed, relatively easy going, and steady constant work through the seasons. Not an eighty hour grind at machines doing the same repitative labour, but a paced life always pottering away at something, interspersed with occasional grinds of ploughing, seeding, harvest, birthing, etc (relatively short burst but long hours of activity) I can attest to this from my father (still alive, born 1935 to a farming for survival family), grandfather and various other old people I've spoken to growing up. It's a different type of life, not rushed but steady. To be fair, I'm Australian and we've had the eight hour day codified in law and set as the benchmark for a minimum wage (pay for (5 or 6) eight hour days must clothe, feed, and house a family) since Federation (birth of the seperate nation) under the Harvester Agreement.